Friday, May 8, 2015
Happy Mother's Day!
Classroom 5A teachers and students would like to wish everyone a Happy Mother's Day this weekend!
Monday, May 4, 2015
Spring into Art
Our class is studying the art of Leonid Afremov, he was born in 1955 in
Belarus (found between Russia and Poland).
He works mainly with a palette knife and oils; he paints landscapes,
city scenes, seascapes, flowers and portraits. Afremov was influenced by the
work of March Chagall, Pablo Picasso, Salvatore Dali, Armedeo Modigliani and
the 19th century French impressionists.
A link to his artwork can be found here and here.
Our students have been studying different ways to create art, the different genres of art (Landscape, portrait, still life and genre-painting) and the process an artist goes through to make art.
Our focus book this month, Molly Meets Mona and Friends by Denise Bennett Minnely, was about a young girl who goes to an art museum and interacts with the famous art she sees. She sees work by Claude Monet, Alexander Calder, Vincent Van Gogh, Edgar Degas, Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky and Lois Maliou Jones. Artists that work with paint, watercolor, stone, wire and dots.
We are now looking into symmetry and how it plays into art. Students have taken small group trips to the museum to work in the art studio.
See all of our photos here!
A link to his artwork can be found here and here.
Our students have been studying different ways to create art, the different genres of art (Landscape, portrait, still life and genre-painting) and the process an artist goes through to make art.
Our focus book this month, Molly Meets Mona and Friends by Denise Bennett Minnely, was about a young girl who goes to an art museum and interacts with the famous art she sees. She sees work by Claude Monet, Alexander Calder, Vincent Van Gogh, Edgar Degas, Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky and Lois Maliou Jones. Artists that work with paint, watercolor, stone, wire and dots.
We are now looking into symmetry and how it plays into art. Students have taken small group trips to the museum to work in the art studio.
See all of our photos here!
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
Roots to Shoots: A Garden Club Visit
We had a workshop with the Bristol Garden Club this morning where we learned all about roots and how plants grow. We learned that we eat roots like carrots and radishes, that roots hold plants in the ground and provide them with nutrients. We also learned that air plants don't have any roots to grow in the ground and some plants can grow roots in the water!
We heard a story about roots and plants, then were able to do an art activity and explore various roots with magnifiers. We examined carrots, radishes, parsnips, ginger and other roots.
In our classroom we have an Boston Fern, two Spider Plants, an air plant, two Golden Pathos Ivy plants, a Prayer Plant and an Amaryllis.
You can see all of the photos here.
We heard a story about roots and plants, then were able to do an art activity and explore various roots with magnifiers. We examined carrots, radishes, parsnips, ginger and other roots.
In our classroom we have an Boston Fern, two Spider Plants, an air plant, two Golden Pathos Ivy plants, a Prayer Plant and an Amaryllis.
You can see all of the photos here.
Monday, April 20, 2015
Beautiful Stuff
Our students haven been working hard this month creating art, but we have been using our Beautiful Stuff a lot; not only in art, but to build, pattern, sort, make letters and compare.The loose parts we have collected are great to spark the imagination; loose parts can create anything you can think of.
Our students collected:
Shells, rocks, gems, jewelry, sticks, wood pieces, wire, metal pieces, feathers, odd keys, cardboard, shiny plastic, straws, aluminum foil, cotton balls, watches string, and many other items of all shapes and sizes.
Anything can be loose parts, here is a link to the letter we sent home to give families an idea of what to collect.
Check back soon for pictures of our students using loose parts!
Our students collected:
Shells, rocks, gems, jewelry, sticks, wood pieces, wire, metal pieces, feathers, odd keys, cardboard, shiny plastic, straws, aluminum foil, cotton balls, watches string, and many other items of all shapes and sizes.
Anything can be loose parts, here is a link to the letter we sent home to give families an idea of what to collect.
Check back soon for pictures of our students using loose parts!
Friday, March 20, 2015
#WearYellowForSeth
**UPDATE**
Check out our photos from today here.
We had our ENTIRE school wearing yellow to support Seth. That's nine classrooms, about 125 kids and almost 20 teachers! Our class made cards and pictures for Seth to show him that we are his friends and we care about him.
Check out our photos from today here.
We had our ENTIRE school wearing yellow to support Seth. That's nine classrooms, about 125 kids and almost 20 teachers! Our class made cards and pictures for Seth to show him that we are his friends and we care about him.
Dear
families,
Continuing our lessons on kindness and
compassion for others, we would like to let you know about a story about a
5-year-old boy named Seth. Seth has Severe Combined Immune Deficiency (Which
means he has no immune system, often referred to as Bubble Boy Disease) and must live every day in a hospital room.
