Early Human Museum by Mariah and Maya G

The 6th graders at Leading Edge Academy have been working on their very own museum. The museum is an Early Human museum, that has many replicas of artifacts dating back to almost 6 million years ago.

This museum was not an easy task. The process was long, hard, and difficult. First, they had to choose what group they were going to make artifacts of. Some classes had assigned groups, others had students choose. Next, you brainstormed what you will be making. Each group was required to have a digital portion, and many did presentations. After that, came the hardest part of the project.

Lots of groups decided to make amazing replicas of tools, food and even houses! One group even made a costume! It was very accurate! Bows and arrows, spears, fires, and more were all created! The hardest part was making the dioramas. Some of the students made diorama inside of boxes. The early farming town of Catal Huyuk was made by a group of students, by wrapping boxes with paper, hot glueing them together, and painting it. The Australopithecus group made a diorama of life back then inside a shoe box. In the end, all the groups projects turned out amazing!

Museum Video Tour



Australopithecus Animal Horn                                             Neanderthal Skull





Early Human Tree Cave Ar



Homo Sapiens Bow and Arrow                                       Neanderthal Fire




Homo Sapiens Fishing                                              Homo Erectus fire

LE School Clubs By: Daniel and Eric

Taiko: Taiko is a Great way to connect with friends, Beating drums, and having fun with friends Before school!

Makerspace challenge: This is an after-school program that contains working as a team to complete fun and competitive challenges in the media center from 2:50 - 3:30!

Engineering: This engineering club Is a really fun activity club that contains flying drones, making robots and much more exciting and fun things.

Chess club: Chess club is a fun and challenging club for kids that want to play chess with their friends at lunch! Chess club Is on Fridays, on lunch, in Ms. Meindl's room

Leadership: Leadership is a student club where you can help create school activities such as dances, rallies, spook grams, and much more.

Math Olympiad: The sign-up sheet is a blue colored slip which you can get in Mrs. Leporieres’ room. The first meeting isn’t until next Wednesday!

Open gym: Open gym is an after-school activity and is for people that are getting picked up late from school and have nothing to do. Open gym is only on Fridays and is from 3:00 to 4:00.

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The 3 winners, all tied for first place, of #makerspacechallenge week 3, on creating bridges. #makerspacethursday #ncsinnovate @ncspfaa @ncs_pfaa @ncs_le

A post shared by Elsa Prettol (@ncslibrarian) on Sep 27, 2018 at 7:40pm PDT

Long Walk to Water

First Blog by Mrs. Leporiere's Class:

One Book, One School.

There’s only one book the whole school is reading, and that’s Long Walk To Water, New York Times Bestseller, created by Linda Sue Park.


The book centers around Nuer Tribe, Nya, who brings her family water from a pond every single day and Dinka Tribe, Salva Dut, who must survive a war. between the government and the rebels. Both live in South Sudan, a country with limited sources of food and water, and both stories are true.

Linda Sue Park was a nine-year-old girl, who had published a haiku in a 1969 Trailblazer magazine. Ever since then, she had created many other books such as her first published/written book: Seesaw Girl, A Single Shard, which was awarded a 2002 Newbery Medal, When My Name Was Keoko and more books. She has now made another book called Fatal Throne, which I suggest if you like to read Historical, medieval times.

Overall, Long Walk To Walk, A Single Shard and more are fascinating books that’ll keep you in it all the way until the end.

A Second Blog by Marcellus and Nick on A Long Walk to Water:

A long walk to water is a book that the whole school is reading. It is about how Southern Sudan was changed. It’s a two-part story in the same place but in a different time. The characters that is later in time is named Nya and the one that is earlier name is Salva. Salva is dealing with war in his part of the story. Nya’s problem is they can’t find enough clean water.

