Where We've Been & What We've Been Up To...

What is it Mark Twain said?  "The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated"-- or something to that effect.  Anyway, sorry for my blogging silence, I have been busy raising my teenagers.  LOL 

The Reader's Digest (not quite) Condensed version of the past few weeks....  

The Quirkles-

Mary Motion
The students  learned that an object will stay at rest unless force is applied (Newton’s First Law of Motion).

  


Nosey Nina

The students learned the our senses work together to send messages to the brain.

In our World Travels, we visited Russia and read the folktale, The Clever Maiden.

In our story, the the czar gave the clever maiden and her father several riddles to solve.  The students used their own creativity and wit to write their own riddles.  We are anxious to share these with you at our spring Open House!

Our next stop took us to India where we read the story, The Drum.  

It was a wonderful chain story that tells how a boy gets a drum he has always wanted, by chance, while he participates in a series of kind acts.  Along the way, someone gave him chapati, Indian flat bread.  So we decided our project for this story was to make and taste chapati ourselves.  

Our most recent adventure took us to the continent of Africa and the country of Ghana where we were inspired by the folktale Why Hare is Always on the Run.  We enjoyed learning a little about the African culture and their masquerade.  We learned about their animal masks, traditional dances and story telling performance.  In a masquerade, the dancers are usually men.  The masks and costumes are inspired by animals and ancestors  that possessed character traits and/or skills desired by the dancer.  

The students discussed and then listed their own character traits, talents and skills.  Next, they chose an animal they felt represented these traits and skills.   The students drew out the design for their own African-styled masks.  They are in the process of making their mask in ceramic clay.  I will fire them after spring break.  In the weeks ahead, they will finish their mask so it can be displayed at our Open House.

In the computer lab, the students continued learning to use Storybird.  They are working on some great stories! Encourage your child to continue to explore their creativity and ideas through writing.  Have them login to their Storybird account and share their stories with you.  Digital storytelling is a great motivator!

Over the past two weeks, I have introduced the students to another digital storytelling site, Kerpoof.  This free site is a Disney created website where students can make pictures, storybooks and even animated videos.  It is very user friendly, engaging and inspires creativity in children as they tell their stories.  Turn your child loose on this site and they will use their imagination and writing skills to create original stories, pictures, animated movies and other creative projects.  This week, the students were given an account under my teacher account.  They know their user login and their password.  The E Day students need to also remember their Class Account Code: K697.

This week, watch for our latest (much shorter LOL) blog update!