Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Rainy Daze

Well, who would have thought it would be raining of September 20th? I think this is the earliest I ever remember it starting to rain in Southern California.

Today we did our first major art project. You can see some of the examples below. It was tightly connected to what we had been reading in Open Court and to what we will be studying in Mathematics. We are currently reading a story called “Stevie” which tells the story of a young boy who is required to keep help his mother baby sit another child. He resents the boy until he realizes that he was “kind of little a little brother.” At one point the boy remarks, “I let my corn flakes get soggy just thinking about him.” Inspired by this line, we did a still life of soggy corn flakes.

I explained to the students what a still life is. We did preliminary sketches to practice making rectangular prisms and half spheres. The students also practice proper water color technique, particularly learning how to correctly apply the paint and wash the brush. I then had the students do the still life first in pencil. They then went over these lines in marking crayon. The completed by carefully water-coloring the paper. Some of the results were quite excellent. Just a couple of the best are shown below. I was still taking pictures of their work when the batteries in my camera died!

Math, as I predicted, confused some of the students who did in fact find exact answers instead of estimate. Tonight, please help them to carefully read the directions for each problem. We went over them in class, but after a day of rainy day schedule I’m not sure how much actually sank in!

Homework:  (1) Study spelling. (2) Science questions, page A28, numbers 1-7 only. Please copy the sentence. (3) Chapter Review, page 50 and Cumulative Review, page 51 in the math book.

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