Her village does not have good health including her younger sister. Salva lost his family after a tragic event and it is to dangerous to go back. As the war rages on the rebellions are the ones fighting the government for freedom of Sudan. Salva had to travel with people that he barely knew. Back at home with Nya her father was talking to some suspicious men. Salva was still running from war for a long time.

Read the book to find out what happens to Salva and Nya and check out photos from the Leading Edge Academy family event below:

Hearing from the about the important work of Operation iDream at our One Book, One School family night @NCS_LE.

Thank you, Mr. Sikapizye, @LindaSuePark, and Salva Dut for persisting to help those in need worldwide. pic.twitter.com/8Sof5Wrd2Y

— Karisa Bibayoff (@LEroomI3) September 28, 2018

Thank you @NCS_LE families for coming out to support our One Book and Museum event. You are such a terrific group! pic.twitter.com/2GLnPEX0yu

— Karisa Bibayoff (@LEroomI3) September 28, 2018

Early Humans Unit by David and Atharv

Hello, people of Leading Edge! Today, David and Atharv have decided to do a blog post on the project of early humans museum and the unit. Our museum project is specifically about the homo erectus. Other groups are focusing on other topics like Homo Habilis, Homo Neanderthal, Early farmers, and hunter-gatherers. For the project, people have tasks to complete like making a presentation, making a diorama, or making life-sized cardboard models! We even got to play a game about hunter-gatherers vs farmers and we chose farmer because we literally farmed candy and eat our rations (Hershey kisses). The game was also very fun because we got to use our imaginations and made forts, it was a lot of fun being in the shoes if the early farmers. Other people also got to be animals like deer, bears, and some even gotta be the great one and only hunter-gatherers!

It was really fun because we got to do a lot of great activities! In these team, we created special types of exhibits. In these teams were the student leader that would put us on task and made them focus so they could get the job done. The project has been a success so far for many people, no one has broken down yet which is good and people have worked together like clockwork! Thank you for listening to our Blog! We hope that you have a good time reading your blog as much as we did making it!

Our authors show off one of their museum artifacts.

Leading Edge Student Sports By: Emily and Samara

Here’s the scoop on how sports are going so far in the fall season at Leading Edge:

Mr. Shane’s Perspective

“I think the teams have been working really hard,” says Mr. Shane the P.E teacher and coach of the boys' soccer and cross country team. He says that he thinks the teams have responsibly dedicated their time to the sports and that their hard work has paid off. He thinks the Volleyball varsity players are “Champs” and that they are playing well.

Pep talk before winning the game
against Bradshaw.
Photo by Karisa Bibayoff

Boys’ Soccer

As most of the boys' soccer team would say “It’s really fun to play at the games.” As Jacob (an eighth-grade player that has been on the team for quite a while) “Everyone has good sportsmanship and the coaches are really experienced.” Another person said, “It's really fun to play other teams.” Another mentioned, “Most of the people we play have good sportsmanship.”

Girls Volleyball

JV Girls won their first set against Bradshaw.
Photo by Maggie Bufflebe

We were able to interview a couple people on the Volleyball team and one girl on Varsity named Ava says “Some teams we’ve played had good sportsmanship, (like Bradshaw) but others (like Mills) weren’t very nice.” We heard that “One of the best parts are doing warm-ups and sometimes I get really nervous but excited too.” Also, the team is so far on a losing streak but the practices have been better.

Cross Country Team

“It’s fun to progress and get better,” says Nick, one of the runners on the cross country team. Even says “The best part is meeting new people and the coaches.” While interviewing a few runners they all had a lot to say about the coaches. All of them agreed that the coaches were “experienced and really nice.” “The coaches let you work at your own pace and they push you, but not in a strict way,” says Maya Goodwin. We heard that it wasn't a very competitive sport and that it was mainly about what you can do, not what others can. We also heard people have really good attitudes even if they don’t run the fastest.

The season is just getting started! Everyone is welcome to cheer on the team at the games. Most are on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Check the schedule with Mr. Shane or in Mrs. Bibayoff's room.