It's Ok because it's a Picasso!

Room 8ers, along with all the other 4th graders at our school, learned a bit about Picasso when they were 3rd graders.

Now that they're in 4th, we talked about what they remembered about Picasso and discussed some of his 'periods of art' - like the Blue Period, Rose Period, cubism, etc.

I led them through drawing this with their pencils, then Friday we started using oil pastels to color.

With this project, the pastel is not to ever go over a pencil line. As you can see on Jacob's, he brings the color up to the pencil line, then stops. The next color comes up to the pencil line, but again, doesn't touch it. Wait till you see the finished product, they're phenomenal.

"Can my face be purple?"
"My eye looks funny!"
"Uh oh, I made this the wrong color."

To all these and more, our answer would be, "It's Ok, it's a Picasso!"

Look at our progress...

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

SET

Friday mornings in Room 8 will find us doing SET.

SET is a critical thinking activity that uses logic.

Cards are put on the overhead in a 4 x 3 grid. The cards have 4 attributes: color, shape, interior, and number of shapes on the card. The colors are: red, purple, green. The shapes are: ovals, squiggles, diamonds. The interiors are either solid, empty, or striped. There are either one, two, or three shapes on each card.

Now if that's not confusing enough - to make a set, EACH attribute must be the same on all three cards or different on all three cards.

Each set contains 3 cards. For each group of cards on the overhead, there are always 6 sets. We record them by naming the X-axis first. Once the SET cards are put on the overhead, the students have time on their own to try and find all 6 sets. They record them in their DOL journal. After a time, I call on students to read out a set they found. I record the found SETS on the board.
This photo is where a student has found 5 sets and recorded them in their journal.In this photo, I have recorded the sets different Room 8ers told me. We usually have a question we ask ... for example, when someone found a set this past Friday, we asked them what their favorite kind of food was. Jacob won the prize for the "most unusual fourth grade favorite food" with his choice of SEAWEED. I thought I was clarifying when I said, 'Do you mean sushi?' He said 'No, just seaweed.' OK.

Room 8 is AWESOME at finding sets.

Here's a puzzle...can you find all 6 sets?

Crazy Friday... or lots of laughing as we came in from lunch recess

It actually was NOT a crazy Friday all day... just when Room 8 was coming in from lunch.

So here's the scene: the whistle had blown to end recess...Room 8 was all lined up outside the windows to come in... I met them at the door WITH MY CAMERA. Now, it's not like they're not used to seeing me with it. I think most of them are familiar with that! But for some reason, when I opened the door to let them in and held the camera up, THAT's when I could call it a 'crazy Friday.' Here's the scene:

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

After the video, they all wanted me to take their picture "for the blog"...so here we go:

Yep, we're a bit crazy! Carlo, Devin, Macey, and Amber.
Again we have Carlo, Devin, and Amber.
Ok, now we're REALLY getting wound up in front of the camera. Carlo, Casey O, Devin, Macey, and Amber.

Ralphie, Austin, and Kamren are definitely buddies!
Now this adorable photo of Macey was actually taken during Friday Silent Reading. She got up and I knew for the sake of fashion, I needed to post this picture of her outfit. I just think it's absolutely adorable!
And here we have Kyle...remember the champion BMX'er?
And here we have Qwinn!
Tucker was ready to have his picture made.
I love this photo of Amber!
Casey, are you sure you want me to take your picture? She doesn't seem too sure about this. The guys behind her look unusually calm....maybe Casey felt something wasn't right since the boys were...well, calm!
Branndon and Elijah came in together.
Madison came in ready to read.
Mae and Mary have been buddies for quite a while. Mae missed Mary when she was out of town last week. Room 8 missed her too!
Now look at this! Tyler and Emily... do they look like they're having fun or what?
Here comes Michael.
Now when I took this picture of Casey, well, you can see the expression he gave me. I told him he should smile... and if you look at the next picture...
ahh, here's Casey J! I'm not sure what he was doing with his arm...
I just love this picture of Devin. What a guy he is! I think he must like to read Harry Potter!
Isn't this a sweet photo of Emma and Danielle?
This picture needs to be in a magazine or something. Out of all the pictures I took on this crazy Friday after lunch, I think this is my favorite. This is Macey and Amber.

In Room 8, we work hard...but we also like to have a LOT of fun!

Friday the 28th was our first Rainy Day Recess

Our beautiful weather was replaced with a little rain on Friday. But that was OK with Room 8ers who enjoyed their first Rainy Day Recess.
Mae was supervising a game of chess between Trevor and Jacob.
Danielle and Amber enjoyed a game of Mancala.
This large group was playing and/or watching an intense game of Hotels.
Kamren, Ralphie, Austin, and Elijah enjoyed a game of SORRY!
Ah, a game of Battleship between our two Kyles!

We were only inside for the 10:30 recess. By lunch, the rain had stopped and most of Room 8 was disappointed to have to go back outside to play. As I'm writing this on Sunday night, it looks like they'll be inside tomorrow.

Notice the scientists in Room 8?

We're starting a unit in Life Science. We explored the lessons in our first unit - on plants, the different parts (roots, stem, leaves) and how they get their energy from the sun, food chains, food webs, and micro-organisms.

We had quite a few different types of leaves to observe. Using our hand lens, we examined the leaves, recording what we noticed about their texture, color, size, and shape.
Casey O.................
Amber.................
Mae................ (don't you just love those braids?)
Jacob...........................
Mary....................
Cayla and Ralphie....................
Cayla and Ralphie....take two.........
Elijah.........................
Macey............................
Brenndan and Dillon........................
Michael and Edin....................
Carlo and Mary............. look at this measuring! Ahhhh, they are being ACCURATE!
Trevor and Madison..................
Emily..............................


After we had completed our observations and recording, we discussed how a scientist might record this information.

Room 8 is excited about Science!

Oh, we should probably audition for "Dancing with the Stars"

Have you heard of the Macarena? It's a dance, a fun dance, and if you want to know how to do it, just ask any Room 8er. We've got it down.

Now in this picture, we're practicing the chicken dance.

Once we were confident we could strut our stuff at the DANCE on FRIDAY NIGHT...then we danced the Macarena.

Here we are IN ACTION!

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Remember those stories about our friends? Here some of us read them to Room 8

The stories we wrote about our friends are about finished. Today, some of us who had finished, read them out loud to room 8.Edin...................
Emily.......................
Trevor.............

Many of you may be wondering why in the world your child came home asking about the day they were born.

I asked Room 8 today what they had told their parents about why they were interviewing. NOT ONE of them said the real reason! In ExCEL, we are reading 'Sarah, Plain and Tall.' In this story, Caleb, the young boy, keeps asking his sister, Anna, to tell him about the day he was born.

That's why we're doing stories on the day of our birth. Today, some Room 8ers shared how big they were and some stories they learned.

Now you know the reason...I'm looking forward to the writing of the stories! We won't really start the actual writing until next week.