Semester 3- Week 1

Photos

Tuesday

Morning Gathering

This semester we will explore navigation and orienteering! We began with the 4 cardinal directions, north, south, east, west. The scene begins with us lost in the woods, accidentally veering off the hiking trail! What if we have no service on our electronic device and do not have a compass? How do we get ourselves onto the right path? Students tracked the direction of the sun's shadow moving from west to east to determine where they are in relation to the 4 cardinal directions, with just a stick and 2 rocks! Knowing this information, we now also know which way the sun is setting!

Writing

Group 1:

Students learned vocabulary in context from Hans Christian Andersen’s The Ugly Duckling. Life lessons were discussed: Being different doesn’t make you less of a person. Don’t let anyone tell you that you’re less special because you’re different from others. Students followed up with a second exercise of making 10 or more spelling words from the word TRANSPORT. To complete the day’s lesson, students were challenged to describe (in writing) a “banana” as if they met someone who had never seen or heard of one.

Skills-vocabulary in context, spelling, decoding, description, deduction.

Groups 2 and 3:

Students were given an example of a 5-paragraph essay outline of The Writing Process (How Losing a Swim Meet Made Me a Better Swimmer) and were assigned the task of writing an essay on the following topic: How did you take a disappointment and turn it in your favor?

Skills: 5-step Writing Process using an outline.

Ancient Civilizations

Today, our journey into the past began in Ancient Civilizations 101! We cracked open the code of what makes a civilization tick, exploring the conditions that fostered these early societies. We got a taste of the exciting civilizations we'll be delving into throughout the semester, and to keep track of their incredible stories, we started building a giant timeline – a visual map of history in the making!

We geared up for a future archeological dig by learning the science of unearthing the past. We learned how amazing digs have shed light on ancient civilizations, and how we can be modern-day Indiana Joneses! We got creative and molded some pottery that will be "buried" for our very own classroom excavation coming later in the year.

Forensic Science

Forensics class got real today! We traded textbooks for detective hats as we cracked the case of the skeletal mysteries. First up, we became bone detectives, learning how to distinguish between male and female skeletons. Did you know a wider pelvis is a giveaway for a female skeleton, while a larger brow ridge points towards a male? But that's not all! Bones are like tiny time capsules, holding secrets about our lives.

With our newfound knowledge, we stepped into a simulated crime scene! Scattered bones awaited – our challenge? Reassemble a male and female skeleton. No real skeletons were harmed in the making of this class – these were replicas.

We discovered the fascinating world of forensic anthropology and how bone analysis can be a powerful tool in solving crimes. Did you know your bones are constantly remodeling themselves, acting like tiny construction crews? Or that your dominate hand has bigger bones?

Wednesday

Morning Gathering

We began today with a centering string art session. This artistic warm-up wasn't just for fun; it served as a metaphor for our day. String art, like our tasks, requires focus and patience to create a beautiful image. By starting creatively, we prime ourselves for a day filled with fresh perspectives and a calm mind, ready to tackle any challenge with artistic flair.

Marine Biology

Welcome to Marine Biology! This week we kicked off our underwater experience with some basic fundamentals of our deep, blue ocean! In order to better understand marine life, we must first explore their environment!  Using experiments, we learned two of the most important characteristics that allow marine life to live & thrive: water temperature and salt content. Our first experiment we explored the ocean currents. The mixture of warm water and ice cubes caused the water to move in continual patterns.  In the ocean, these are called ocean currents. These currents affect marine-life habitats, feeding, and migration.

For our second experiment, we observed how salt affects ocean currents, and also creates buoyancy. Buoyancy is how well an object floats. The density of an object is what determines if it sinks or floats. Density is the amount of weight an object has in relation to its size. Water has a density. An object will float if it is less dense than water. An egg is denser than water, so it will sink. However, when we added salt to the water, it increased the density of the water, giving it more weight, so the egg floated.

Lastly, we read a story about what a cargo ship spill with rubber duckies taught us about ocean currents! Fascinating!

Energy 101

It was such a joy getting to know all of your kiddos this week. The goal was to learn about Energy and what it is and that we are our greatest computer; we are energetic capacitors and are all uniquely different each with super powers of our own. We explored ways to feel energy through movement, sounds/song and practiced humming sounds (ong (which means wisdom; and ma) to see their effect on us.  Our goal over the next 10 weeks is to explore different, unique modalities that offer the kids to learn about their own energy and how they can utilize tools throughout their life to assist them on this journey and be able to trust their intuition that is regulated by the glands in our body. We are going to learn they can create anything they want if they choose to, one choice and action at a time. We ended the day with an exercise of color. Asking the kids to pick a piece of constitution paper and we discussed why, how it made them feel and what energy colors exude.  We are going to cozy up for a sound healing experience next week, so the kids can bring a smallish blanket if they want, but it’s not required.

Sculpting & Art

This week we began our semester discussing how to make a 2d shape look 3 dimensional using highlights and shadows. Group 2 & 3 started with a value scale and shading of a sphere, cube, cone and cylinder. Group 1 sketched an apple with shadow, and then did a watercolor painting of apples in a bowl inspired by Cezanne. Looking forward to the upcoming weeks!