Exploration Celebration

Tonight was the big night!  Our Exploration Celebration is a time to share some of the inquiry projects we have worked on throughout the year, and it is also the evening that we share some concert music.  It's a time of food, friends, and family!

Our Georgia O'Keeffe artwork:

Our Matisse artwork:

Some of our life-sized animals:

I didn't get everyone's life-sized animals, so I will make another post later!
It was a busy night!

LEADS did a great job at the concert!

Titanic Day

Since the beginning of the year, Mason has had an eye on our timeline to anticipate teaching us about the Titanic on the anniversary of the day it sank: April 15, 1912.
He brought in a bunch of items he had collected in a special box and taught us all about it!

We were totally engaged while he was teaching!

He showed us a picture of the captain and how he went down with the ship.

We were amazed at the size of the propellers! 

Thank you for sharing your resources and knowledge, Mason!

Our Silent Auction Benches

We did a bench on 1st grade learning for the silent auction item at our Exploration Celebration.  Here's how they turned out!

Great job, Room 408!

Georgia O'Keeffe

One of my favorite artists is Georgia O'Keeffe, and I couldn't wait to share her art with Room 408.
We read a few books about her life and work:

We studied her paintings to see what her work was like.

We researched online, as well.

We looked at some of her famous paintings.

We noticed how she loved to paint nature and looked closely at her subjects.

We even tried looking at they sky through bones just like she did with this painting.

We brought in nature objects and looked at them closely just like Georgia O'Keeffe, and got inspiration for our own nature paintings.

Here are the artists in residence!

Jace looked closely at the flowers, just like Georgia O'Keeffe!

We made lots of paintings to display at the Exploration Celebration.

Here is a video about Georgia O'Keeffe:

We look forward to sharing our paintings at the Exploration Celebration!

Creating Life-Sized Animals

Today was the big day that the kids have been working toward and waiting for!  We started working on our life-sized animals as a way of "Going Public" at our upcoming Exploration Celebration.
After each group turned in their measurements for their research club animal, they received paper that matched the length/width of their animal.
The first stage was to sketch out their animal.  As I modeled with a manatee, they were told to "Think big, draw big, think fat, and draw fat."

Komodo dragon

sea otter

coyote

bison

The next step is painting and adding details once the base paint is dry.  I didn't get many pictures, as it's a busy time with 18 extremely excited kids painting!  The animals are starting to look like animals!

Next, we cut out our animals.

bison

sea otter

Bengal tiger

 The kids discussed plans for the background habitat of their animals and requested colors.
They glued their animals on the background paper and worked on designing the habitat of their animal. We went through a lot of gluesticks!!!

The next step was working on labeling our posters.

We met in our research clubs to decide who was going to teach each topic.

Then we used our best handwriting to record facts that we will add to our animal posters.

It feels like we have performed a minor miracle in Room 408 this week!

We can't wait to display our life-sized animals at the upcoming Exploration Celebration on April 16th.  Hope to see you there!