do it yourself

We are the school that says yes.Kristie was sick today, but instead of cancelling community lunch, we passed along the responsibility for it to the Undead Goats, who took up the challenge with only minimal groaning.While the Goats made a supplies run and began their cooking adventure......the Ninja Cats took to the road......and the Flying Fish battled with ratios of wingspan to weight.Before they left, the Ninja Cats shared stories about their nerves when they first began to ride bikes.Then they headed to Shotwell. The Cats practiced one-handed riding to prepare them for practicing the shoulder check that's for looking for traffic while riding on the roads.Look!After riding for a little while, they played "Duck, Duck, Goose," using different words like cheese, cheese, pepperoni for their own spin.Back at the school, the Goats filled the building with the smell of bacon as they prepped grilled bacon and cheese sandwiches for community lunch.They realized that it takes nine people to replace either Kristie or Debbie on a hot lunch day. Props to those moms for making it look so effortless.The Flying Fish took a break to play "Cat and Mouse" on the cork floor with an old, out-of-date parachute from Gever's paragliding gear.Cooking for thirty is absolutely not as easy as it sounds, no matter what you make.The Fish's provocation for the day: a life sized silhouette of a golden eagle, a scale, yardsticks, rulers, tape measures and the question, "How long would your wings have to be if you were a Golden eagle of your same weight?"They made guesses at the wingspan of the golden eagle, and even lay down and measured themselves against the silhouette cutout. They each took turns measuring it out with their tools and discovered that a fourteen pound golden eagle will have a seven-foot wingspan.Mackenzie did her best to try to explain the concept of ratio using blocks to try and figure out the kids' own wingspan, knowing it might go over their heads, but they got a lot of number sense and measurement practice.The most influential moment of this exercise was when fifty-six-pound Aidan picked up the fourteen-foot length of PVC that was the length of one of his ratio-appropriate wings and tried to flap it. He couldn't even get it off the ground! They talked about the adaptations that help birds to make flight possible namely huge breast muscles and light bodies with hollow bones.The biker Cats returned to school for lunch......and we all sat down to grilled sandwiches, salads, and strawberry pound cake with whipped cream.At the end of the day, the Goats took a well-deserved bike ride after their day of labor.Always... do it yourself, try something new.