Deede Dixon's blog

Cultivating a love of reading at Celentano Museum Academy

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Celentano Museum Academy hosted a Scholastic Book Fair in March. After a few years without holding a fair, we were able to share the joy found in reading with each Celentano student! Every classroom, pre-Kindergarten through grade 8, came to the book fair twice throughout the week. The first time, students browsed the shelves and wrote their favorites on a wish list. The second time classrooms came to the fair, students located the precise books they planned to buy and checked out at the register.

The Night Sky Indoors

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Last Thursday, February 28, 2013, Yale students brought the StarLab Program to Celentano Museum Academy. StarLab is an inflatable planetarium that teaches astronomy to young students. Two people from Yale came with a portable bag, from which they unrolled a large piece of plastic, attached a fan, and blew air inside, raising a planetarium to eleven feet in the air!

Report Cards, New Dictionaries, and Parent University

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New Haven Public Schools held the Middle/Elementary School Report Card Night on February 6, 2013. I set up a table near the front door of Celentano Museum Academy, to chat with parents on their way to or from meeting with the students’ teachers. I had stacks of Parent University New Haven (PUNH) sign-up sheets and information cards, along with the PUNH t-shirt.

MOVIN' After School at Celentano

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Everyone, start to move. Just move around the stage however you like, with constant motion. The ceiling is getting lower. The ceiling is only 3 feet tall. Keep moving, keep moving, as low as you can go. Now, freeze! This position is your shape #1, so remember this position, and return to it when you hear the words #1. Now the ceiling is rising, keep moving, stretch your arms as high as you can go! Constant motion. … #1! Now let’s move again, going to any level, and try to find a different way to go down to #1 each time it is called. Move around, move around. … #1! Now there’s peanut butter everywhere, and it’s time to walk through thick, chunky peanut butter. Keep moving, move all over through the peanut butter. Freeze! This is shape #2. Move again, keep moving. … #1! #2! #1! #2! #2!

The grins and giggles ensue.

Creative Innovation

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Here’s a challenge: what kind of game can you create with a paper towel roll, a plastic spoon, tape, pipe cleaners, paper clips, yarn, rubber bands, white beans, a plastic cup, popsicle sticks, and a marble? Any ideas?

Last Thursday afternoon, Doreen Abubakar facilitated the afterschool program called Kids Quest to Invent. She's a volunteer facilitator of the CT Invention Convention, and she comes to the Troup School every other week to lead the program. She gives Troup students in grades 3 to 7 the supplies and one hour to tackle a challenge. At the first class of the spring, students were challenged to make a cup slide down a fishing line and drop pennies at one specific point. Students learn that a plastic cup can be used for much more than simply to hold water. And paper clips are not strictly used to hold paper -- you can straighten one out, and use it to poke a hole in the paper towel roll to create a noise-maker!  Or, you can turn it into a spring that causes the toy to jump. What other ideas are there? Ooh, that’s sounds great, too: tie it to a string and try to hook it onto the straw.

Experiential Learning: What's Our Next Move?

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I firmly believe in the power of experiential education, the potential to grow from any experience. At my previous job in New Hampshire, we taught a learning cycle to every participating group. This learning cycle begins when you have an experience. Next, you reflect on that experience. During this reflection, you have a “BFO,” a blinding flash of the obvious, as we called it. Something clicks in your mind. You then transfer this newly discovered truth to other aspects of your life or other fields of study.

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