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!