Diego plays the role of  Stan in the Live Theater Workshop ’s production of Wild Things:

“Stan needs help making new friends and it comes from an unlikely source. Wild Thing, Good Things, and Funny Thing crash into Stan’s room and take him on a hilarious friend-finding mission. Their adventure leads them through the universe, to Mars, and under the sea where they meet professor Picklenoodle, a Broadway bound octopus, and Pablo da Vinci, an eccentric painting sea anemone.”

He’ll be playing Stan on April 25, May 9, and May 23, at 1:oo. Tickets are $5 and $8.

The Live Theater Workshop is at 5317 E Speedway.

Vanessa’s been taking classes at Sonoran Glass Art Academy, and she got kids excited about glass art when she took them on a field trip there, so she then organized enough students and teachers for a full day workshop.

The people at Sonoran Glass are great! There were about five instructors for the fourteen of us, so we received plenty of expert attention.   Over the course of the day, each of us learned three glass making techniques: to make beads or small animals in the flame shop; to make paper weights in the hot shop, and to make a collage-like plate or bowl with fused glass.

The glass is kept molten in an over 2000 degree furnace. It was pretty intimidating.

Asha learns how to work with a ball of molten, glowing glass

Vanessa in the flame room, where we made glass beads

Everyone in Jennifer’s homeroom who was able to get to school by 5:30 this morning had an adventure they’ll remember all their lives — a ride in a hot air balloon!     Big thanks to Patrick’s family, who provides hot air balloon rides as Southern Arizona Balloon Excursions!

Inside balloon before the flight

After the ride, everyone toasted with sparkling apple juice and then went out for breakfast at the Skyview Cafe

Libby says some of the kids decided to surprise Butterscotch with a newly decorated chicken coop, but she is so curious she keeps trying to sneak in to see what is going on.

Meanwhile, Charlie is getting help planting a new palo verde tree. Since palo verdes have a life span of about 40 years, the new tree will be providing shade when the trees that were originally planted on the primary playground begin to die out.

Aneesa has made a tornado box. Come to project sharing night next Wednesday and see if you can figure out how it works.

What were these guys up to ?

Last week nine Kino students and two chaperons made their way to the Chiricahua Mountains for the annual writer’s retreat. Vanessa has  been giving high school students  interested in creative writing the opportunity to go on a  four-day-long retreat for  three years now, and they were  a feature of Chris’s and Felice’s  creative writing classes before  that.
The retreats takes place in  Paradise, in the Davis’ two cabins nestled into the  Chiricahuas mountains. These  cabins are available for all kinds of Kino field trips. They have all the amenities of home   complete  with beds, kitchens, and bathrooms) but their  isolated location allows students to be only steps away from nature.

During the trip, students had the opportunity to write, go on hikes, and bond with their fellow classmates. Students were responsible for all the food preparation and cleaning. They did an excellent job of working together to make these events go as smoothly as ever.

Each day there was a morning and evening meeting to discuss goals, participate in writing activities,  and have writing critiques. During the day, students  would be at their leisure to write, read, or  walk around the property. A small library was  available for students to read during the trip, and  several heated games of Scrabble were played. As is  traditional, we took a trip to South Fork for a  short hike leading to a freezing pool of water, where  the brave of heart could jump in (the record  is 14 jumps)!

The students are what makes these trips a success, and this year the students did not disappoint.  Everyone pitched in, behaved maturely and  responsibly, and utilized their time there wisely.  Our only complaint was that we couldn’t stay  another day!

Vanessa described just a little of the writing done  during the retreat: One of the morning exercises  was to draw the name of another person out of a hat and then write a journal entry from that person’s point of  view. Caroline drew Ian J’ name and revealed that he was really a robot in disguise. Zoe, inspired by the trip to  the Paradise graveyard, wrote a story about the life of a couple buried there. Ian D wrote a science fiction  story, and Griffin continued to work on a long short story that has grown out of a character profile excercise  the class did earlier in the year.

Howling at the moon

The day before rodeo vacation is always special for Kino primary students because it’s the day of the rodeo cookout. Students stay at school until seven o’clock. Under the palo verde trees as the sun goes down they do a little square dancing and a little roping, and roast marshmallow over the bonfire. This year they also made quesadillas, ate chips and salsa, and drank some sarsaparilla. After listening to stories in the twilight, they traditionally end the night howling at the moon.   

Rodeo inspires two weeks’ worth of primary Language Arts activities before the cook out. Mary Jane says,

“We started this year by reading western stories, like The Cactus Hotel. We took a field trip to Old Tucson, and then wrote about our experiences in our journals. Our music teacher, Lisa Otey, sang western songs with us. We learned about western folklore, clothing, customs, and food.”

Libby has a collection of hats, chaps, vests, scarfs, serapes, and boots so everyone can dress up in character.

If we needed to list the academic areas touched on by these two weeks, it would go on and on: listening to and reading stories, writing in journals, lots of drawing, dancing, music, cooking, history, folklore, the desert ecology, local heritage and other cultures. But there are also ineffable and unmeasurable lessons: relating, cooperating, taking turns, enjoying each other’s company, a firmer sense of the world and one’s surroundings, a sense that school is not only a welcoming place, but a magical one as well.

As Kolton says, “This is my favorite night of the whole year.”

It’s just a typical day at Kino, riding an elephant, and going up in the rigging of a pirate’s ship.

That is, when the typical day includes a trip to the Renaissance Faire.

Author Eleanor Davis talks about Kino in an interview here.

Kino just received news that it was awarded a Youth Garden Grant. This means we will receive a gift certificate for $500 to buy gardening supplies from Home Depot as well as educational materials from the National Gardening Association.  Big thanks to the National Gardening Association, which administers the grant, and Home Depot or providing the gift certificate. Chris says he already has plans for what to buy.