just doing

There are some days when I am more impressed with the kids at this school than other days. I'm always thrilled that they are here doing what they're doing, but sometimes when you turn around and they're extra helpful, or extra responsible, or extra on-task, or extra focused, it's pretty impressive. Today, when I was on the floor, taking them to the park, or subbing for Mackenzie in the afternoon, I found that the kids' behavior in a particularly challenging warehouse-turned-school space that provide distractions everywhere was cool. Calm. Collected. Focused. There was a rhythm of just doing.Caroline, Josh's friend and an awesome linoprint artist, came in and helped the kids make their own prints. They were excited to make their own drawings into ink-able, repeatable prints.Nicky focused on working through problems in his marble run project.William took notes on the project he's starting.Zada and Audrey took a break from muscle training to add their work to a wall displaying all the Ninja Cats' notes and diagrams about their projects.The Ninja Cats helped each other create a museum-like display of their work.Kaia added her linoprint to her horse notes.Ben and Isaac struggled through Google Sketch-up problems and Evan, Alexander, and Daniel fiddled with parts while Josh took Connor and Henry to a lunch with flying machine expert Rick Cavallaro (pictures forthcoming).Coke and Quinn battle through the design of their trebuchet. Chane was inspired by their dedication and told the staff that she overheard them saying, "We can't do this, but what can we do?"Aerial performance.......and practice.Kaia continued work on her horse illustration in her study of movement.The Flying Fish read some of the Froggy books with me in the afternoon, and they giggled at all the right parts. They groaned when they heard the same line - "more red in the face than green" - repeated in all five stories, and gleefully repeated the rhymes in each story after I read them.Gever worked with Nicky to program a Mindstorm piece that will serve as the motor for a conveyor belt in his marble run.The lunch table, after a day of linoprints.The Goats finished off their day of work.Each day has its own rhythm... today's was one of doing.