American Ballet Theater

Today we headed to Lincoln Center's Metropolitan Opera House to see the American Ballet Theater's Young People's Ballet Workshop.

The American Ballet Theater Company put on a great show showing both principle dancers, dancers in training, and even public school students.  All of the pieces were inspiring to us as dancers, especially those choreographed and danced by students from local schools - including students our age!

We had a great day experiencing the ballet and enjoying dance.

Growing plants without seeds

Over the past few weeks we've been exploring, observing, and growing plants that start from seeds.  We have brassica flowers, wheat stems, and green grass growing all around our classroom - and they all started from seeds.  Today we heard that you can grow plants without seeds!

Some of us thought of some great examples - an onion left in the drawer too long suddenly sprouts new growth!  A potato full of eyes suddenly has buds on it after it is forgotten in the bin!  These plants are growing - without a seed.

Today we talked about a plant we often see around the East Village - ivy.  We see it climbing up buildings, spiraling around poles, and clinging to large patches of dirt.  Yet we knew that roots were the plant-part that held plants steady.  Which must mean that stems can grow new roots!  We decided to test this theory.

We made cuttings of ivy that included stems and leaves and put them into water.  If they start drawing in the water like a root does, maybe roots will begin growing!  If they do, we'll be able to plant our new plants in soil and watch them grow.  We'll be observing these cuttings over the next few weeks.  How exciting!

Plants all over the place!

Our wheat is growing!

Our classroom certainly feels like spring!  We have plants all around us, growing and thriving!  Thanks to all of you who have brought in cuttings from ivy and other plants so that we can experiment with starting new plants not from seed - we'll begin that work very soon!

Today we observed a number of our growing plants and we took care of some "chores" related to plant care.

First, we observed our newest plants - carnivorous ones!  Last week, we read about carnivorous plants and watched a Brain Pop video about them.  During these readings and videos, we took lots of notes about what we were learning about.  We learned about plants that catch bugs actively (like the venus fly trap and the sundew plant) as well as those that catch bugs passively (like the pitcher plant).  We then wrote reports about carnivorous plants using our research.  Come check them out in our classroom - you'll learn a ton about plants that live in areas where their soil lacks the nutrients they need.

A student has a snack as she watches our carnivorous plants

We also observed our wheat that is steadily growing from a seed.  We can see the roots below and the green sprout coming from the top.  Some are growing faster than others and now we're trying to figure out why that is.

Today, some of our brassica flowers sprouted!  We should see some steady growth on these amazing flowers in the next few days.  We can't wait to go through the entire life cycle with these plants.

Our brassica flowers are starting to sprout!

We also had some work to do.  Our grass that we planted last week is really growing!  As all people with lawns know, we had to mow it.  Today we mowed our lawns and soon we'll study to see how the plant reacted.  Did it grow from where it was cut, or did it grow from the root upwards?  Will the leaves of the alfalfa grow back?  Only time will tell.

Grass growing before we mowed

Grass growing before we mowed

Mowing the lawn

City Government Work

Two Department of Health workers
answer the phones and fill out
work orders as needed.

Yesterday we were sent to work!  We were hired in five different city departments where we all answered phone calls from citizens.  So, we put on our ID badges, walked to our offices, and got to work!

Some of us worked in the Sanitation Department.  There, we answered phone calls from citizens about trash on the street, questions about electronic recycling dates, and much more.  As we dispatched trucks out to sites, we marked them on our NYC map.

Others of us worked in the Animal Care and Control Department, answering calls about injured animals on the streets, wild raccoons in the trash cans, questions about local vet offices, and much more!  We also had to dispatch workers to help animals that were found as strays or injured animals to help bring them to a city shelter.

Five of us worked for the Parks and Recreation Department.  We helped classes find guides for the parks, helped people get trees to plant on their blocks, and answered questions about park hours and lots more.  We marked where the calls came from on our map using color-coded blocks.

A few of us also worked for the Health Department.  We received lots of calls asking about healthy eating programs, locations of city fitness classes, and for many pamphlets about being healthy New Yorkers.  We also were sent out to inspect restaurants where we used a checklist to make sure they were running a clean restaurant.  We assigned letter grades to restaurants based on our inspections.

Some of us also worked for the Department of Transportation.  We received calls about broken traffic lights, pot holes, and lots of other issues.  We helped send out other workers to those sites by marking them on our maps.  We also fielded calls asking for inspections of bridges and tunnels - we went right out to do those ourselves.

It was a hard day's work, but for a city that never sleeps people need to be working to keep our city great.  We'll be back in our offices on Monday helping the people of New York.

After hanging up the phone, a Department of
Transportation worker fills out a Work Order

The Health Department filed away their finished work orders

The Department of Sanitation sent
trucks out across the five boroughs
as phone calls came in.

Making lawns

Today we began our plant study in science!  During the next six weeks we will be observing lots of different types of plants, growing plants, and learning about plants in our classroom and community!  Today we planted grass.  It's a common plant found all over our community - yet we weren't quite sure how it grew - especially after it was mowed.  This week we'll be observing our grass and then mowing it as it grows.

We planted two types of seeds - alfalfa and rye - which are both grasses - and watered them.  Stay tuned to see how it our growing and mowing goes!


Letter sent home today:

The Perfect City Show

Today we met Savvy Traveler, the host of the world-renowned show called The Perfect City Show.  On the show, Savvy visits a different city each week trying to find a city that is perfect.  She’s been all over the world – and this week, she came to New York City.  We were lucky enough to be in her studio audience! 

She toured around the great places in NYC – from the Statue of Liberty to the Empire State Building to Broadway and everywhere in between.  She loved what she saw and was fairly certain she had found a perfect city… until she started to interview us!  We told her that as much as we love our city (and we bragged an awful lot about the great cultures, the wonderful food, and the amazing parks), it isn’t perfect.  We have crime.  We have pollution.  We have people without homes.  Savvy Traveler was upset that she would once again have to pack up and travel to a new city.

But then an audience member spoke up!  She said that NO city was perfect!  No matter where Savvy went, she’d always find things that weren’t perfect.  At first, Savvy was crushed.  But quickly we told her our idea – to simply change the name of the show from The Perfect City Show to the Nice City Show – a show about a city that has lots of great attributes but also is working to improve.  We told her that we would become her cast and crew on this new show over the next few weeks and help her find the great things about NYC, the things that need to be fixed, and highlight how our city tries to help itself become even better.  How exciting!

Stay tuned over the next few weeks as we work with Savvy Traveler on the Nice City Show!

City of the Future

Over the past month we've been time-traveling to 1514 to study the ways of the Lenape on the island of Manhattan.  We then made a large chart about the great things that the Lenape did in five categories:  education, government, work, food, and transportation.  We then added to our chart about what was great about those categories now in New York City.  After studying our chart, we noticed that we liked lots of great things about 1514 and 2014!

Of course, our work wasn't done yet!  We then planned our ideas for the future.  We took the great parts of the Lenape and the great parts of modern-NYC and put them together to help plan the City of the Future.  After planning out ideas, we starting building our models.  Tomorrow we will present our ideas to the group to share our plans.  Stay tuned!