Trivia Triumph and Trufulla Trees!

The Dr. Seuss trivia contest is an annual event here at Seabury on Read-Across-America-Day, and we always celebrate by wearing comfy pajamas and relaxing with good books for a large part of the day. This year, the Spirits won the trivia contest - no small feat at this school, with trivia questions (written by the Peacocks, the previous years' winners) like: How many times is the phrase "Oh, the places you'll go," used in the book of that name, not including the title? This contest is serious business here,  and it's always a close race. These kids really know their Dr. Seuss! Well done, guys!

 We started the day with a rousing rendition of Green Eggs and Ham, led by our Head of School. (And yes, most of the kids know this one by heart).

 Then we read.

 And read.

 And read.

 Stopping, of course, to share the good parts with friends.

 But mostly just reading, which at  a school like Seabury, is one of our favorite things to do!

Dr. Seuss, we love you. Everybody -- Read on!

Super Cool Science!

Last Friday we did some SUPER COOL SCIENCE (literally AND figuratively!) with class mom and Evergreen State College professor Toska Olson and two of her students, Jasmine and Amanda. They brought in some dry ice and some liquid nitrogen for us to do some further experiments relating to states of matter. We explored some of the capabilities of dry ice, or frozen carbon dioxide, which has the interesting property of sublimation -- or changing directly from a solid to a gas without becoming a liquid. We froze bubbles, listened to the reverberations it made as it "melted" in bowls of different materials, and even made some ice cream with it! We also used liquid nitrogen, which boils at a temperature of -320 degrees Fahrenheit, to freeze objects such as oranges, rubber balls, bananas and flowers. We tested the rubber balls and found that the frozen one became too dense to bounce. We tried hammering in nails with frozen bananas and cucumbers, and we each got to freeze a flower and then crumble/crunch up it's frozen petals -- strangely satisfying! We also filled a balloon with nitrogen gas. We really love learning about states of matter -- science is super cool!

Fabulous Frescoes

As we study the Renaissance, we have, of course, been learning about famous frescoes such as Leonardo's "The Last Supper" and Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling. So we decided to try our hand at fresco painting, but instead of making our own paints the way the great masters would have, we used pastels, and our plaster dried very quickly so we could not paint it while it was still wet. Interesting to think about the challenges these artists faced!