Spring has definitely sprung and we have had so much fun in the sun! The end of the school year is near and LEDP, after a long three years, will be bringing back the Walk-A-Thon!

We are very excited to bring this tradition back to LEDP, with only 4/5 being the only ones to participate in our last gathering! Please, check your e-mail regarding the details, as this year's cause is one very close and dear to our hearts! We do hope you will be able to join!

We have had a lot of fun the last couple weeks with beading! It's been such a relaxing way to end the week and our friends have made such amazing pieces! 

Our highlight of this week was by far our visit to Pierce School to see Pogo Fred! Our new friend has been on The Ellen Show, The Late Night Show and has competed on America's Got Talent! Our kiddos were cheering and in absolute awe of Pogo Fred and all of his amazing tricks- voting that his backflip was probably their favorite one of them all!

The sunshine continues to be the highlight of the week and I'm sure will be for the weeks to follow, but we had a very relaxing time making some abstract art together! 

We played some lo-fi, instrumental music to elicit a relaxing mood. We then took some black card stock paper and white liquid glue and created our abstract images. It would take some time for the glue to dry, so many friends did a few different pieces. 

Once the glue dried we took some chalk, others used oil pastels, some used both and colored within the negative spaces of our images. Although the end result was quite beautiful, I think it was the process, with the music, that made this project feel more relaxing than anything else. 

We have many wonderful artists in 4/5 and I can't wait to see how we explore more mediums!

Although we were still taking total advantage of the sunshine, our highlight of the week was hands down our Handball tournament!

We decided to change up the day a bit to give our friends who are not with us later in the day to get some gym time while in LEDP. We split up the group into three teams, with two on at a time at five minute intervals.

We played with standard Handball rules, with two steps with a clean catch and emphasized short quick passes to get the ball moving up the court faster! It it such a fun, fast-paced game, it was so easy to get involved even from the sidelines. 

We will no doubt have one of these tournaments soon! It will be interesting to see how the dynamic changes with new teams!

Spring has sprung!

This week we got to spend a ton of time basking in the sunshine! With the whole program out and about there was no shortage of activities to jump into! 4/5 has especially been into basketball.... whether that is practicing free throws or their dribbling skills ! We've got some pretty epic scrimmages going on as well; even getting Aaron out to shoot some hoops against our fourth graders! I think we've got some serious basketball players on our hands!

Of course we had Four Square going on and we did out best to de-thrown our friend Aiden as king of Four Square! 

Never a dull moment in 4/5- especially with the sun shining!

We look forward to longer days outside! Wahoo!

3rd grade mentors had a blast making Ice Cream in a Bag! Although we got a little messy during the process, we had a lot of fun getting to our final yummy treat! With many requests for the recipe... we hope you have just as much fun as we did!

Ingredients:

- 1 cup half-and-half per student 

- 2 Tbsp. sugar

- 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

- 3 cups ice

- 1/3 cup rock salt or kosher salt

- 2 sandwich size zipper bags

- 1 gallon size zipper bag 

1. Mix the half-and-half, sugar, and vanilla extract together in the sandwich bag. Be careful to keep bag upright to avoid spills!

2. Fill a gallon size Ziploc bag about half full of ice. Add 1/3 cup of salt.

3. Place 2 sealed, sandwich bags with the mixture in large bag. Seal the bag firmly. This is important so the salty ice water does not enter the ice cream mixture.

4. Friends take turns shaking the bag vigorously for about 7-10 minutes.

5. Enjoy your yummy treat!

The science behind this experiment is that by adding the salt to the ice will lower it's melting point; the ice absorbs heat from its surroundings (the bag of ice cream mixture) which allows the ice cream mixture to freeze. Since the mixture isn’t water it needs to be a little below 32 degrees to freeze. Adding salt allows the temperature around the mixture to get colder.

Program wide, LEDP celebrated Random Act of Kindness Day!

We learned that February 17 was Random Kindness Day and we thought it important to remind ourselves what it is to be kind- kind to others, ourselves and to the world around us!

LEDP decided that in a small way we could remind our community how powerful a simple gesture can have; hoping soon they would stumble upon our Kindness Rock Garden and find another reason to smile.

In this garden, they'd find bright, beautiful rocks painted with thoughtful messages from an unknown friend who crafted one with only the purest intention of heart- to be kind.

"In a world you can be anything- be kind."

4/5 took advantage of the sunshine and warmer weather with fun chalk art, a big game of soccer in the field and shot some baskets at the basketball court! 

4/5 has also been very into card games- playing classics like Spit, James Bond, Spoons and a new game taught by our new fourth grader, Tina! She's unsure what to call it- but it begins by selecting one card from the deck and keeping it face down on the table. We then deal out the rest of the cards. Each player makes as many pairs as they can in their hand and place them on the table. The player with the most cards left begins. We then take turns clockwise, choosing a random card from another players hand. The goal is to empty your hand, the last player with a card in their hand looses the round. The last card should match the card selected in the beginning of the round. Such a simple game, but the kiddos really enjoy the race for pairs!

We are definitely looking forward to longer days of sunshine!

Back by popular demand..... SLIME!!!

We had many, many request to make slime so we were so happy to get the ball rolling on this much anticipated project! We are hoping to try various recipes over the course of the next few weeks... next up, Cloud Slime!

This weeks recipe!

Ingredients:

5 ounces of Elmers glue

1/4 teaspoon of Borax

1 cup warm water

Shaving Foam

1.) Pour 5 oz glue in bowl and mix 1/4 cup of water.

