Tuesday, July 22, 2008

ELP

The first day of the new school year is fast approaching and Ceres will be starting 7th grade. As all mothers tend to say, I can't believe my baby is all grown up. Where have the years gone? I think it's safe to say that Ceres had a great time in elementary school, and the highlight of those years was participation in the Extended Learning Program. ELP is a program for gifted students. I always thought "gifted" was a funny description for these students as I tend to think the word refers to mentally challenged children or someone with an exceptional talent for magic tricks. Actually, these kids are pretty smart, maybe even extraordinarily so. They are "intellectually and academically gifted students" who get the opportunity to delve deeper into and beyond their usual classroom subjects. What is truly amazing about this class is that while they are putting together science projects and writing reports, learning about mythology and astronomy, solving puzzles that my engineer sister couldn't even solve, learning Latin and Chinese characters, memorizing squares and cubes, etc., etc., etc., they are having fun. FUN, FUN, FUN! They love this class! They can't get enough of it! Maybe, just maybe (it's possible), it has something to do with their teacher, Ms. Knappenberger, the Most Supreme Goddess of All She Surveys (I bow to you). What an awesome teacher she is - fun, active and creative. The kids adore her. And her rain dances are a big hit, too (although I heard she was holding out this year).

At the end of this last school year, in correlation with the Olympics and this year's Greek mythology theme, Ms. Knappenberger held her Wacky Olympics. The kids had a great time in all the events. In one of them, teams of two had to act as mother and baby. The "mother" had to put a diaper on the "baby", lift it into her lap and feed it a bottle while rocking and singing to it. The "baby" wasn't allowed to help with the task except to drink the bottle. The team who finished the bottle first, won the gold. Well, I thought I'd honor Ms. Knappenberger with a little clip of her showing her students how to put the diaper on the baby. And while she warned that any videos of this kind better not show up on youtube, she didn't mention anything about blogs.

So here's to the greatest teacher a "gifted" student could ever have! Cheers!


2 comments:

The Whimsical Goblin said...

Yes, they do grow up fast :(

But sometimes not fast enough ;)

Crazymamaof6 said...

Oh my son is in ELP and LOVES IT! they get to learn the coolest stuff, and all the teachers LOVE teaching. and get to do more exciting learing at a faster pace.

WHOOHOO for starting 7th grade!