Reflecting on our Year

Hello Families!

Thank you so much to all the families who shared your children with me this year.  You were so involved and made my year so fun and interesting.  Your kids are each so multifaceted and unique.

Here are some images from our end of the year celebration and learning exhibit. 

Then Thursday we invited other IA classes into the exhibit to share our work and ideas.  The kids were proud to share their work!  In between our visits, we also had some fun dancing, doing puzzles and playing red light green light!  :) 

Also, I hope you had a great and special Father's Day.  Here's a cool piece created by Bridget W. for her dad, which I'm sending out to all you dads!

I am looking forward to next year at our new site.  To those who won't be joining us, I wish you all the best and lots of future learning and a feeling of community in your new schools.  To those of you who will be joining us in Scripps, see you next year!  And if you can, come out and help us to make the site ours and inviting.

Thank you for everything!  Love, Jennifer

Tomorrow Night's the Night!!!

Hello World Thinker Families!

I am full of excited energy.  Life can feel so amazing.  This afternoon and this evening many of you families came and spent your time to get our class packed up and begin to get ready for the exhibit.  Karri and I worked on some of the installations already and it is amazing to see your children's work up and to show it off.  They have done so much!  Tomorrow after school we will finish up and it will be ready!

So, COME TOMORROW NIGHT!  The presentation will start at 5 SHARP.  Please come early to enjoy the exhibit, or be there at 5 and enjoy the exhibit after.  Thank you to all the families who have helped and also all the families who are bringing yummy goodies.  It will be a special night.

Also, field day was SO fun.  It was lovely to be out getting sun and playing different games.  These kids made the day fun and adventurous.  Lunch together under a tree is always a special moment.  Thank you to the families who drove and made it work to have this fun-filled day.

Here are some fun memories.  Have a nice night.  See you tomorrow, Jennifer

Making the End of the Year Special

Hello families!

What a week, we have been so busy and I am getting really excited about the end of the year celebration and Learning Exhibit.  I can't wait for you to see all their beautiful work!

We have had a few discussions about our feelings about the transition and end of the year.  Gaby and I have noticed many different versions of unique behaviors.  Our emotions around any transitions come through in different ways for each of us and the kids are no different.  They have been pretty honest about their feelings and worries, excitement and sadness.  It has been beautiful to hear what they are thinking about and the ideas they have about staying in touch.  This is a lovely group of people.  Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help this transition go smoothly. 

We also have been working on our two letter writing campaigns.  One group of friends are writing to experts about the problem of plastic bags in the ocean  and the other group is writing to some armed forces members that our families know that are abroad.  These kids are getting good at creating interesting letters and asking important questions.  If you would like to add anything to the packages for the armed forces, please let me know and bring the items in next week!

We also had a special treat made by Bridget W. and her mum, Kelly.  Bridget W. had a vision of this special treat to share with her classmates and Smoothie Day was a big success.  Thank you for the fun and yummy day!

And finally, I wanted to share this info about our final week with you.
Next week's excitement:

Monday: Field Day at Allied Gardens Park during the school day!  WE NEED DRIVERS!

Tuesday and Wednesday after school: Packing and setting up the exhibit

Wednesday Night: World Thinkers' Learning Exhibit! 5pm is the performance and ceremony in our classroom.

Thursday: Memory Day- Writing in our memory books or yearbooks, inviting other classes into the exhibit and reading some of our favorite books of the year and planting for our future.

Friday: Game Day and Pizza Lunch offered by Yama's family!

Thank you to each of you for such a special year.  I feel so lucky to have been able to work with you all! 

Sending love and thankful thoughts, Jennifer

Ideas from our day!

Hello Families!

Today we had some cool stuff come up, so I thought I'd share them for the weekend.  Here are some great "homework" ideas and ways you can extend the discussions at home!

Today we watched these two videos about where yarn comes from and how it is made.  This topic has come up a few times recently when the students have been trying to decide how to categorize this material.  In the first video (which we watched without sound so we could watch and investigate), the students were intrigued by the transformation of the alpacas.  They look so different after sheering!

The kids were also wondering how the fur becomes yarn.  Aryav brought up this great word: processed. The fleece needed to be processed.  So we watched the second video and our hunches proved correct.  Cecelia had mentioned that she thought that twisting the fibers would make them stronger.  The kids were intrigued by the Peruvian woman's technique and all the subtle things this included like stretching, twisting and spinning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InV4uRir8Qo

http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/woman-making-yarn-from-alpaca-wool/4f6871e175047d74c1b94f6871e175047d74c1b9-838396150941?q=making+alpaca+yarn&FROM=LKVR5&GT1=LKVR5&FORM=LKVR

Also, this morning Thyra shared her work about water darkness in relation to it's depth.  This was inspired by the conversation we had when Tayler showed her model of the place she stayed in Florida.  Thyra has noticed that the deeper end of the pool often looks darker than the lighter end.  She created a first draft of a representation of this phenomenon.  In our revisiting meeting we discussed possible reasons and decided to create some research questions. If you have a pool at home, or visit a pool in your life, can you do some research for the class?  Here are the kids' research questions:

Does your deep water look darker?
How deep is your pool?
Is there a shade structure near or over your pool?
How does the water look when you are under water?
Are there any parts of your deep end water that seem lighter?

And finally, an update.  The class has been trying to build their Kappla structure as high as the ceiling and many friends this week worked on it.  Friday, the structure fell again.  The class let out a collective laugh and "awe!".  Then Madelynn and Henry immediately began rebuilding the structure.  The students are trying to be VERY precise about the way they lay down the blocks.  Will we reach the ceiling before the school year ends?

I hope you are enjoying this beautiful weekend!  Love, Jennifer

How Long? How Deep? How Hot?

Hello Families!

How are you?  I am good.  I feel that I am getting to be back to normal with eating and not having a weird stomach.  Jason is on the mend and that makes me happy.  And the kids amaze me each day with their work, the way they examine and discuss things and with the way they treat each other.  Life is good!

Today Tayler showed her three dimensional representation of the area she stayed in while on her trip to Florida.  The children were very interested in this work and have been intrigued by these three dimensional styles of sharing ideas lately.  Questions about dimensionality and ratio came up in the discussion.  The children were very interested in all the water involved in the layout and also how warm the water was there.  The kids also asked how deep the water was.  This stimulated a discussion about water depth and how it might relate to temperature.  Some theories were suggested that friends want to explore and depict for further discussion. 

The children were also wondering about how your body acclimates to the temperature of water. They noticed that often when you get in, it seems cool, but later you aren't cold anymore.  Other friends pointed out that this could be somewhat effected by the fact that when we move around our body gets hotter.  So how do all these things relate?  This might be an interesting discussion to continue at the dinner table!

The measuring of the finger crochet chains has continued.  Henry, Paz and Tayler have used a technique of using rulers end to end and then also gems to keep track of how many gems.  But this begs a question, what increments are they using to measure?  If they are counting how many inches long, then why do they need to know how many rulers they have used?  Or will this also be interesting and useful information to know how many rulers and inches they used?  How do all these numbers and lengths relate?  They are also testing strategies to keep track of the lengths that they have already counted from day to day.  With real problems, which the children truly want to know the answer of, they are driven.  We will see what they find out.  How long do you think it is?

In our morning message I used the word "parents".  The children were noticing that -ent is another ending we are hearing often in words.  What words can you think of that end in -ent? 
I hope you have a great evening!  Love, Jennifer