Thanks everyone for an awesome green space work day!

Mille mercis to Profesor Joey, Madame Chou Chou (Elizabeth), and Madame Danielle for bringing their families to participate in today’s work day. It was pretty awesome and rewarding (as you’ll see in the photos). Along with currently enrolled families, new families and SLU’s APO service fraternity chapter, our crew doubled the size of the topsoil/wood chip area, assembled and placed three benches, made decorative spider webs with glass beads, assembled the weather station, stocked two storage bins with building materials and bird watching/weather station materials, painted rocks for building, made plastic flowers from old milk jugs (bring some in to add to the collection!), added the final touches to and relocated the nature art table, put locks on all of the storage cabinets and added a new coat of weather sealant to them.

The outdoor science classroom includes myriad manipulatives for inquiry-based learning. The weather station storage includes: a weather vane, rain gauge, outdoor thermometer, wind meter, bird feeder, upright weather station, water blocks for building, sand blocks for building, 6 pair of binoculars, 5 bug viewers, a set of 18 color paddles, and 2 sets of acrylic prisms. Wow!

Next Saturday our volunteer carpenters will build the stage and hopefully we’ll get the bike rack installed as well. We may have other small projects/staging tasks, so contact Lisa (lisaberman@rocketmail.com) if you’re interested in lending a hand.

Cast your final vote for the SLLIS playground today

Voting for the KaBOOM! video contest ends tonight at 10:59PM CST.  There was a technical glitch overnight, but voting has re-opened.  Cast your final votes and remind your networks to get their votes in as well.  We are so close, but if you’ve been watching and voting, you know how quickly that can change.

We appreciate the outpouring of support for the future of our students’ play and look forward to building the space with you!

The link between play, recess and bullying?

The New York Times published an interesting Op-Ed piece yesterday that draws some conclusions between the lack of natural childhood play and the increase in bullying in elementary schools.  We talk often at our school about how our children don’t have the same opportunities for free outdoor play as we did growing up.  Not having a traditional playground has led our students to create more than a few innovative recess games, but our staff and families are busy planning for more installations to inspire collaborative play and inquiry.  Voting for our KaBOOM! playground video competition ends March 31st.  This is a great way to support our work from afar– vote daily for the SLLIS playground.

If you’re in St. Louis, we would love for you to lend a pair of hands and strong back as well!  Our first work day for the outdoor science classroom is Saturday, April 10th.  This space will include a tree house, green house, small pond feature, weather station and bird-feeding station.  Contact your room parent to volunteer.  New families for 2010-11 are very welcome to volunteer as well, contact Lisa Berman lisaberman@rocketmail.com for more information.

KaBOOM! declares SLLIS Playground “In the lead”

We have 8 days left in the KaBOOM! video voting contest.  KaBOOM! reorganized their website over the weekend and SLLIS is currently “In the lead” to be one of the three finalists to receive up to $5,000 towards playground equipment purchase.  Thank you to all of our families, friends, supporters and friends of friends and friends who are voting for us daily!  With your support over the next 8 days we will certainly be among the awardees.

We appreciate every single one of  you, your votes, energy and enthusiasm.  Our students are fortunate to have such a strong local and global fan base.

Voting works: Let KaBOOM hear your voice!

Apparantly we started trying to vote before the KaBOOM! voting site was ready for us.  Now the site is ready.  You can see the videos of all of the other finalists and how many votes each school has received so far.  If you tried to vote earlier and got frustrated, don’t give up!  Remember to vote daily and send daily reminders to your network.

SLLIS one step closer to KaBoom! playground

We have been invited to advance to the next round of consideration for a KaBoom! Playground installation.  Woohoo!!!  If selected, we will mount our biggest single day volunteer opportunity to date to install our new play structures this school year.  Think Extreme Home Makeover type big.

How can you help us now?  Community support is a big part of the award consideration process.  Visit the official KaBoom! website, create a profile and become a member of the SLLIS Playground Project.

SLLIS applying for KaBoom! playground grant: photos needed

Our Green Space task force is hard at work on a new funding opportunity: a KaBoom playground installation. SLLIS has begun a project for consideration and will find out this spring if we have been selected for this exciting opportunity.  If selected we will begin a massive volunteer campaign to support our Build Day.

How can you help support our application?

We’re making a video to help us win a grant to build our playground. Please send ANY pictures you have that can be used in this video. Pictures should be from any Green Space work day or of kids playing on the playground during school. Please only send pictures if you would allow them to be shown on the web. E-mail pictures to lisaberman@rocketmail.com.  We’ll publish a link to our video as soon as it is available.

What an amazing day!

Thanks again to all of the founding families, founding staff and supporters who came out to our Back To School BBQ this afternoon!  It was awesome and inspiring to see everyone there.  We had such an amazing turn-out and a special thanks goes out to Elizabeth, our Lunch Bunch facilitator, and her family for planning and organizing the event.  The food was exquisite, students and families decorated a commemorative canvas, the bounce house was a magical fun time for the kids and many families got to meet their child’s teacher.  This is definitely a tradition that I am already looking forward to!

Our press conference at 3pm was also well attended with representatives from STL-TV, KSDK, The St. Louis American, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the St. Louis Beacon.  We’ll keep you posted on the resulting articles.

Remember to join us at 9am for the Green Space Task Force’s playground painting project.