Looking Closely

We learned that scientists look very closely and record exactly what they see.
We read a book by Frank Serafini called Looking Closely in the Forest.

We looked closely at an apple and noticed the small details.  Room 408 noticed a dark spot, a scratch, how it is red, yellow, and green, and how the stem is in a dark hole.

Next, each partner group got a rambutan to observe.  We looked closely.

We used all our senses...even smell!

We recorded as many details as we could.

Later, we opened it up and looked inside.  We even tasted it!

Many thought it was only good for observing, not tasting!

Colorful Matisse

We studied the life and art of Henri Matisse.  We read two books about him called Drawing with Scissors and Henri's Scissors.

Of course, the first question was, "How can you draw with scissors?!?"  We read the book and looked at his art with this question in mind.

Matisse started out as a painter and painted things so they looked real.

Soon, Matisse painted with more imagination.  He used brighter colors and bigger brushstrokes.

Some people who saw his art like this said that his paintings looked like "wild beasts" had painted them.  

As Matisse got older, he was often sick.  He had to stay in bed a lot and couldn't stand up for very long to paint.  So he started cutting out paper shapes and called it "drawing with scissors."  Here is a picture of Matisse cutting out his shapes!

Here are some of our favorite Matisse cutouts.

La Gerbe

The Snail

We decided to give it a go and create our own Matisse-inspired cutouts.

I think we did pretty well at "drawing with scissors!"

Veterans Day

Room 408 did a mini-inquiry about Veterans Day.

We made observations and inferred about photographs:

We read magazines to get information:

We watched videos and during our research we made sure to write down our findings:

We were amazed at everything we learned about Veterans Day!

To top off our inquiry, we had a special guest come in...Bennett's dad!

He answered a lot of our lingering questions.

He was a medic in the Army.

He showed us a lot of the medical equipment that he had on hand.

His strong medical scissors could cut a dime in half!

He showed us the medals and pins that he earned.

We are so thankful that our military is so strong and brave!

Becoming Stronger Writers

When Room 408 arrived this morning, the morning message question requested their favorite food or animal.

As we discussed our answers, we discussed adjectives.  We added adjectives to our food/animals to make them more descriptive, just like an author.

During Writing Workshop, we read through all our writing from our Small Moments unit and chose our best piece--the piece we are the most proud of.

Next, we practiced using our new checklist to make sure we included all the things in our writing to make it our best Small Moments piece.

If we had any checks in the "not yet" or "just starting" column, we made sure to go back and fix those parts of our stories.

We're growing stronger as writers every day!