September 27, 2015
Greetings,
As we wind up our first month of the 2015-2016 school year, we thought we'd take a look at some of our recent activities:
Buddies
Older and younger students coming together for special activities is a long-standing tradition at Swain. Mrs. Takacs
and Mrs. Viqar's Prekindergarten class recently met their 5th grade buddies from Mrs. Coverley's class. As a 'get acquainted' activity, they drew portraits and interviewed each other. Who likes spaghetti? How about onion rings?
(click photo for more images)
Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month
Senorita Laney, our K-5 Spanish teacher, helped her 4th- and 5th grade students celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month by making pico de gallo sauce (PEE-ko dee GUY-oh).
Ask them the difference between this colorful dish made of chopped tomatoes and vegetables, and salsa!
(Click on this photo for more images)
Fall sports time!
Our Archery, Cross Country, Field Hockey
and Soccer teams - made up of 5th-8th grade athletes - are off to a great fall season. The entire school cheered them on at last week's Pep Rally
(see photos here).
You are encouraged to come out and cheer on our Cougars! Tomorrow we host field hockey and cross country home contests; check the entire schedule at swain.org/sports.
A record number of archers are participating this year; see more photos by clicking on this photo.
Collaborating in Math
Mrs. Scerbo often gives her 2nd grade math 
students complicated problems to solve, but she frequently pairs them up for these more challenging problems so they can collaborate on the answers.
This time, each group had to come up with a combination of numbers that totaled the number in the alien's stomach - proving two heads are better than one!
Click photo for more pictures.
Celebrating Peace Day
Celebrating International Peace Day is a fairly recent tradition at Swain. This time around, the K-4 students enjoyed poetry written by third graders, at their weekly Town Meeting.
By Luke:
What is peace?
a sunrise - a dove with an olive branch
What is Peace Day?
wind blowing at a calming pace - a slight movement, in the air
How can I help?
by sharing my snack - holding rallies all I can to make peace an awesome plan
Led by drama teacher, Miss Bocian, the middle school students were challenged to create a tableux (pronounced TAB-low, or French for 'frozen picture) that illustrates peace, at their town meeting.
This is Miss Bocian and Mrs. Werner's advisory's depiction of peace - they gave this explanation:
Two warring sides who had been fighting for a while were trying to reconcile, and some were in favor of the reconciliation, and some were not.
This week on Facebook - among other news...
We did a flashback yesterday, to September of 2007 when fourth grade teacher Miss Kleppinger made her first appearance at Swain - as "Joanne Appleseed", great-granddaughter of legendary Johnny Appleseed ... Mr. Burns took his 8th grade History class outside, to enjoy the beautiful fall weather ... and we celebrated "National Comic Book Day" with a visit to the Umansky Library, where comic books - aka graphic novels - are a popular read with our students.
Thanks for reading, and have a great week!
