One of my favorite middle school events in the years before COVID was the Chinese New Years Assembly. Put together by my amazing friend and colleague, Neil Bray, it features music and skits by students and culminates in a lion dance by a local family troupe (the Ha family). This year, we were happy to have the Ha family back at school for an in-person event. I caught a bit of the dance on video:
Category Archives: Video
Volleyball 2022
Griffin has had a great season with his volleyball team this fall. The team has been unfailingly positive even in the face of defeat. (Though they’ve done better this season than last year, with a few decisive victories and many close matches.) It’s been a joy to watch them duke it out on the court every week.
Here’s a short video at the tail end of one of their closest games. Alas, after getting 1 point from victory, they were ultimately defeated, 25-27.
Circus + Horses
In addition to her regular circus classes, Maggie has started taking equestrian circus classes. Today, she practiced standing on two horses at once!
Griffin’s First Band Concert
Griffin has been taking a piano for a few years. This year he started learning the trombone as part of the music program at St. Paul Academy. He played in his first concert this evening. He sounded good and, more importantly, had a great time.
The beginners joined the full band for two pieces. Griffin is on the rightmost bottom seat in the two videos below.
Circus Show: Blizzard
After a break due to COVID, Maggie resumed her work with Circus Juventas this fall. She will be performing this spring, but we decided to go see their holiday show as a family. The show is called Blizzard, and is framed as a bunch of careless elves letting stories loose from the Big Book of Holiday Stories. Lots of snow and Christmas goofiness, but mostly a spectacular circus performance.
If you’re looking for something to do this month, the show runs through December 19. Only an hour with no intermission, it was a great time. Here’s a short clip of the flying trapeze:
Tetris
Griffin’s latest stop motion creation.
Stop Motion
Griffin, Maggie, and Oliver have been experimenting with stop-motion animation with legos. This is a sample of one of their works-in-progress.
Maggie and Walnut
Maggie spent a week this summer at Camp St. Croix with a focus on horseback riding. She loved it enough that she signed up for continuing weekend lessons this fall. The video below shows her riding Walnut.
Courage Retreat
Every fall, my school hires Youth Frontiers to conduct a day-long activity for our eighth graders called the Courage Retreat. I was skeptical about it the first time we ran it in 2010, but they won me over because they were able to win the students over.
This morning, while discussing the retreat with some new faculty members, one of my colleagues discovered a video on the Youth Frontiers site that features our school. These were our eighth graders three years ago, so they are in eleventh grade now. It was a great class.
The video is obviously an advertisement, but it warms my heart nevertheless. I thought some of you might enjoy catching a glimpse of one of the many things we do at SPA. Sharp eyes can even spot me in the background in a few shots.
In case the YouTube link above ever goes defunct, I made a personal copy of the video that should work in perpetuity below. (My guess is that YouTube’s streaming protocols are far more efficient, though, so I would watch the above copy as long as it is working.)
Piper’s Frenemy
The newest member of our family is a robot vacuum cleaner. Piper has kept her distance until this morning when she realized that she might be able to play with the interloper.
I would be remiss not to mention how infatuated we are with the new cleaner—known as “Robo 3000” in our house. (The number changes depending who is saying it.) It is actually a “eufy” RoboVac 11S by Anker. It was one of the cheapest we could find but it has been a household revolution.