Taking Flight

MORNING MUSIC: In prep for class later today, the kids had to transcribe a song ("Juba") and play it on their glockenspiels. Though it started a bit rough (see above), after a couple of run-throughs it got better. In fact, they were able to play it together, error free.

Later, during music class, we all did the samba (comical as you might imagine), and we had to shake shakers (redundant, I know) along with a Jamaican island inspired song. The instructions prior to shaking were to shake to the beat. And we all did that, the default for the group was one shake per measure (I heard it to be a 4/4 song). Except CJ. He was really getting down, shaking 4 beats per measure. It was a fast paced song, and so he got a rather frantic workout. When it was over the teacher said to me (as if I hadn't noticed), "I would have stopped him, but he was keeping a perfect rhythm."

That's our CeeJ - shaking to the beat of a different drummer. :)

THIS ONE'S FOR THE LADIES: March 8 marks International Women's Day, and today was the the 100th observance of the day.

Fortunately, I had laid in resources ahead of time, and had a perfect person for the kids to study today - Amelia Earhart.
First we read "A Picture Book of Amelia Earhart" as an introduction to her and her accomplishments. Next, we watched a DVD about her, and afterward we read "Young Amelia Earhart - A Dream to Fly." We followed that with the BrainPop bio of Earhart. Along with that came a couple of written assessments - first the kids had to put events in Earhart's life in chronological order. They also completed a multiple choice quiz on the most famous aviatrix.

I had to laugh when I saw all of Bee's "flair" on her worksheet.

I also smiled at one of the answer's on CJ's sheet. For question #10, he circled two answers, and, frankly, BOTH of them were right. Of course A was the right right answer, but in everything we saw and read today, C was also the right answer. All of the resources talked about how unique Earhart was (wearing pants, playing "boys' sports, etc.) and how risky and dangerous what she did was. That, and I continually stress to CJ and Annabelle that 'strange' and 'weird' are NOT bad things to be. Therefore, it could definitely argued that C is also correct. This is the kind of thinking he would be docked for in a traditional school. This is also the kind of thing I really LIKE to see. Here's to creative thinking! :)

TAKING FLIGHT: I figured a great way to give the Earhart lesson some staying power would be to make paper airplanes. So, we tapped into an Activity TV paper airplane tutorial where a very nice man in a very bad wig showed the kids how to make a "Double Flap Glider."It took some careful listening and following along, but the planes worked really well - the kids were thrilled!

WHALE TALE: We were a few minutes early to yoga, so we stopped at a park nearby their yoga place and the kids played for a bit. One of the things they did was ride a whale on a spring. As coincidence would have it, the theme at today's yoga was whales.