Global School Play Day

  returning the gift of play

“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.”

-Plato

Weather

Second graders are researching different types of weather. 

 Extreme weather is so exciting but so is nice, calm, sunny days.

We'll be creating a newspaper with articles and artwork.

Students think of themselves as newscasters, making comments about what, where, when, a quote from some one who witnessed it or advice about how to deal with it.

Never Get Cold

Did you know that a snow shower is water vapor that falls in flakes?  

When John Meryer was a kid, he was caught in a snow storm with his dad.  He thought his dad would never get cold, so he thought he would never be cold in the snow either.  But when the snowstorm came, he was cold!

You can't always tell when a snow shower is coming, so be prepared with warm clothes.

Albemarle County Visual Arts Festival

March 2017

The Periodic Table of Element Names

Sea Creatures

Fifth graders studied, wrote non-fiction papers, and watercolored sea creatures.

Here are some that have been finished.  

African Trade Beads

3rd graders study Mali, European explorers and Mali. 

The European Explorers had glass beads that were made in Europe.

They were beautiful colors of glass.

Our beads are like the ones made in Venice, Italy that used the Millefiori technique.  The "million flowers" were produced by creating flowers or stripes from glass canes, that were then cut and molded onto a core of solid color.

Beads were used as ballast in slave/trade ships for the outbound trip. 
European Explorers traded the African people for salt, gold and slaves.
Mali controlled most of the gold and salt.

We traded beads with each other made necklaces.

Can you find your beads?

Ekua Holmes

The Crossover
"poetry in motion"
written by Kwame Alexander
illustrated by Ekua Holmes

As Ms. McGill read a poem about basketball,
students were inspired.
When Ms. McGill said we would write a poem about our favorite sport and illustrate it,
the excitement grew.
We wrote poems about our favorite movement using Kwame's techniques.
We looked at Ekua's collage artwork and noticed she used
newspapers
and wallpaper books.
We noticed the people were usually in silhouette.

Could we make a silhouette of the action and what words would we use?
pow, poof, splash, smack, whoosh, slap, cheep, scrunch, ding, phwoom, shriek, ay, hey, keeyah, thud, strick, clash, ping, thwack, swoosh, swish


Ms. Mary Lou asked one person to get up on the table and make the movements
of basketball and then freeze.
We all had a turn on the table to freeze into our favorite activity.
It was so much fun! and we love our silhouettes!

Thank you Festival of the Book for making it possible for us to see Kwame and Ekua in person
and listen to them talk about their process.

Here are some of the finished poems and artwork.....

Jacob Lawrence

We started a study of the Civil War in class.
Jacob Lawrence was an artist who painted pictures of the Civil War and the Reconstruction Period.

Jacob Lawrence

Students

This is a runaway slave turned Union calvaryman.  He's holding a sword charging the enemy.

These slaves are treated unfairly.  They feel forgotten.

Northerners gave slaves jobs on the railroad after the war.  

The Door to Freedom

 Slaves are carrying baskets of cotton to the cotton gin.

 Riots happened when ex-slaves went north and took the jobs of the northerners.

In the north, the slaves had new opportunities for jobs and one was working on the railroad.  Northerners also traveled during the war by walking on the railroad tracks.