The Second Graders finished Catwings and started making their own cats with wings from the materials of their own choosing!
The Third Graders did another color experiment. We made sunprints using acrylic paints and sunlight!
I didn’t manage to snap a picture yet, but the First Graders sang the book The Fox Went Out on a Chilly Night and read The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse by Eric Carle. Of course, I put out blue paint for the children to use for creating their own pictures…
The PreK is studying about all kinds of change and transformation. We read two books about color mixing – an old favorite, Mouse Paint and an old story by Margaret Wise Brown, The Color Kittens.
Then we did a color science experiment. We stretched white fabric over plastic cups. The children drew on the fabric with permanent markers, then dripped rubbing alcohol on their drawings.
We watched the colors disperse, mix and spread. The rubber bands that held the fabric on the cups created a boundary that keeps the ink in a circle pattern. It was really exciting to see the result.
Although I didn’t read the stories to the Third Graders, I repeated the experiment with them. Then I asked them to use books and the internet to research to figure out what was happening and why!
We discussed what historical fiction is in library class this week. I read Ruth and the Green Book and Belle, The Last Mule at Gee’s Bend to different groups and we thought about what the elements of fact were in these stories that took place around the time the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was doing his work.
I asked the children to think about a large or small problem that they think needs solving, and gave them paper to write and draw their responses.
Anna is a young girl who loves to help her father in his bookbinding shop – but as people begin to value speed as opposed to craftsmanship, the family’s livelihood is threatened. While Anna’s father is busy attending to her mother who is having a baby, Anna sews the bindings of an important order and has the finished books ready for their most important customer. She also collects the scraps of leather and paper to create a mosaic picture for her new baby brother. Woven into the story is the tale of the tortoise and the hare….
Mosaic pictures were worked on following the story…
The Second and Third Graders have had Barak Obama as their President throughout their entire lives. Yesterday before the election, and today, after it, we read Of Thee I Sing, a book that President Obama wrote to reinforce the contributions to our country of both famous people and regular citizens. The book profiles people like Jackie Robinson, Abraham Lincoln, Billie Holiday, and Dr. King, but also reminds readers that we all are creative, inspiring, healers, strong, and many other things… And also, that America is made up of people of all kinds who share their “unique gifts” and “lift one another up” as “we build upon all that is good in our nation.”
I asked the children to write about what they would like the new President to know or do in the next four years. I hope you can read Tillie’s message…
This week, Sixth and Seventh Graders talked about web site credibility – knowing who the author is and what his/her credentials are; how the site is being funded and who is making the information available; and when was the site published. We looked at Sweet Search– a search engine that is an alternative to Google created for students’ use and vetted by “internet librarians.” We tried an experiment by searching for Hillary Clinton on both Google and Sweet Search to compare search results. There were definitely more Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, and other like sites on the Google first page than on Sweet Search, whose citings included the New York Times, Washington Post, Hillary Clinton.com, Politico, and so on.
The children then did some research on topics for their science projects.
Third and Fourth Graders started their typing program.
BookCraft 