Seth’s
family has asked the world to show their support for this brave little boy before his second bone marrow transplant by
wearing yellow, his favorite color.
We are hoping that all of the students AND
families in our class, and the entire school, will wear yellow to show their
support on Friday, March 27th.
BE CREATIVE! Yellow shirt, pants, socks, shoes,
scarves, headband, jewelry, or paint your faces yellow! Let's make Seth laugh!
We will be
taking a picture and sending it to his family so they can print them out and
hang them in Seth’s hospital room for support. You can take your own and upload it to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram by hashtagging
#WearYellowForSeth
Learn more
about Seth at – www.OurLittleHero.wordpress.com
Watch
Seth’s video at https://youtu.be/4tlTZSGhi-g
The students are SO excited to make Seth feel happy and supported, they even suggested we paint our new tree house yellow for him.
Let’s make
this little boy smile!
Thank you
for your support!
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
Design and Engineering Introduction
We have begun our unit on all things construction, Design and Engineering. In this unit we have and will talk about buildings, constructing, tools, materials, famous structures, stability, and many other facets of design and engineering.
We wanted to begin with a fun activity to get them used to handling tools. We gave our students real tools. With Valentines Day just passing, we decided to have fun with some left over conversation hearts.
Beginning with safety, we talked about each tool and how they're used. Then we gave them minimal instruction about how to break the candies. We wanted to see what the students did with the tools, how they used them, if they used multiple strategies to solve the problem of breaking the hearts into smaller pieces, the vocabulary they would use and what they would predict.
After spending some time with conversation hearts, we tried breaking different types of food; we added M&Ms and chips to our trays.
We wanted to begin with a fun activity to get them used to handling tools. We gave our students real tools. With Valentines Day just passing, we decided to have fun with some left over conversation hearts.
Beginning with safety, we talked about each tool and how they're used. Then we gave them minimal instruction about how to break the candies. We wanted to see what the students did with the tools, how they used them, if they used multiple strategies to solve the problem of breaking the hearts into smaller pieces, the vocabulary they would use and what they would predict.
The hearts were in between two pieces of paper towel so that broken bits didn't fly everywhere.
We used hammers.
We used screwdrivers.
We tried different ways to use the screwdriver.
We even tried breaking them with our hands.
After spending some time with conversation hearts, we tried breaking different types of food; we added M&Ms and chips to our trays.
Friday, February 6, 2015
Measuring
A fun way to introduce measuring for children is to measure with nonstandard units. Children have a hard time understanding inches and feet, so instead we begin measuring with "units."
In this activity we paired students up and asked them to measure each other with anything they found in the room. For example, someone might be 14 blocks or 20 magnets.
Students tried everything from books, to cars, to blocks and instruments.
One students asked, "What would happen if I pulled my legs up?" We predicted and tested his theory that "It would be smaller."
We made other predictions about how many units it would take, what would happen if we changed the units or which students would be more units.
We documented our measurements with drawings, numbers and words.
We compared the size of students.
Measuring with rulers and measuring tapes came later. Instead of calling them inches, we just called them units. After teaching how to start at the zero on the clear rulers, students would measure any item in the classroom. We would compare and sort items (which are more/less than 5 units?) We used rulers to measure sticks, baskets, chairs, tables, arms, rocks,books and anything they could get their hands on. They measured in pairs and worked together with both rulers.
Students were all given their own rulers (the template can be found here) and measured by "units."
Vocabulary words like bigger, larger, smaller, smallest, etc were defined and used regularly.
In this activity we paired students up and asked them to measure each other with anything they found in the room. For example, someone might be 14 blocks or 20 magnets.
Students tried everything from books, to cars, to blocks and instruments.
One students asked, "What would happen if I pulled my legs up?" We predicted and tested his theory that "It would be smaller."
We made other predictions about how many units it would take, what would happen if we changed the units or which students would be more units.
We documented our measurements with drawings, numbers and words.
We compared the size of students.
Measuring with rulers and measuring tapes came later. Instead of calling them inches, we just called them units. After teaching how to start at the zero on the clear rulers, students would measure any item in the classroom. We would compare and sort items (which are more/less than 5 units?) We used rulers to measure sticks, baskets, chairs, tables, arms, rocks,books and anything they could get their hands on. They measured in pairs and worked together with both rulers.
Students were all given their own rulers (the template can be found here) and measured by "units."
Vocabulary words like bigger, larger, smaller, smallest, etc were defined and used regularly.
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