We learned how shoes can become handy dandy pencil holders…
…and so can upper lips!
Around the World in 60 Days…
We celebrated the world’s fourth largest continent of South America by learning about some of its magnificent natural wonders, games children in South America play, and the special treat on Thursday of Gabriel’s mom, Laura, sharing what it was like growing up in Rio Grande do Sol region of Brazil.
Laura brought with her a cup of traditional matte chimayo…
She shared that gauchos and ranching are a large part of life in the southern part of Brazil, so is drinking coconut water from coconuts and her parents not only adopted a rescued scarlet macaw as a part of their family, they worked as volunteers with a penguin rescue organization!
We found out that South America has the Andes, the longest Mountain range in the world, the “lungs of the earth” ~ the Amazon Rainforest and waterfalls that are 3,212 feet high ~ the highest in the world. We had so much fun learning the Choco-la-te Hand Clap Ask your Alpha to teach it to you!
We rolled up our rug to get in the groove and play palos y clavos. We got so good at it we were able to do it all in unison!
We also played La Estatues. A game with music that goes like this…one person is “it”. They turn their back on the rest of the players. All but the “it” person dance to the music – we played the song El baile de los esqueletos (The skeletons are dancing) – and when the music stops everyone is a statue, but you can’t hide your face because the “it” person walks around and if they make you laugh…you’re out!
Our cooking team made Pão de Queijo. It was a favorite at AHB’s Around the World so we thought we’d see how it’s made…
We had time to share some of our North American artifacts…but not all. We’ll share more next week…
an ancestor from Poland…
A golden coin souvenir from Rocky Mt. National Park…
A morpho butterfly from Costa Rica….
To add to our exploration of rhythm this week we had a STEAM challenge of seeing if we could create rhythm instruments using only spaghetti, cardboard tubes, paper, egg cartons and tape! Wow! Are our Alphas creative…they made drums, shakers, and güiros!
Some shake, and some “…you can play 3 different ways!”
This week’s Reflections…
We shared what responsibilities we took care of with our travel buddies. Many of us realized we take part in similar responsibilities.
This week in Math…
Ms. Kim’s group…
We learned new games to practice Math Facts and our understanding of Place Value. We completed building our 99 chart and used it to play Guess my Number.
Ms. Eliza’s group…
We started our unit on time and how to tell time. We’ve been studying the difference between analog clocks and digital clocks and understanding that time is a unit of measurement that is split into am & pm, seconds, minutes and hours.
(the time flew by ;-) and I didn’t get any photos…I will next week!)
This week in Language Arts…
Ms. Eliza’s group…
In our writing workshop this week we wrote about what it was like to see the eclipse. “It was a ring of fire” , “It was dark” were some of our observations. Last week when we were writing about our homes and what home is to us there was a bit of discussion about what our “dream homes” would look like. We took a vote and it was unanimous that we would make our dream homes before writing about “something I love to do”. We had an underwater submarine home, a houseboat home, a couple of treehouses, and even a home in a volcano!
An important part of our writing workshop is reading what we write to our fellow group of writers, working on our presentation skills and listening to one another, asking questions and offering comments.
Ms. Kim’s group…
We started the week by capturing our memories of the ECLIPSE! We reviewed the homonyms “to, two, and too” and worked on differentiating how to spell “er” words with long or short vowels in the first syllable or a two-syllable word! We read The Umbrella, by Taro Yashima about an early memory of a little girl. We shared our P&P about our earliest memories and talked about how we can turn this information into an interesting story.
In other news…
We decorated our alebrijes!
