Today we were barely able to squeeze all of our learning into the day! The highlight was our construction time with Ms. Dionysia’s class. I touched base with all of the teams to find out their team names and their goals for the day (I forgot to record who was on which team, so see if your child can help you solve the mystery of their team name). The Unicorns and Dragons were hoping to get part of their base built today. The Saluters had the toughest job, as their kit came mixed and had a ton of little pieces, so they just wanted to get everything organized and bagged up so they could build next time. Rainbow Cornflakes just wanted to get out of the planning phase and have SOMETHING built, just so they could feel good about it. The Ultimate Unicorns were hoping to get everything organized into piles and count their pieces to make sure they had all the pieces they needed. I was thrilled to see every team engaged, thoughtful about their goals, and working together smoothly. It was a great time!
In our read aloud today, the President had the nightmare the BFG gave her, woke up to talk to the maid, discovered Sophie, met the BFG, and invited them to breakfast to talk about the plan. Before the story, Anja predicted that the President would be happy to meet the BFG, as he is going to help her stop the other giants from eating more kids. Yianni disagreed and thought the President would kick them out, as the BFG is still a giant. Afterwards, Gia agreed with Anja that the President ended up happy because the BFG was nice. We hope that next time we find out their plan to stop the mean giants.
In our building explorations, we tried to build something from the story. Teddy sketched out the President, then built her out of blocks. Rebecca helped Gia build from her blueprint, but suggested making it bigger to match the drawing closer. Paolo actually built all of Sophie’s bedroom and her shaking in fear, but struggled with how to record that in his blueprint. Timo built the White House and recorded it on his blueprint. Our buildings are increasing in complexity and our blueprints are actually becoming closer to the buildings they are supposed to represent, which are really useful drawing and engineering skills.
I’m not going to lie, the shade study today was pretty rough. We studied shades of yellow, but our black is apparently just a super dark navy, as several students noticed that it was making almost a green. We talked about why that was unexpected and talked about what that told us about our black. We persevered through, however, and had some pretty interesting pieces. Rebecca liked swirling the paint in spirals to see how it changed color as the paints blended, while Niki liked dotting the paint as it changed colors. Sokrates preferred using the black paint and made a witch and her potions. Tove drew a whole person looking for something, which was pretty impressive. Bisola used the colors available and made a sun with the q-tips for sunbeams.
In our anatomy exploration, we finished up our study of ears by using mirrors to sketch our own ears. Jerome struggled to see both ears at the same time, while Bisola liked including her earrings to make the sketch more accurate. When you come in for conferences next week, you should check out the ears and eyes on our updated silhouettes by the lunchroom!
