Wednesday, January 19, 2011

1st and 2nd Grade - Students finished up their Visual Nursery Rhymes and those are on display in the Art/Enrichment room. We then read a book about "Pressure" with the Berenstain Bears and discussed stress in our lives. Students then drew posters giving an example of how to relieve stress.

3rd Grade - The word of the day was Gregarious. Gregarious means sociable. The pilgrim of the day was Elvis Presley. Mr. Presley had a high school music teacher who gave him a "C" in class because she said he couldn't sing. Elvis Presley said she just didn't like his music. After he played a song for her, she agreed that she just didn't like his style of music. After graduating from high school, Mr. Presley sang whenever and where ever he could finally landing a chance to record for Sun Records in 1954 with "Heartbreak Hotel." His records still hit the top of the record charts. The warm-up activity of the day was an art project called "Loosen Up." Students were to draw six dots on a piece of paper, connect the dots, then turn that shape into a scary monster. This was a great ex cerise for developing creativity. Our trip to Crystal Pond Woods had students further developing their Visual Thinking. Students were to manipulate pentomino shapes into a variety of puzzles. We then finished discovering crayons. Our last activity was to begin a study of relationships. Students were to write as many analogies as they could in 5 minutes.

4th Grade - The word of the day was Shun. Shun means to keep away from; to take pains to avoid and it sounds like sun. The pilgrim of the day was Albert Einstein. Mr. Einstein immigrated to the United States during the Nazi occupation of Germany. He encourage the US government to develop an atomic bomb because he knew the Germans were developing one. He was against using the bomb on people and was very sad when the bomb was dropped on Japan. These students also drew scary monsters from six connected dots. Their affective lesson was focused on the fact that being gifted means different things to different people. The rest of the day was spent building a creature from the directions sent to us from Russell Doughtery. The creatures will be on display in the Art/Enrichment room until after Open House on February 10th.