Middle School Student Newsletter, 4/19/19

Hello Community,

As you may know, last week the eighth years were in the Dominican Republic. They are now back in this country and they had a great time! You will hear more about the trip in a future newsletter. Meanwhile, the seventh years had a week full of outings, service work and special events. On Friday, the 6th graders came to the middle school for two hours. In that time we did many team building activities. These activities will help lead the current seventh years and the rising seventh years into a strong school community in the year of 2019-2020. It took time to plan and bring all the ideas to fruition, and in the end the day went of without a hitch.

To start we did some greeting games like introducing ourselves to one another and finding out what types of things we have in common with the game Where the Wind Blows. In this game someone stood in the middle of the circle and said something like, “Where the wind blows I like the beach.” Next everyone who liked the beach would find a different spot. The person that did not get to a spot in time would stand in the middle and say, where the wind blows….. And so on and so forth. After that we did a more active game. This game was called trolleys, and in this game eight people would stand on two long pieces of fabric with loops to hold on to. The goal of the game would be to get from one side of the room to the other without falling or stepping off the trolly onto the floor. After the two teams of trolleys finished we had a wonderful snack prepared by a few of the seventh years. The snack was lemon bars, they bars turned out and set well, compared to our practice batch earlier that week. And the drink that went with them was delightful. The mix of lime seltzer with either pink or regular lemonade or cranberry juice complemented the bars qui

te nicely. Once snack had finished, we headed back out to play one more team building game, Ubuntu. Ubuntu is a game where there are two teams and three stacks of cards, with one deck of cards placed in order with different pictures on them. Each team member has ten seconds to look and memorize the cards. Then, working together, the teams have to recreate the pattern.

Turning to micro-business news, this week the class sold microgreens for the first time! The process to grow and bag the microgreens is an interesting one. The greens start out as seeds and after two weeks of sunshine and water they are ready to be cut. When they are being cut, the greens have to be handled with care because too much pressure could ruin the greens. After the greens are cut they are weighed, bagged, and labled. Then, only a few hours later, they are sold at the pick-up line. We sell a two-ounce bag for $5, and the microgreens are packed with flavor and nutrients.