Field Trip Wrap-Up and Pumpkin Math

Hi team! Thanks so much for rallying the early wake-up call and making our trips to the de Young a success. It felt great to enjoy new inspiration and get out into the world as a class. There was important learning for all of us as a result of participating in this program and I'm grateful for it. Thanks too for the drivers/ chaperones who made it all possible.  It will be wonderful to share some of the writing the kids produced on these trips at our conferences next week. 

The Garden of Enchantment

The Minimalist Galleries

 Cooling off in the mist

 Thanks to Kirstin Asher for the great iphone shots above!


The Oceanic and African Galleries

You'll see us below using our math skills to investigate some Halloween pumpkins. Students used different techniques for making educated estimates of the pumpkins' circumference and weight. For example, they found and weighed items around the room that they thought might have a weight similar to that of their pumpkin. They also demonstrated an advanced understanding of place-value by counting the number of seeds within the pumpkins and manipulating those numbers with multiplication, division, and multi-digit addition.  It really takes a lot of organization, teamwork, and thorough planning to count so many seeds efficiently. We also spent some time in the kitchen preparing and roasting the seeds for a much-deserved treat during today's class meeting. (Nice work facilitating, Hugo! Such leadership and seriousness!) Thanks to Genevieve for joining us today and helping gather materials!

 

  

Globes, Frozen Fun, and Inspiring Visitors

See you bright and early tomorrow for an 8:00 departure to the de Young!

Spotlight on Social Studies:
We've just wrapped our global cartography unit which focused on globe and map skills. I love maps and I've been finding lots of cool maps to investigate during our Westward Migration studies. Now these kids are ready to interpret all the useful and interesting details that a good map offers!
Another important parts of the unit was looking at the ways cartographers have remedied the challenge of depicting a 3D planet on 2D maps. We compared five common 2D Earth projections and their strengths and pitfalls. We also looked at the ways that we can tell that certain projections were made by European cartographers and discussed the following quote about perspective:
"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." -Anais Nin
We ended the unit by watching a clip from The West Wing in which the Cartographer's Guild of America argues that public schools should use the Peter's Projection instead of the Mercator Projection. The students expressed why they agreed or disagreed with the proposal.
Here we are at the beginning of the unit, investigating the challenge of translating the surface of a sphere onto paper.

Thank you so much to Mila's mom, Lisa who joined us to share her incredible art! We learned about Lisa's artistic process and the ways that her dioramas relate to the work that we're doing in poetry. Like our poetry, her Glass Cathedrals depict a small moment or detail or object that holds strong feelings or a big idea.
http://glasscathedrals.com

 How about a little silly, Friday fun?!

 Ready? Set? Go find your shirt and put it on as fast as you can!

 Wait? It's FROZEN?

 That's one technique!

 So cold!

 Frozen arm hole :)

This afternoon we had a visit from Mila's dad, Ralph! He shared his work as a talented illustrator and gave the kids some tips as to how to express emotion in the figures they draw. Thanks Ralph!