March 2015 – Mrs. Zurfluh Archive Blog

March 27, 2015

KZE thinkers and explorers…

One day, We read a book called “What Do You Do With an Idea?” by Kobi Yamada and Mae Besom. It inspired our students to have an intense discussion about what they would do if they have an idea:

Michael: “I will write it down.
Lizzy: “I will write it down and stick it on the mystery wall.”
Emerson: “I agreed with the book, I will change the world.”
Daisy: “I would just do it.”
Trace: “You shouldn’t do it because you don’t know if it is a good idea or not.”
Scarlett: “I will write down on my idea book. And see if it is a good thing to do.”
Lisa: “I will write it down. I will do it when I am older. I want to test it and see if it is good or not. I can’t do it now because it may be dangerous.”
Liam: “ I will just do it.”
Freddie: “I agreed with Liam. I will just do it.”
Safiya: “Don’t wait, just do it. If you wait, you might forget your idea.”
Hannes: “I will write it down, and put it on the mystery wall.”
Fatima: “I agreed with Safiya. If you wait, you will forget about it. So just do it.”

We are waiting for some ideas to come up so that we can decide what to do with them.

The other day, after finishing our sculptures with wood, rocks and wires, we were wondering what else we can use to make sculpture. We happened to have some plaster in the classroom. Students were so enthusiastic about trying it. Mrs. Zurfluh and Ms. Tracey told the children that they had not done this before. So we decided to explore together. Our experiment started with wearing masks and gloves, touching gluey plaster, finding ways to make plaster with consistency etc. etc. We also got frustrated about not being able to put plaster into balloons fast enough so that we can mold them into shapes we want before it dried out. Along the way, we all learned to be patient, flexible, and persistent. The children also discovered the following:

Daisy: “I noticed that when it is dry, it feels harder and cold.”
Liam: “I can make it into almost any shapes that I want.”
Emerson: “When you use plaster to make things, it dries very fast.”
Scarlett: “I noticed that when it is not dry, it feels hot. But when it is dry, it is cold.”
Michael: “When you tried to make a snow man, the ball fell down.”
Freddie: “I noticed that it is very, very messy when we tried to make things.”
Lisa:” When you take off the plate or the bowl, the patterns stay in the plaster.”
Fatima: “When we use plaster, it is very messy. We need to wear gloves.”
Safiya: “The plate that I made has patterns in it.”
Hannes: “ It is very messy…”

It is our hope that the inquiring/exploring seeds that we planted will continue to inspire our children in the years to come through their learning journey.

March 20, 2015

Writing – Family Stories

KZE students continue their inquiry process in writing. We focus on family story writing this past week. We read mentor texts “Arthur’s Family Vacation” by Marc Brown, “The Trip Back Home” by Janet Wong, and “Pictures from Our Vacation” by Lynne Perkins. We shared what we noticed in these books, created a noticing chart, and chose four things we noticed to try it out in our own writing. One of our notice was “authors tell what happened in order.” But we didn’t know how. So we had a close study session by going back to the mentor texts. We found out that writers use sequential words (words that tell us when and tell what happened in order). We added all the useful sequential words in our noticing chart to remind us to include them in our writing as well. We are working very hard as writers and can’t wait to share our family stories soon.

March 13, 2015

Unit of Inquiry – How We Express Ourselves

At the beginning of our “How We Express Ourselves” unit of inquiry, KZE students observed some art pieces and tried to draw on their prior knowledge and experiences to answer questions of “What is art?” and “What was the artist trying to tell you?” Here are some of their understanding:

Kyle: “Art is like making sculptures. Artist can use different things to make art.”
Daisy: “Art is where you draw and make lots of new stuffs. Artists always make sure they get ready to do what they want to do. They always have the colors they want.”
Liam: “Art is colorful, it has paint in it.”
Emerson: “Art is being creative. Artists usually use the word “art” for painting.”
Michael: “Art is when you draw pictures.”
Fatima: “Art is experimenting and use different tools.”
Scarlett: “Art is pretty and colorful. Artists use paint brushes, crayons, markers, and pencils to make pictures.”
Lizzy: “When artists don’t have the colors they need, they can mix colors.”
Trace: “Art is like drawing with color crayons to make pictures. You need lots of colors to do painting.”
Freddie: “Art is like you can use pretty much everything to make art.”
Lisa: “Artists sometimes use strings, beads to make art. They also do oil painting.”
Hannes: “Art is colors.”
Safiya: “Art is drawings.”

We read some books and they seemed to tell us something different than what we thought. So we agreed to do some more explorations and experiments. Maybe at the end of our unit, we can come back and see if we change our thinking.

The Kindergarten teachers set up different activities with different mediums and tools in each room. All Kindergarten students visited each classroom in rotation. They got a chance to explore, manipulate, observe, and reflect. Here are some of their notice:

Water color in Mr. Ross’s classroom
• The paper has pattern on it, when you paint the pattern appeared.
• You need to use water to wet the paint.
• There are dots on paper when you paint.
• You can mix two colors to make a new color.
• You used one brush for all colors. But you need to wash the brush every time.

Making prints in Ms. Jill’s classroom
• You can make prints with lots of different things.
• You can print with paint. All you need to do is to put the thing in the paint, pick it up, and put it on the paper.
• Prints can be colorful.
• You can use mud to make print.

Chalk/oil pastel in Mrs. Wiese’s classroom
The chalks spread well, but oil pastels didn’t spread well.
• The chalks have little dust coming out, but the oil pastels didn’t.
• The chalks are very messy.
• When you use chalk sideways, it draws quicker.
• When you use blue and green pastel on top of each other, the colors don’t mix together.

Sculpture in Mrs. Zurfluh’s classroom
• The white rocks are with chalk on it. They made your hands white.
• Some wires are hard to straighten.
• You can bend and cut the wires.
• The wires are kind of sharp. We need to be careful when working with the wires.
• There are different sizes of wires. The thinner ones are easy to cut. The thicker ones are difficult to cut.

Clay in Mrs. Nellor’s classroom
• Clay is very messy. Sometimes is very hard to make stuff. Sometimes it is not.
• It is fun working with clay, but it is hard to break it.
• You can make anything with clay.
• Clay is kind of like print. We can make print on the clay.
• You can use tools to make different shapes with clay.
• The clay washes off very easily.

We will continue to experiment and explore artistic tools and mediums to create art that express our feelings, ideas, and thinking