Happy Thanksgiving!!

As American Thanksgiving approaches, I thought I'd post some pics about Alianna and my school, Prairie Hill Learning Center! I hope you enjoy.

Here is Praire Hill! The campus consists of three seperate age groups: 18 months-3 year olds, 3 year olds-6 year olds, and then in the building I work in we have 6-9 year olds in one room, and the 9-14 year olds in another room. This is the building I work in- the Earth House. It has a wind turbine (you can see it in the picture) to generate electricity. It also has solar panels, straw bale construction, and angled walls to allow for the most light in winter, and the least light in summer. I'm taking this picture at the end of the day, so the sun is setting... Sorry for the poor lighting!

This is actually a picture of a room in the Prairie House. You can see a bunch of the young children taking naps!

A mural on the wall of the building I teach in, the Earth House.

The office in Prairie House. To the left you can see the small animal barn with the chickens, ducks, and peafowl.

Here is an example of one of the child's work. The student was learning about the parts of a flower and chose to write about the parts and then make a clay model representing her learning. The paragraph is hard to read in the photograph. Needless to say I'm glad my co-teacher, Deb, gave this lesson, because this child knows more parts of the flower then I knew even existed!

One of our after school teachers, a parent, and some students discussing an artist's work.

Sneakers- who likes to sneak into the buildings on cold days!

Looking south from the Earth House you can see the barn (with the three ponies, Felix the sheep, and the five horses), the garden (nearly empty now), and grassy areas where we play.

The kitchen, we prepare most of our own food and clean up together as a community.

A corner, showing a quilting project, some of our books, and a "phases of the moon" lesson we worked on today.

The main classroom for the 6-9 year olds. Notice the messy closets. 6-9 year olds are ordered enough inside, that they don't care so much about mess around them... Joy oh Joy!

More...

Alianna

Alianna's new bed. The first night in it it took two hours to get her to stay in. Since then she has done excellently!

Playing in the leaves during fall break. She loved jumping in them. Or rather, she more often backed up into them. She often backs into us when she wants to be held, or picked up. It is very cute!

We went and saw the Omaha Zoo with our friends from CBC.