Tradiciones Festivas Mexicanas - Holiday Traditions from Mexico

As the monarch butterflies are completing their migration into Mexico, the first graders are taking a closer look at some holiday traditions that happen in Mexico.  The winter holiday season begins on December 16 with las posadas (the inns) and is celebrated through January 6th, dia de los tres Reyes, Three Kings Day. After reading the story of las posadas by Tomie de Paola, the first graders reenacted the processions that take place to different homes, reenacting the journey taken by Mary and Joseph and ending with a great fiesta on Nochebuena (Christmas Eve) at a designated home. There are special foods (many similar to our Thanksgiving foods), singing, gifts and of course a piñata for the children! This day is actually more important than Christmas and is often accompanied with fireworks. Three King's Day is of equal importance as the holiday season comes to an end.

We learned about the poinsettia, la flor de nochebuena, which we call the Christmas flower, and created our own beautiful poinsettia artwork with tissue paper and pastels. They are displayed in the classrooms and not to be missed!

Ann B.B. shared a story, Hanukkah Moon by Deborah Da Costa that looks at Hanukkah traditions as they are celebrated through a family's Mexican culture. This inspired the first graders to learn to play dreidel and make paper dreidels for the Winterfest table.

We were fortunate to have several families join us to share their holiday traditions around Christmas and Kwanzaa. We learned that different holiday cultural traditions all shared the themes of being with family, and had messages of peace and hope.

As we prepare to go out on winter break, the first graders will celebrate a joyful Mexican tradition and break open a piñata and have sweet treats in the afternoon. We send out wishes of joy and peace to all in our community as you engage in special traditions with your families and friends over the winter break.

Multiplying Our Math Skills

Third graders have been busy learning multiplication during math.   We started thinking about the concept by representing multiplication in different ways as skip-counting, repeated addition, and groups of objects.  This helped the concept become more intuitive as we talked about things that come naturally in groups.    We talked about how multiplication can also be represented as rows and columns or and how the commutative property works by flipping a rectangular arrays.

For the past few weeks, we've learned a lot of our facts by practicing, playing games, solving word problems and thinking of strategies for solving facts quickly and efficiently.  One student, Zach, showed how you could solve for multiplying 5 by any even number by dividing that number in half and adding a 0 to it.  (Try it!  28 x 5 = ?  Half of 28 is 14, so 28 x 5 = 140!)   Another student, Grace, extended this strategy for odd numbers by using the even number that comes before it and then adding 5 at the end.  We also talked about strategies for figuring out multiplying by 6's (adding one more group to 5), 9's (one less group than 10), and 8's (doubling 4).  As we continue to work on our multiplication skills, we're excited to find more new strategies for even larger numbers.

Fourth Grade Discovers Colonial Crafts

In our yearlong study of Philadelphia, we are commencing our study of how the city came to be and what occurred during the colonial period. Last Friday the fourth grade participated in a day of exploration of what children and adults might do if they lived in the 18th century. The students started their day making corn husk dolls and then creating clothing for them to wear. They commented on how much they enjoyed making them and how there was no stigma attached to boys and dolls in the creation of them.

Once we cleaned up the students all rotated throughout the morning in small groups to different stations to discover how to embroider, create paper quilled snowflakes, and dip candles. Just when they were needing a bit of a run around outdoors they were introduced to colonial games, which were a great hit. Delicious colonial desserts were donated by parents so when the activities wound down in the afternoon, we all had a chance to snack and share our thoughts about the day. The children talked about what they enjoyed most and how much fun it was to learn by creating outside of the classroom.

Historical Fiction in 2nd Grade

This December, second grade students are reading historical fiction in school and at home. First, students explored the structure of historical fiction. 

The entire grade is reading the historical fiction book Wagon Wheels and learning the story of the Muldie boys and their father as they travel from Kentucky to Nicodemus, Kansas in 1878. The Muldies were a real family who along with thousands of African American pioneers left the South after the Civil War to settle in the West. They first settled in the town of Nicodemus.

We read about the courage of the boys as they lived in a dugout while their father searched for land that would enable them to have a better life, and then of their journey of one hundred and fifty miles to connect with their father.

The trilogy of books from The Prairie Skies series by Deborah Hopkinson is being read aloud to the students. The first book is Pioneer Summer. This book starts in 1855 and follows the story of Charlie Keller and his family as they travel to Kansas from Massachusetts in order for Charlie Keller’s father, who is an abolitionist, to cast his vote for Kansas to be a free state. Along the way Charlie meets a friend whose father feels very different about slavery. Deep discussions have occurred in class as students think and discuss their reactions to the issues and characters in this book.

Students are selecting historical fiction books of interest to read at home with their families and then talk, write and draw about their particular book.  

They are also selecting historical fiction books to read independently in class. 

Art Room Happenings

The art room is busy and bustling as we begin the winter season. Students are working on new art concepts, applying learning from previous projects and delving deeper into areas of study. There is a growing excitement in the air around our upcoming winter program and our young artists are beginning their work on the set design. Here's a snapshot of activities happening across the grades.

