Minotaurs and Elections

We started today, as usual for Wednesdays, with our Theater class. Today Mr. Pratt introduced the idea of stage combat. All our students had a great time with this, not just the boys! As Mr. Pratt explained to the students, actors often have to pretend to fight. He talked about how important it is for them to stay safe while they do this because they will have to have the same fake fight over and over again for many performances. He explained that in order to keep safe the actors very carefully choreograph their fights.

Mr. Pratt went over the classic Greek tale of Theseus and the Minotaur. (See, were already getting ready for May's field trip to the Getty Villa!) He had the students practice a simple, but very effective, choreography for the final fight between the protagonist and the antagonist (Mr. Pratt really stresses vocabulary) of this myth. The students had a blast. They will be practicing this during the week, and they will be performing it next Wednesday. So in about 10 days or so, expect another video. 'Til then, don't be surprised if you see your child stabbing the air when he thinks nobody is watching, crying, "Die you disgusting creature!"

Tech Center was also great today. Ms. Richards focused on the election. She had the students look at a map of red and blue states on the NPR website, and she explained what the electoral college is and how many votes are needed to elect a president. Students had to decide which of the undecided states will go for Obama and which will go for McCain, and they saved this information in a text file. Next week, when the final results are in, they will import this data into Excel to create a spreadsheet and a graph. Politics, math, technology...I wish I had been exposed to stuff this challenging when I was in fourth grade.

The rest of the day was normal. We corrected and collected homework. We went out to PE. We did silent reading. And yes, we got this evening's homework.

Homework: (1) Do the pages 1-4 of the second OCR packet. These focus on the theme and also the word study and vocabulary for the first story. (2) Do the take-home Quiz over chapters 6-10 of Island of the Blue Dolphins. (3) Do the front cover for the "Land and Early Peoples" packet in History. This should have the words "Land and Early Peoples," a color picture, and the student's name. (4) Do "Multiplication Through 12", Math, page 149 and "Multiply 3 Factors," pages 150-151 in the same book.