An Authentic Illustration

Meet Jacob.

Jacob does not normally look like this, but for the sake of his "tribe", he gave us an authentic illustration to go along with one of his topics, which, not surprisingly, is tattoos.

As readers of this blog know, we've been studying various California tribes. Room 8 has been divided into 'tribes' and each tribe has done research on various topics and created a poster. Each student had to write a paragraph and create an illustration for each of their topics. Friday, we began giving the presentations. Jacob asked me if he could do this, I said 'no' but he didn't hear me. Next thing I knew, in he came from the bathroom, black pen in hand. In my shock, I didn't check to see if this had been created with a permanent pen. Who knows, he may still be tattooed on Monday!

We had MANY students absent Friday, at least one from all but one tribe. So I only took one group photo. Branndon suggested we wait for photos until everyone was here. Excellent suggestion, Branndon!

Here's the Hoopa tribe:Emily, Mary, Macey, and Casey O.

Valentine's Day in Room 8

There was no shortage of sugar in room 8 this afternoon! One of our sayings, well, at least one of my sayings is, "We work hard and we like to party hard in Room 8."

If there's an occasion to celebrate, Room 8 rises to it! We had probably 6 different kinds of cookies, plus cupcakes, and juice. This doesn't take into consideration the overflowing Valentine bags that were hanging in the front of the room.

Take a look at some of the fun we had today:

Oops! Look at our new student!

Tribe Posters

Native American history is a large part of the 4th grade curriculum. Actually, it's California history, but so much of our state's history is Native American history, too.

We learned about the regions in California and the natural resources in those regions. From there we began to look at different tribes and how they lived according to the resources available. Lately, the class has been divided into tribes, with each tribe doing a little research on different topics (i.e. homes, dances, clothing, etc.). What you see in the photos that follow are the various stages of their posters... I'm loving how they're turning out.

Tomorrow... the presentations!

Mary comes to tell us about her tribe's culture

Meet Mary!
Mary belongs to the Hupa tribe. She came to Room 8 to share about her culture and tell us some stories. In this photo (above), this is part of her regalia. She described it to the class as her 'dress up clothes.'
Here, Mary is putting the dress on our Room 8 Mary! She told us that the dresses, with all their intricate detail, can weigh 20-75 pounds!
Mary also brought necklaces. She told us how men only wear one necklace as part of their regalia, but women wear many. Originally, women didn't wear tops like they do now, so they wore many necklaces to cover their chest. Now, even thought they wear shirts/tops, they still wear many necklaces...which can weigh about 30 pounds! She let all Room 8ers come up and put on the necklaces and see how they felt.

Mary had so much to share with us! Thank you for coming to Room 8!

The "Love Doctor" invades Room 8

Valentine's Day...

Friday, Room 8 made Valentine Bags. Walking around looking at all their ideas made me smile ... made me laugh!

All the bags are now hung at the front of the room. I'm sure some Room 8er's will bring in their valentines tomorrow. During recess, or whenever they finish work early, they'll put their valentines into the bags.

I didn't get a picture of all the bags, but I got quite a few.

"I thought we were going to do art?"

That was the question asked this afternoon in Room 8.

The answer: We did art...we did the preparation for an art project.

Lacey came in this afternoon and talked to us about different kinds of boats ... seiner, purse seiners, longliners, .... she also had lots of paintings of boats for us to look at.

March 14th, our parent club is hosting a salmon dinner. The salmon is coming from Lacey and her family... from Alaska! Along with the salmon dinner, there will be an art show. The art will be for sale...all to go towards helping our school.

Room 8 had so many great questions and Lacey was eager to share her love of boats and fishing.