Today was one of the best days working in the garden we may of ever had. We put layers upon layers of mulch and dried leaves on top of soaked newspapers. The kids took to it very well; they even got the teachers to stop hiding in the shade and get out in the sun to help. They had so much fun planting the different foods and watering them. I want to have more days like this but with more shade.
I know! I know! The title sounds a little out there but bear with me. Today we learned about how worms work to help us help the world. Today the studens learned how worms help keep the soil healthy enough for things like plants and trees to grow. They seemed so interested in these little creatures it was amazing to see how quick they took to the lesson.
I must take this opportunity to brag on a few of the University of values students. Today we had two new additions to the program and two of our current students demonstrated one of the three major characteristics we have been teaching. For the past few weeks we have been covering three very important characteristics, Caring, Manners and greetings.
We all know those warm fuzzy feeling we get deep inside ourselves when someone steps outside the box to make us feel like we are apart of something. Today I saw two of my students step out of their way to welcome people into our program. This morning Darahjanee came to me and told me that she had taught our new student how we greet in our program she then proceeded to ask me if she could show her around the program. Of course I couldn't refuse! It is awesome to see Darahjanee step into a leadership role to help others. I must admit I felt like a proud mama.
Another child that stepped up to the "caring plate" was Kwame. Today Kwame showed me caring by helping me color pictures for our ocean shadow box. We had a great talk about his favorite teacher and subject. Soon, we were joined by a few of the other children. Kwame was more than willing to share our special time with the other children, he even helped many of the younger children get coloring sheets and crayons. But the one thing that truly blew me away was when a new student Tarion came to join our group. Kwame. in a very polite tone, asked, "Will you please tell me your name?" when she responded Kwame made awesome eye contact and replied, "Thank you. It's very nice to meet you." It was such a grown up conversation that Kwame initiated himself without being prompted. 
Last week we made a "caring robot" which after much deliberation Hayzul named "
Nikki." Nikki is a very hungry robot who loves to eat lightbulbs. Now these lightbulbs aren't just any lightbulbs. On each bulb there is a place for a name and description. This gives children the opportunity to observe each other and look for situations in which they demonstrate caring, manner and greetings. The children love to write positive words and feed them to Nikki.
I am so proud of each and every one of our kids but special shines to Kwame and Darahjanee for the day. Keep up the good work!!
Today was a very interesting day; we took the kids to vist a landfill. They seemed very interested on where the trash they threw away finally ended up.
After the tour we played some games and won some prizes. It was a chance to see if what we were teaching our students were sticking with them...and it is!
We saw first hand some of the ways the landfill protects the environment by capturing green house gases and using methods to speed up the decay process for garbage.
The days of burning trash are long gone and now we process trash in a way that contributes to the city budget from selling the gas produced at the landfill.
Ms. Sheila, a director who is also en engineer, was glad to see us come and was proud of the job that her summer interns from the City of Dallas were doing to direct games for our kids to test our recycling knowledge. The University of Values kids did very well and appreciated the Landfill's staff wonderful tour and the time they took to make sure we understood the science behind modern waste management systems. Hazel answered a question without hesitation by responding: the three R's of resource management are to Reuse, Reduce, Recycle.
Way to go kids.
We found out that truck drivers and mechanics are always needed and that environmental and civil engineers are responsible for monitoring and developing most of the processes we saw. Dallas is one of the only southern cities that is using a particular type of laying process that uses old tires for filtering, we were told.
Look at them trying to decide which type of light bulb will give off the
most heat and which will be the brightest.
We had one student, Trinity Taylor, who thought the compact fluorescent light(CFL)bulb would be cooler to the touch and give off just as much light. However her fellow students were thinking just the opposite. She had an insight during the probing session and you could see her realize what the answer might be from her expression. It was priceless.
We ran the test for 1 minute for each bulb and of course the new CFL bulb is cooler to their hands held over the lampshade. At this point Trinity reveals that her sister has this type of bulb in her lamp and she thought it seemed cooler.
We can even remove the CFL bulb easily because it never got as hot as the older type bulb.
The children share that their families use some of the new bulbs at home, but also are still using the older bulbs. We'll get a chance to "estimate" what kind of impact our children's families would have on reducing their electrical cost when the K-1 class's home electric bulb usage surveys are returned next week.
Now the kids can tell their parents with conviction that the CFL last longer and uses less electricity, not to mention that it does not heat up the room the way the older bulbs do. Jada Kelley, Aviant Blaylock, Angel Tate, and Jailyn Vickers have "seen the lights" so to speak.
Science Rocks!!!!!
Today we had a special guest help us prepare for our very own Garden!! The garden will be out in the back of the University of Values building and it will be the responsiblity of each of the students to make sure the garden is maintained.
We have officially started to make progress on the garden. Today the students went outside to measure the dimensions of our garden. The children worked together to measure and hammer in stakes to show the gardeners where to till up the land. We learned today what tilling means. We also learned about team work as we shared in the many tasks to achieving a perfect garden.
Today the 2nd and 3rd grade class created their own thermomaters. We took an empty water bottle added water, rubbing alcohol and food coloring to them. We then placed a straw into the mixture and surrounded it with molding clay. The children learned that when it is hot the liquid goes up into the straw and when it gets colder the liquid mixture goes back down.
This project was very intriguing for both the children and the teachers. When Ms. Nazareth attempted the experiment this morning it did not work like she had planned. We were hesitant to try again. However the second we took the kids' projects out Ishmael's liquid almost out of his straw. There was laughter from all 5 of the children and Hayzul exclaimed, "It must be 100 degrees out here!" Kwame then realized that if he put his hands around the molding clay, the heat from his hands would make the mixture rise up the straw.
