Straw Flutes, a Tricky Spider, and Journals

Quark Unit Studies
This week the Quarks learned about the continent of Africa. They are continuing to color their globes and filled in Africa this week. Also, they found Africa on a map and placed their native animal stickers on the continent. Later, the Quarks ate dates (native to Africa) while listening to a story about Anansi, the mythical African trickster spider. We wrapped up with an art project depicting Anansi the spider to add to their “passports”
 
Quarks Math Club
For our second meeting of the Crazy Kids Math Club, we experimented with math and sound. We began by blowing over the top of a straw to make a noise. Then we tried submerging those straws in water at various depths to see how that changed the sound. Finally, we cut the straws to different links and explored the correlation between the length of the straw and pitch of the sound, eventually assembling the cut straws into a pan flute to take home.
 
Neutron Drama
To expand on our previous lesson on feelings, we explored character development through various scarecrow stories and then building our own mini scarecrows for dramatic play (complete with unique, original expressions!).
 
Electron/Muon Writers’ Workshop
This week we did some writing in Writers’ Workshop! The topic was “currently”.The project was meant to document what is going on in our lives while making these altered book journals.I gave the kids a list that included listening,eating.drinking,wearing,feeling,wanting,needing,thinking,enjoying,date. It was interesting to see how differently the kids interpreted “currently”.
I asked the kids to just jot down whatever came to mind without mulling it over too much. Then they went back to edit and correct spelling.We will turn our answers into decorated pages and the decorated pages will then be glued into our journals.
Magic Muons
This week the Muons discussed the Zine movement, from its inception as an alternative media outlet for the punk rock music scene, to its use is art culture, and its application to fan-based movements in pop culture. We discussed the difference between corporate-sponsored media, and its more grassroots counterparts in order to decide what sort of publication the Muons themselves might like to publish. The kids settled on a hodgepodge approach, and each of them selected a loose topic to start their first respective articles.