Thank you for another wonderful week here at Innovations Academy! Take a look at this week's adventures:
This week in Gardening, the students were visited by Amrie our Dietitian Volunteer. They harvested Kale, Broccoli, Curly Leave Lettuce and Chard from our garden this week. Students drew a helped to draw a body and began to label the vitamins and nutrients that were found in our 4 featured vegetables. They learned that Vitamin A helps with eye sight. They discovered that Vitamin C fights infections and helps fight germs when we have cuts. Friends also learned the values in folate, calcium, and phosphate. They concluded the lesson with taste tests of the foods and rated their liking of the flavors. The students also learned that it takes up to 15 tries to learn to like new foods! Check out our Discussion Notes Binder for more information.
This week, I challenged the students to try out a partnership activity called, Mirror. Each group had one person who did an action, and another partner that mirrored that friend's movements, as if they were their partner's reflection. It was neat to see how creative these friends can be and to see them practice taking risks together!
The Loose Parts has been booming with activity as many friends continue to test out the new materials. This week, friends from multiple classes worked on building a fort together, but it turns out that it was not as easy as they first thought! It took many days and tests to get all of the materials to stay up!
But of course, for fort is complete without a campfire to keep warm!
In class, we have been counting down the days left in the month of January. With the excitement of still being at the start of the new year, friends proposed celebrating this occasion with a New Year's party for the end of the month. However, this would have left the class with a total of 5 full days to plan, organize, and execute the party. Friends recognized that this was not enough time, so it was suggested by another friend to push the party to right before Valentine's Day, providing the class with three weeks to do all of the work. With the new timeline being so close to Valentine's Day, it was agreed to combine the two days, and so, the class has been working towards getting everything ready for our upcoming New Year's Love Party.
When asked how we would celebrate these two occasions, the idea that the class agreed upon was to have a fancy party, where the ladies could wear dresses and the gentlemen could wear tuxedos, or suits with ties; they could have fancy music to dance to together, eat fancy finger foods, drink tea out of fancy tea cups, and have sparkling cider as we counted down to 12 o'clock (in the afternoon!) Friends also suggested to have a Lounge Area where they could rest from dancing and tea, and play chess or checkers, card games, or board games, and even make cards or gifts for loved ones!
When discussing the decoration ideas, the class agreed upon a red and pink color scheme. Friends knew they wanted to have the number 2014 as one of the decorations, and cutout hearts made into chains. The paper chain making was a mystery to some friends, so for a Revisiting Meeting, we had a friend model to few ways they thought would work, and we discussed what might affect the outcome. After a few trails and errors, we found the correct way to make paper heart chains!
Friends have formed their committees to help make the sign ups, the signs for the classroom, a banner, the decorations, the games, and the party banner.
As we continue to explore maps and neighborhoods, we went on a full-circle nature hike with our Buddies this week through a section of our school's neighborhood. As we walked, friends noticed which landmarks and features were found on our trip. We brainstormed a list of traits that were significant to our neighborhood. Come check out our Discussion Notes Binder for more information!
Thank you to Sarah for being our Family Reader this week!
For this week's Class Council, we continued to reflect on Martin Luther King's message by answering the question: What is a friend? Friends shared their thoughts and feelings about what traits were considered to to be friendly and appreciated by others. Come in to read our Class Council Journal for more information.
We ended our week by following up with our Class Council and brainstorming ideas of what were some kind words to say to friends and thinking about how people might feel and how we feel when we hear kind words from others. We then generated a list of unkind things people say and thought about how that affects people around them.
I introduced to them a science experiment that Ryan's mom, Kirsten, had let me know about, which tested the power of words that we share with one another on two different jars of white rice. We labeled one jar with "I Love You" and the other with "I Hate You" and placed them into brown paper bags. We will speak to these jars every day and monitor the changes found in the rice. Friends have made their predictions, and we will continue to think about how kind and unkind words affect us, as well as the rice!
Next week, we will put out sign ups for how families can help with our New Year's Love Party, as well as do some research on the internet at etiquette and formal dancing to help prepare us for our fancy party; monitor our Rice Experiment Jars, and continue our ongoing discussions of how to be a good friend to others.
Thank you for sharing your amazing children with me!
Love, Gaby
No comments:
Post a Comment