Setting Sail on the High Seas

We kicked off our year, and our study of explorers, with a fantastic hands-on learning opportunity -- a 3-hour educational sail aboard the Hawaiian Chieftain, a replica 1700s-era Tall Ship, operated by the Grays Harbor Historical Seaport.

We helped to set and trim the sails and divided into watches to learn about navigation, early trade, and the life of a sailor. Ahoy, mateys!

Scroll through the pictures to the bottom to see a few short videos of our crew in action.

Heave ho! Hoisting the sails on the fore deck.

Boarding the ship at Westport Marina.

A quick safety briefing.

Getting ready to hoist the sails.

Learning about a sailor's life.

A happy hard worker!

  A rare moment of rest.

Hoisted sails.

 Charting our course.

 A gimbal compass

There are a lot of lines to keep track of -- each one for a different sail. They all need to be =neatly coiled and hung to keep things ship shape.

A traverse board, used to keep track of direction and speed sailed during a watch. Sailors (who could not necessarily read or write) would mark the direction by putting a peg in the hole of the compass rose on the top of the board, and mark the speed from the knot log (also known as the chip log) board on the bottom. This information would be recorded in the ship's log at the end of each watch by the ship's navigator.

Role playing as early traders, who would have sailed on trading voyages on the Lady Washington around Cape Horn to the west coast of North America, where they would trade for furs with Native Americans before taking those to the east to trade for silk and porcelain.

Reflecting on life at sea.

Ready outer halyards!

Heave! Ho! Setting the sails is hard work!

No cruise is complete without a round of rallying sea shanties!

Starting off with the Big Picture

One of the things we know about gifted students is that they are often "big picture" learners -- conceptual thinkers who look for and can understand deeper meanings, patterns and connections in and between different concepts and subjects. This is one of the reasons we build our curriculum around overarching concepts, which differ for each year and grade level. This year the 1st and 2nd graders are exploring the concept of "treasure" and several of our early lessons and writing have been about what this means and how it relates to what we will study this year (see previous blog post for a list of this year's subject areas). Here are some of our early musings as a group:

And some individual reflections on things we treasure and what treasure means:

"I treasure my inventions because I can post them on kick starter..."

"I treasure science and art projects because they have results."

I treasure nature "because it is beautiful and all around us," and also "because it gives us what we need."

Some of the things we determined to be characteristics of treasure: rare things, things you work hard for, things you can sell, things that can be given as presents. This led to a discussion about the fact that treasure is associated with having value - both monetary and other types of value. We will delve into the idea of value more as the year progresses, as we discuss what motivated explorers to risk their lives to go into the unknown, and what kinds of ideas and values shape different cultures and the different ways people live.

Non-Examples of treasure: dirt, sand, garbage, germs, REPTILES. This led to an interesting discussion about the fact that there are always differing viewpoints and some people would treasure these things -- Herpetologists, for example, do treasure reptiles. And how would we grow food without dirt? And some germs are good germs, or have provided us with vaccinations or protections against others or serve useful purposes. And what about the expression "One man's trash is another man's treasure?"

This one has some of my favorite examples of treasure: A treasure box with magic words, and of course, unicorns! I also share this student's love of huge maps. We also listed a lot of valuable stones and minerals, and gold and money made almost everyone's list. This led us to an interesting discussion about gold vs. paper money and what gives things value.

So far, we are loving learning about treasure. You could even say we treasure it!

See more about gifted conceptual learners and big-picture thinkers at the fantastic blog of the Eide Neurolearning Clinic (experts on brain-based learning and twice exceptionality): http://eideneurolearningblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/gifted-big-picture-high-conceptual.html

Ready to explore and learn!

One of the things I love most about Seabury is the raw energy and excitement the students bring to the classroom - these kids are ready and raring to learn! This year we'll be learning all about explorers, colonialism, world geography and cultures, environmentalism, animals, plants and geology, all through the lens of the overarching concept of treasure: What do people treasure and why? We are all excited for our explorations to begin - and the ultimate treasure? Knowledge!