WEST AFRICA

This week students in all grades began their unit study of West Africa. Students in 2nd grade enjoyed learning about the various instruments played in Africa - gongwa (bells), dun dun (drums), rattles / shakers, and mbira (thumb piano).

Masterpieces of the Month

Our Masterpieces for the Month of Jan. are Naima Bhutta and Kaden "Smiley" Williams. They are both in 6th grade. Their artworks show texturized paintings of floral still lifes.

Congrats, Naima and Smiley!!

 

Emotions Puppets

Emotions Puppets – grade 1 – Students create a character by writing descriptive words of their character. They then switch papers with a buddy. The buddy uses the description to create a puppet. Then, the papers are mixed up and placed in a pile in the center of the table. Students at each table switch tables. They then have to work as a table team to identify which descriptive papers and puppets belong together. Teams go back to their original tables to check the work. Students get to take home their original character descriptions and the new puppet their buddy made of their created characters.   

Drama Pantomimes

This week in drama class, students enjoyed performing various pantomimes.

2nd grade played a game called "No, You Can't Take Me!"

5th grade did an individualized pantomiming game called "Whose Hat Are You Wearing?"

And 2nd grade performed a creative group narrative pantomime entitled "A Tree Grows" which took them through the life-cycle of an apple tree.

Masterpieces of the Month

This month we have two wonderful artists chosen as Masterpieces of the Month for December. They are Aaliyah Garcia for her lovely Native American piece called "Friendship" and Destini Alexander for her primary color scheme snowman.  Great job, girls!!

Snack and Chat

This week, we did a new type of learning activity in 4th grade called the "Snack and Chat."  Each table team was given a paper and a baggy of questions about our play for the week. Students were then given a bowl of treats to enjoy while discussing the play with each other.  It made for a fun and enjoyable learning experience.

Fifth graders finished a musical this week called "Thirteen Colonies," a funny rendition of drama regarding our study of the Colonial Period of Early America. Students completed a self-assessment of their individual performances after we finished our performance.

  

Masterpiece of the Month for Oct.

This month we had 2 outstanding young artists chosen as Masterpiece Artists for the month of October. Carson, a 2nd grader, created a very scary spider collage, and Clayton, a kindergartner, created a snowy collage scene.
Congrats to both boys for such excellent artistic work!!