2.) In separate bowl, mix 1/4 tsp of Borax powder into 1/2 cup of warm water. Mix well.

3.) Add shaving cream to glue mixture. The more shaving cream the fluffier the slime. 

4.) Add 4-6 drops of food coloring if desired. 

4.) Add activator solution (Borax & warm water) to glue mixture 1 tsp at a time until you reach your desired texture. Stir often- be careful not to add too much activator- will become firm.

We had so much fun making and playing with slime. With the mess were a lot of laughs! Stay tuned for out next slimy activity!

With the unpredictable weather, 4/5 has enjoyed some longer inside time, revisiting some of our classic LEDP games!

The last couple of weeks we've really enjoyed playing the classic game, Spoons! There are always lots of laughs and tons of anticipation waiting for who will grab the spoon first! It is such a perfect game to play in the afternoon, as we can have a ton of friends playing at a time! We've also had tons of playing, Heads Up! We can't help but laugh answering silly questions and doing our best not to spill the beans with a risky clue!\

We've also pickup up Werewolf, after a bit of a hiatus, which  we also really enjoy with such a large group! 4/5 has become quite the experts at the very important Moderator  role!

If you haven't tried either of these games, we highly recommend them for a Family Night in!

4/5 had the best time creating their gingerbread houses! With an assortment of yummy treats like pretzels squares, candy canes, M&M's and wafer cookies our architects lined their roofs with candy shingles, and candy cane walkways. They made pretzel windows and created graham cracker mazes for rooms. We had so much fun jamming out to holiday music and swapping plans for break! What a perfect way to end 2022 together!

We can't wait to see what 2023 has in store!

Happy New Year to our LEDP families!

Mentoring and Nerd Club continue to be a huge highlight in 4/5; each week our mentors and members of Nerd club are excited for their respective clubs. On this weeks adventure, we learned that in Nerd Club they received the ability to breath underwater... but later encountered a scary octopus! Did their new abilities work in our team's favor? I suppose we'll have to wait until next week to see!

In mentoring we created 3D Polar Bears with 2nd grade. Our mentors did a wonderful job walking our friends through each step, offering both patience and fun banter along the way. It was amazing to see the meaningful connections 4/5 is making with their mentees!  

Other highlights this week were our continuous tournaments in board games- chess, Bananagrams, Scategories & Stratego. Our fifth graders also had an so much fun bringing in a game they learned in mentoring- Back-to-Back Pictionary. Each artist has a piece of paper in front of them, often placed on their friends back. The person last in line creates an image one step at a time, as friends in front of them do their best to copy what they are feeling on their backs. The objective of the game is to see if all three drawings will look the same. Needless to say, the final results were tons of laughs and very different artwork!

In lieu of the World Cup, 4/5 has really gotten in the spirit of tournaments and what it's like to show good sportsmanship! They're favorite games thus far is Stratego and Bananagrams! Aaron & Irene have also joined in on the Bananagram craze, and it's amazing to see how creative our friends are with their word boards! We love to see them shake hands and with an added, "great job," at the end of rounds! 4/5 also played their first round of Capture the Flag this year and absolutely loved it! It's such a different pace then any other gym game and we love to see how they work together and strategize how to capture that flag!

4/5 artists took their time and had lots of fun creating botanical inspired line drawings. They used watercolors of varying hues- a standard tempura pallet, some metallic- all the while mixing and blending colors to create their final products. What we thought would be a one day project, led to three consecutive days of painting! With the time change it has been a nice change of pace to have some time to sit down and create some art together! 

Our mentors had a blast with 3rd grade with, "Cookie Monster," and "Back-to Back Pictionary," especially with special guests: Mary, Sam and Bridget!

Cookie Monster: Each contestant will sit down in a chair as a mentor places a cookie on their forehead. The objective is to try and move the cookie into their mouths without using their hands! To say silly faces were made is a huge understatement!

Back-to Back Pictionary: There will be three 3rd graders lined up in a row with a blank piece of paper taped to their backs. The 3rd grader in the back will blindly pick a piece of paper with something they must draw step by step. With each step, the friend in front of them will mimic what they feel on their back and draw it on the piece of paper in that is front of them. The objective of the game is to see if all three pictures match!

Sam was the only one to succeed in Cookie Monster... but I think a yummy treat for trying along with a load of laughs made everyone winners!

For this week's Snapshot we wanted to give a real shout out to our crew of Lego legends- Aiden, Kai, Gerard, Luke and Henry! They have spent the last few weeks creating, dismantling, reworking, rebuilding, renaming and re-imagining  a world of their own! One of flying vessels and massive skyscrapers... with hero's and villain's that move through a metropolis  that is inspired solely on the workings and magic of their ships!

Each day the story builds alongside their dreamworld and we truly cannot wait to see what our Legends come up with next!

Mentoring is well underway and we're so excited that we have 24 mentors joining the program this year! This is the largest group to date and with three activities under their belt, Irene is thrilled to see all the energy and enthusiasm each mentor is bringing to the table! Please, check for weekly photos of mentors in action in the Peer Mentoring section!

With much anticipation Sam has announced the final lucky seven chosen for Nerd Club! Every Friday the club will meet from 2:00-4:30 for the popular role playing game, Dungeons & Dragons!

Nerd Club 2022-2023:

Abe

Genevieve G.

Henry

Jonas

Kayla

Morgan

Olivia