Friday, March 28, 2014

120- The students have been studying their senses.  I pushed in for the last day of this to take documentation. 

Teacher- what sense are you exploring?

Esmerada- olfato

Jose- olfato is smell

Teacher- tell me about the smells.

Esmeralda- that smells like cheese.

Teacher- what do you think it is?

Esmeralda- I think it's a type of cheese

Joel- this one smells like coffee

Jose- mmmmmm, coffee! I drank coffee at my home. It's yummy.

Teacher- what smells the best?

Esmeralda- the cheese!

Jose- none of them

Joel- the coffee

Esmeralda- this one smells good

She is referring to the tea.

Nayelis- I like this one [the tea]

Esmeralda writes with the body oil on the tea bag. It soaks in and reveals the tea grounds through the bag. She gasps with delight and shows Nayelis. Nayelis also tries to write on a tea bag. They've discovered something interesting.

Esmeralda- it broke! When I got it too wet, it broke!

She shows me a few tea grounds in her palm.

Nayelis applies the body oil to the tea grounds on her hand.

They grab a magnifying glass to study the effects of the oil on the grounds.

Esmeralda wants to put the oil on everything.

She and Nayelis put some of the other scents on the candle.

They predict it will still smell the same.

Teacher- Does it still smell like a candle?

Esmeralda- no. It smells like the coffee now, I think.

Esmeralda- this looks like a flower now.

Jose stacks the cups like a block tower.

They are always tying in artistic concepts to their science experiments.  

112- We FINISHED the ocean mural and now the wall documentation is complete!  This is such an incredible display of hard work and accomplishment for this class!  

108- I pushed in to teach watercolor tips and technique.  I let the students paint their Burchfield journals to practice. It was fun to teach whole group art for a change. 

118- I was going to pull a small group, but I noticed that they were working on an art project in their reading time.  It was on character traits.  I saw the opportunity to teach simple ways to show space, as most of the drawings had the character on a baseline.  Since I want their drawings to be more mature than the standard for their age group, it was an opportunity I took advantage of. 

I realize the tree on the correct side is "see-through"- I was making a point.

I popped my head back in that room later and saw that the students were experimenting with this new information and I suspect we're going to move quickly away from the baseline stage! 

101- They continued their identity wall portraits and I had a breakthrough with a student who'd been struggling with the tracing concept.  I'm really pleased with his portrait now, but he's a student who doesn't have a media release form signed, so I have to respect his parents' wishes and not show that artwork. 

103- Right before coming to the studio, the students in 103 decided to build a community in their room.  They'd been working on dwellings and structures for weeks now and the outcome of today's exploration was pretty impressive.

The symmetry and color choices were by design. 

This car is pretty awesome! 

After their community building exploration, they came into the studio.  I asked the students to think about the stories they've been working on in the block area.  I really want them to get practice using the watercolors so when we do our Burchfield watercolor paintings based on the nature walks we'll be taking, they will be used to using them and they can focus on the technique instead of the novelty of using watercolor paint.

The blocks are a realistic color and the repetition of his lines is pretty great.

This student struggled with the shapes forming houses concept
only a few months ago.  Now he clearly understands it. 

This shows an alligator and dinosaur toy- he fetched them from the
 room to have a more realistic drawing. :)