Early Childhood - The Catbirds and Cardinals enjoyed their first exploration with clay, learning to roll balls, pound the clay and roll coils of clay. They "scratched and attached" their coils to create their very own coilpots. After their pieces were fired in the kiln, they noticed that the clay changed colors and became very hard and fragile. They painted their fired coilpots with glaze and are eager to see the pieces emerge from their second firing covered in shiny, bright colors.

Coilpots loaded in the kiln

Kindergarten - The kindergarten artists are learning about color-mixing and groups of colors. They began an abstract painting exploration using a cool color palette of green, blue and purple. In a follow up painting session, they added a layer using a warm color palette of yellow, red and orange. They will be continuing their color study, by using primary colors to mix secondary colors and create a rainbow.

 


1st Grade - The first graders have been continuing their study of art and artists from Mexico. They viewed a series of traditional Metepec clay suns. After sketching an initial plan, they built their own sun faces out of clay, and used glazes to add color to them.

2nd, 3rd and 4th Grades - The older grades have continued to explore art materials during independent work time. Many students have carried ideas and themes throughout the year and tried them out with several different media. Take a look at some works in progress to below, to get a window into the exciting activities that are happening during class time.

A baby toy created at the sculpture station

Large weavings for the winter program set at the fibers station

Creating a paper boomerang at the collage station

Working on a collaborative sculpture at the sculpture station

Making a pizza at the clay station

Selling Ideas

Fourth grade completed their first tech project of the year, finishing their radio commercials. Building on skills first introduced in second grade, the students were assigned the task of creating a community and then marketing their community through a radio commercial. This project took multiple classes with students first brainstorming what a community needs, and what might be desirable in a community. The groups then had to choose a total of nine possible services or desirable features for their community. Conversations were animated, students debated the need for wifi over water ("Every place has water.") Was it more important to have trees or organic farms? Who were they marketing their community to? And of course in true fourth grade fashion, all the communities included the need for wildlife or animals. For some this was the most important factor, while for others this was a nice addition.
Once the students had their nine selling points they set to work crafting audio commercials. In this part of the project students had to create an interesting and entertaining way of sharing their ideas. How do you grab attention? Will music in the background make the commercial more interesting or just get in the way? The students talked about commercials they remembered, breaking into jingles. Was this a way to move your idea? There was a lot of laughter and a lot of arguing.  But with minimal coaching, the students were able to hear each other and try to listen for the good in everyone's ideas. Students were reminded that unique to Quaker education is the space for all voices and one voice is not valued over another. We discussed what this looks like and sounds like. As with all learning moments, students are at different stages in their development. This means that some groups were able to practice deep listening with minimal teacher assistance, while other groups worked with support to surface and respect all ideas. This is a value and a skill we will continue to practice and reflect on.
Enjoy the students' work below.

Multiplication Madness in Third Grade (and a fun game to try at home!)

In math, third graders have been building upon their understanding of multiplication and have been exploring multiplication through a variety of games and activities.  We started by reviewing what students already knew about multiplication, and it turns out that they knew a lot!  Students recalled that multiplication is the same as repeated addition; that it totals the number of objects in a certain number of equal groups; that multiplication and division are opposite operations, and that the multiplication sign means “groups of,”

 We have been exploring a number of ways to solve multiplication problems, including drawing equal groups, using skip-counting on a number line and a hundreds chart, skip counting mentally as well as using arrays and the area model.

Third graders have been eager to practice and apply what they are learning about multiplication to math games.  They have been playing a variety of practice games, some of which focus on multiplying by a specific number and help them practice strategies like skip counting, and others that focus more on problem solving related to multiplication.  This week they played a multiplication card game called 'Spiral Multiplication' as well as 'Multiplication Battleship' and 'Multiplication Dominos.'

If you’d like to try a fun multiplication game at home, get out a deck of cards, a die and something to use for game pieces.

Spiral Multiplication Directions 

(For two or more players)

1.     Use a deck of cards to make a spiral game board starting from the center (take out all of the face cards, but leave in the Aces, those will count for ones).

  

2.     Place your game pieces at the start (in the middle, ON the first card).

3.     Player 1 rolls the die.  Player 1 multiplies the number on the die by the number his or her game piece is on.  If they are correct, they move the number of spaces the die shows.  If they are incorrect, they do not move on that turn.

4.     Take turns and repeat until someone reaches the end of the spiral.

If you enjoy this game, you can also ask your third grader to teach you how to play one of the other multiplication games we have recently learned.

It's About Time

Second graders have just wrapped our recent math study of telling time using an analog clock. The students learned to use the minute and hour hand to show and tell time to the nearest minute. We started the process by learning the different parts of the clock and how to tell time to the quarter hour and the minute. Lastly, the students learned how to read a schedule and determine elapsed time. This skill can be challenging as so many clocks today are digital.

As time telling can be a bit tricky here are two helpful links below that can you’re your second grader practice their skills at home. The links below are for a game called “Stop the Clock!” It is a fun game that can be used at different levels.

Stop the Clock Easy

Stop the Clock Harder