Aaaaand, we're back from Spring Break! And, exciting... We came back to chicken eggs in an incubator! We love peering through the windows to investigate the eggs, but there's really not much to see on the outside yet. Thankfully, Madame has an app that allows us to observe what's happening inside the egg and track the chicks' progress and growth each day. Also a fun feature of the app - the AR chicken that it can place in random spots around the classroom. We like to try to "pet" it, or photobomb it. We are so excited for the chicks to hatch! Madame has even told us that she'll let us work together in small groups to name each of them. We went on our first ice skating trip this week! It was a gorgeous day for a walk to the rink, and the cool air of the arena actually felt so refreshing when we arrived. For some of us, this was our first time ever putting on skates! We met the task with such determination and perseverance. Madame was very proud of us all! We can't wait to go again next week! We are beginning Term 3 with a much more targeted focus on writing. Every day, Madame has us write out one sentence or correct the errors in a pre-written phrase. This is separate from our journal writing where she gives us a lot more creative freedom and has us focus more on fluency and content output. In these short, daily exercises, Grade 2s are working toward spelling mastery (Grade 1s are still working on "phonetic spelling"), and we are all working on using capital and lowercase letters in appropriate places, spaces between words and periods at the end of our sentences. After just 5 days, we are already noticing improvements! After our enthusiasm about the Van Gogh lesson before Spring Break, Madame was excited to get going with another art history lesson. This week's focus was on Leonardo da Vinci. "And you know what's SO cool...?! Leonardo da Vinci was the namesake of one of the Ninja Turtles... in fact all of the Ninja Turtles are actually named after Renaissance artists!"... "You know... Leonardo?... the Ninja Turtle...!" *Blank stares* Madame broke into the Ninja Turtle theme song (with a little accompanying dance, of course) to try to jog our memories, then looked at us with a hopeful smile. The confused silence was so thick that we could hear our classmates blinking. So for anyone born after the 80s, here's a helpful info-graphic... We learned about how da Vinci was from Italy ("it looks like a boot!") during a time called the Renaissance, which is actually a French word that means "rebirth". It was a time when people were learning and discovering all kinds of new things, and artists began making art that looked so realistic it could almost be a photograph! Da Vinci became very famous for his painting of the Mona Lisa because it looked so real! We learned about some of the techniques he used and practiced using a pencil to make different types of scribbles, varying the pressure we used while scribbling. Then we did our very own Mona Lisa "paintings" (using oil pastels), trying out some of the techniques we learned. We also learned that da Vinci was not only an artist, but a famous inventor, as well. But he kept all of his ideas top secret in his notebook by using a technique called "mirror writing" - you could only read it if you held it up to a mirror! We had fun trying out this strange way of writing, and coming up with our own ideas for inventions! Extra photos... More incredible perler bead art by Nathan and Callen...
Comments are closed.
|
Archives
June 2024
Categories |