Activities!

The activities board shows the schedule for the week.

The week started with an activities meeting, which happens first things every Monday morning.  Someone calls the meeting to order, nominations are taken for a student to lead the meeting, we elect a meeting leader, and then the leader calls on people to share their ideas for activities.  Some of these are classes, like my Junior High math class which will happen first thing every morning, a schedule I agreed upon with the students prior to the meeting. Other activities are trips like a field trip to the art center or a wilderness class at the nature center.  Other activities are one-time events like collaging the covers of notebooks to use in a gardening class.  Sometimes the kids request activities - even from other kids: today a second-grader asked a fourth-grader to offer a songwriting class that was offered last year.

Most of these classes are open to anyone, while some are for a specific age group such as a fifth/sixth geography class.  And you can see that there is a still a lot of open space in the schedule.  A few activities have a sign-up sheet because there is limited space - after the meeting students clamber for pens to sign up.  The activities board stays up in a prominent place in the Big Room.