Third Grade Celebrates The Moon

Third Graders gave a marvelous performance last month in celebration of the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival!  As the leaves started falling and the air grew cooler, we studied this important cultural celebration through research, presentations, interactive lessons.  Rasheeda led us in many fun and interesting activities in science class including creating models of the moon phases, making moon journals, and even playing Moon Phase Twister!  Amanda and Maria taught us many new things about Chinese art - we made lanterns, beautiful wall vases, and some intricate geometric designs.    The Black Box was wonderfully transformed through the art that we had created with Shana for our movies.

We opened the performance with an original composition.  Students wrote the lyrics for the verses of the song and Keisha guided the third grade in creating an accompaniment on instruments for our singing.  The voices of our students  brought the sounds and feelings and the autumn to life.  

We also showed our linguistic talents by reading poems in Chinese, as well as writing and reciting poems that we wrote in Spanish class with Alicia.  We learned a lot of vocabulary creating our poems by thinking about how the moon moves and what objects it reminded us of. 

 

Each student presented information about the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival  that they thought was important for learning about the holiday and we also re-told the classic folktale of Chang-Er and Hou-Yi as an animated movie!

Finally, our entire class shared each of their magnificent poems that they had written with Shana last month.  Each poem was creative, thoughtfully worded, and evocative of the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival.    It was wonderful to be together with all of our families to share in this holiday!