Jan 16, 2012

How Can I Help Make the World a Better Place?

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"I can help take care of animals." -Liam

"I can help make the world a better place by planting flowers and vegetables and green green grass, trees and purple flowers with nectar for butterflies. And homes for birds." -Sophia

"I can help make the world a better place by helping animals. Like if they have a broken leg, I can take help them get better." -Violet (while holding her stuffed Platypus)

"I can plant flowers and give food to people in Africa who don't have food." -Zeren

"I can plant grass for animals to eat to make it greener. No dead grass or trees, making the world green like our carpet. And don't litter." -Alaira

"I can make zoos for endangered animals to keep them from poachers." -Damon

Jan 12, 2012

Freedom, Freedom, Let it Ring...



Freedom, Freedom, Let it Ring
Let it ring said Dr. King
Let us live in Harmony
Peace and Love for You and Me
Freedom, Freedom, Let it Ring
Let it Ring said Dr. King

Chemistry and Safety

Here's one snippet from what Ms. Eda did with the children this week.

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Chemistry:

We introduced chemistry as a type of science that studies matter. We talked about the elements in the nature and how different they are in terms of their properties. We touched and felt two elements, gold and aluminum and talked about their differences. We looked at the periodic table and what it is about and then we read a book about matter and forms of matter (solid, liquid and gas). We discussed examples of all the types of matter and found how these forms exist in our bodies (e.g. solid:bones, liquid: blood, gas:air in the lungs). We touched, smelled, and even tasted different types of matter including lemon juice, salt, baking soda, alcohol and vinegar.

We later demonstrated how chemical reactions occur when we mix some elements.
(Vinegar + baking soda --> Chemical reaction that creates a new matter which is gas).

To make it fun, we loaded a ziploc bag with a lot of vinegar and baking soda and sealed it and shook it and saw how the bag got filled with air and popped..

Also discussed safety. Did role playing on how to respond when a stranger talks to us. What an emergency is, and what we need to do when there is emergency. Calling 911 and getting help.

Dec 9, 2011

It's About the Quality of the Journey

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I am talking about a culture of schooling in which more importance is placed on exploration than on discovery, more value is assigned to surprise than to control, more attention is devoted to what is distinctive than to what is standard, more interest is related to what is metaphorical than to what is literal. It is an educational culture that has a greater focus on becoming than on being, places more value on the imaginative than on the factual, assigns greater priority to valuing than to measuring, and regards the quality of the journey as more educationally significant than the speed at which the destination is reached. I am talking about a new vision of what education might become and what schools are for. — Elliot Eisner, What Can Education Learn from the Arts about the Practice of Education?

Weather is Getting Colder!

Observing (then painting) how a prism can be used to break light up into the colors of the rainbow.

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Temps are dropping. Winter is almost here!

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Snowman, by Alaira.
I want earmuffs like him!

What is Wind?

When the children were asked, "What is wind?", here were some of their thoughts.

"It blows our hair."
-Lucca

"Blows the sun and covers the sun. It gets us cold."
-Zeren

"We need to wear jackets."
-Skye

"Air that blows."
-Alaira

"Air is different than wind. Air you can breathe."
-Damon

 "It slows us down."
-Sophia

Dec 6, 2011

Can the Wind Blow It?

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The following are photographs taken by the children with the prompt, "Photograph what you think the wind can blow."

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by Violet

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by Skye

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by Sophia

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by Lucca

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by Liam

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by Zeren

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by Damon

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by Alaira

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one more by Damon

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Anonymous