Springs School News, January 18

The Super Fun 61 Opera Company of fourth-graders finished their season with four packed performances at Guild Hall. They are selling a DVD of “The Tale of Sea Womp,” produced by LTV to raise money for the program. Veteran opera students returned to help on the sound and lighting this year. They are Anna Rafferty, Samantha Schurr, Mary McDonald, Annelise Mendelman, Maddie Schenck, Taylor Murphy and Sophia Ledda.

The third-grade young inventors class proposed ideas for the front lawn of the school. They inspected the site, created a prototype with blocks and then had to “sell their ideas” to the other students in the class. So far their designs have been functional as well as artistic and have included an open-air classroom and an outdoor stage.

Junior high art students are finishing their canvases for a juried art show. They each received a small canvas. Many of them developed their ideas by working on a project called “art in a clamshell.” The clamshells were donated by Pat Titus. Matthew Lester created clamming scenes while McKenzie Frazier wrote short poems and illustrated them inside her clamshells.

As part of the cancer awareness month, the Springs Fire Department, in conjunction with the PTA, is raising money to fight cancer for the Relay for Life team. Participants pay $5 per person or $15 per family to dance. There will be a DJ with snacks to benefit the PTA with locally crafted “hair bling” for sale. The dance-athon will take place on Friday, January 20, from 7 to 9 p.m. in the gym. The community is invited.

On January 25 the school’s musicians will perform the winter concert at 7 p.m., directed by Ben Jones and Margaret Thompson. The art classes created polar bears to decorate the stage for the annual program.

The student literacy film class made storyboards of their favorite fairy tales. In teams, they animated the stories, which will be presented and judged by the younger students in Spirit Meet in February. Jackson Rafferty and Will Mackin have just completed their story “The Little Engine that Could.” Colton Notel-Dunn and Ryan Tuthill are editing the film.

Alana Ellis and Betzy Pillco designed a red wall mural outside the Academic Enrichment room. It highlights words that describe successful people on one panel. On the second panel they listed all the countries that contribute to the cultural diversity in the school. The wall project is part of an ongoing mural program developed by the art and the academic enrichment program. Students are encouraged to submit wall plans for possible approval.