When I asked the children what they learned by doing this experiment Darahjanee told me that she learned that sometimes when you do an experiment it does not always work out the way you want it to and you just have to understand the before you start. Ms. Danielle helped our class make the thermomaters and when we took them outside she made a comment that she wanted to make one at her home. This then led to a discussion about how we, as a class, could teach people at the enviroment fair on how to make these very special themomaters.
Today, Ms. Anna had an idea to paint rocks to put outside in our garden. So Ms. Anna and Ms.Lauren's classes went outside to gather smooth rocks to paint. We didn't find many smooth rocks but gathered as many rocks as we could. We all worked very hard on our rocks. There were so many different designs! There were ladybugs, spiderman symbols, and many more.
I believe that we all had fun creating our art. -Vanessa
As I came into the office today, I noticed that the After-School Academy window that is usually brightly lit up like this:
was very dark, as if no one was there. Though there were no lights, it seemed darker than usual.
Perplexed...and, I admit, a little concerned that the teachers weren't doing their job...I started to walk in.
As I opened the door, little voices started chattering, "Someone's coming in!" and one of the dark black curtains hanging from the ceiling, encircling the kids, slightly opened so the kids could see their intruder.
"It's Ms. Janet!" they exclaimed. And quickly started telling me, "We're having a campout!"
Indeed, it was very dark...like a campout. And I looked down to see their "camp fire" in the middle of the circle (baby carrots on a piece of white tissue paper with a flashlight underneath to make it glow).
The kids had read their morning story, Bear Snores On, and were role playing and learning about kindness.
Shines go out to Nazareth, their teacher for the day, who stepped in for their regular teachers. I'm glad I walked in when I did. Sometimes it's the little events that help me realize how much the kids are learning and how much the teachers (many of them high school students...and Nazareth, a former student herself) are teaching.
Thanks, everyone!
Well our docent, Sarah, at the Dallas Museum of Nature and Science wanted us to know that this area of Dallas was once a fertile and wet zone
where many animal lived whose fossils are seen
in 
the museum exhibits.
This Super turtle, like the one shown here, and this gigantic armadillo, about the size on a Volkswagen bug, were once living here in Ocean Texas. Angel and Trinity were able to get these photo shots even in the face of danger, and they wanted to know why things like the turtle and armadillo had shrunk in modern time.
I guess we had all better hope that climate change doesn't cause shrinkage like it did before or we might come back the size of ants.
Laughter and fun with a twist of education seem to be the cures for this heat.Our second and third graders needed to put their knowledge to the test so we thought what better than some outdoor fun. Our fun consisted of five stations: relay races, facts and illustrations with chalk,and water cycle puzzles.
We challenged the kinder and first grade classes sounds unfair ,but the reality of it was that we lost and yet no one in my class complained. What I was most impressed with was the kindergartners; they worked as a team, didn't complain and the knowledge they displayed was speechless.
Aviant put together a puzzle that was about evaporation. Jada, Trinity, Angel,and Jailyn worked as one to solve their puzzles.The first graders had plenty of patience and were really happy to interact with the other classes.
The day was very successful and overall the most important thing learned today was knowing that when an adult speaks a child listens. Witnessing laughter and knowing that you created it makes a hot day seem like the ultimate day.
(Facts by Neiman and Kawame)
Water is good for the Earth
In class today we began creating a newspaper about the environment. We had the kids each look up a specific topic about the environment and then had them write mini articles about them. After a little discusion we decided to name the paper "The Daily Planet." Some of the Superman fans out there probably get the reference. The project should be finished by the end of today, and pictures of the completed newspaper will be uploaded soon.
Today the children all came together and played a game on our theme of the week, which was Water. The game that was played consisted of three stations. In the first station, the children did a relay race with water balloons. They had to get the water balloon out of the bucket and run down to bust the balloon and go and tag there partner, until everyone went. The next station, the children were to write one fact they knew about water. In the last station, they were to put a puzzle together, each puzzle was a different part of the Water Cycle.
I think the children leared alot doing the game and they also had fun while doing it...And who wouldn't want to do that.
Making music is lot of fun it's even better when is comes from recycled/reused items.
The Technology class, pictured below (from left to right: Randy, Tahjonae, Charleston, and Lewis) reused old bowls to make some really interesting music; Lewis even made a rap to go along with it. It was very funny, but goes to show just because it's old, doesn't mean it's not fun.
"I have a piggy, his name is Wiggy..." Lewis
My Son Jordan who is 8 years old is apart of the Asa program, and the summer program University of Values summer program. I would like to say as a parent Thank You to programs like this. Thank you staff for believing, and caring about our children ,and letting them know that the ball doesn't just stop at high school but beyond. Thank you for giving us a chance of knowing all the possibilities, and what I mean by us , is my son and I. When my son comes home from the program, he 's eager to teach me something that he has learned new. In the summer program ,environment has been the focus and how we can help our community. He's been really excited about recycling, one day he came in and asked Mommy can I have those plastic bags under the counter in the kitchen and I said for what He said we don't use them I feel we need to recycle them I said ok but I thought to myself he was right we won't use those bags. Jordan had a huge smile on his face because to him he did something for the community.
We are looking at samples of composting materials that include worms, "rolly pollies",vegetable peels and old newspaper. In just a few week we are expecting to see our first crop of summer vegetables, so perhaps we'll want to borrow a supply of prepared compost, if someone could spare us a few tubs. Not enough time to wait for the rot. I think.
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