Monday, November 25, 2013

120- We are starting an inquiry about masks.  I showed the students two ceramic masks (one African and one Mayan) and we looked at samples of masks from around the world.  I pointed the countries out on the globe as we went through, so they could see how the masks come from all of the continents and many countries all over the world.  We talked about the purposes of masks- to hide the face for protection, disguise, celebration, theater, or even for warfare or hunting.  The students then had time to brainstorm and draw their ideas for their own masks.  Tomorrow, we'll build the armature for their masks, which will be made out of papier mache.

116- I took a small group to work on the foyer mobile project.  This is the project with the cardboard triangles.

108- I took a small group to work on the foyer mobile project.

118- I had two groups today.  One group was the "church group."  They have their walls finished and started to construct the building, but they had a hard time getting the walls to stick together. I wanted them to try on their own and I will step in tomorrow to help with it, as it can be tricky to attach the walls when you don't have experience.  The other group I had worked on the foyer mobile project.  We divided the cardboard triangles into groups by color.  The students will compose patterns when they hang the pieces, so we thought we'd be prepared by dividing them ahead of time.

102- I took a small group of students who needed to finish their self-portraits.  Now we're ready to critique them with a lesson on adjectives.  I'm going to have the students look at each other's work and share one adjective that describes the person.  The kicker is that no one can have the same descriptive word as someone else.  I want them to expand beyond using just "beautiful" or "cool" to describe something they like and use a few synonyms.

101- I had the preschoolers work on the foyer mobile project.  I strung up a few pieces to show them what we're working toward. The final version will have fishing line instead of white string and the students will be allowed to work on gluing the pieces into shapes, like circles or diamonds, and will be encouraged to use patterns, so this is just a basic example.