This was a busy week of holiday festivities and a trip out to the Oakland Museum of California, in addition to our usual schedule of learning about math, reading and writing skills, and wrapping up our unit on plants in science.
Part of learning math is learning about the vocabulary. The vocabulary words specific to multiplication are “multiply”, “product”, “array”, “factor”, “factor pairs”, “multiple”. Ask your Temescalians if s/he can explain what these different vocabulary words mean and what role they play in understanding multiplication. This week, we worked with the idea of what a multiple is. While we have learned that a product is the answer of a multiplication number sentence, there are related products. For example, if you are thinking of multiples of 3s, they would be the answers if you were to skip count by 3s: 3, 6, 9, 12, 15… We introduced a new game that is similar to “Sparkle” but a little different called “Buzz”:
“Buzz” as a multiplication game:
As a variation for older children, tell the children that the aim of the game is to count to 50 – simple, right? Except all multiples of the chosen number must be replaced by the word ‘Buzz.’ For example, if the buzz number was multiples of 5, play would go – 1,2,3,4,buzz,6,7,8,9,buzz,11,12…etc. If a child makes a mistake play begins (for the whole group) again at 1.
For a harder variation, choose two sets of multiples to exclude – say multiples of 3 and of 5 – multiples of 3 are replaced with the word ‘fizz’ and multiples of 5 with the word ‘buzz.’ For numbers that are multiples of both 3 and 5, the respondent says ‘fizz-buzz.’ For this example, play would proceed as follows – 1,2,fizz,4,buzz,fizz,7,8,fizz,buzz,11,fizz,13,14,fizz-buzz,etc.
We also partnered up to make 10 trains of a given number with alternating snap cubes. Then measure out and indicate on a strip of paper the number of cubes. For example if you were given the number 4, you would draw a line at the end of each train of 4 and essentially record multiples of 4 as you skip count along up to the 10th multiple.
Benicia, the middle school teaching artist, was a guest educator during Art and led the Temescalians in designing and fusing glass together. As always, she talked about safety first, and gave directions on how to score and break the larger pieces of glass into smaller, desired shapes and sizes. Benicia pointed out that one cannot cut curves in pieces of glass. She also gave the example of glass being similar to water. It will keep spreading out until it comes to a wall to contain it. The thickness of the glass, regardless of how many pieces you stack up, always ends up being the same height. Jackie and I got to sit in the first portion of the class, and Julianne showed Jackie and I a preview of the finished products! Teachers bid Benicia adieu on Friday as she transitions on to her next adventure.
The Halloween Parade was a show of creativity, humor, pop culture, and a menagerie of animals and food items. Parading through the classrooms is a lovely way to see the different spaces of the school as well as appreciate everyone’s costumes.
Halloween festivities included a popcorn and candy corn gloved hand, face painting, and baking apple cider donuts. Thank you to the parents who helped Temescalians change out of costumes, and a special thanks to the 2 parents who stayed and led these activities. If you would like to try baking these donuts at home, you can try this recipe for baked apple cider donuts from Food Network. (For the topping, I used 1/2 a stick of melted butter and 3/4 cup of sugar with 1 teaspoon of cinnamon mixed in. If you need donut pans, I suggest you use a coupon and go to Michael’s to purchase the donut pans through separate transactions.) Other activities included Halloween themed mad libs and crosswords and a viewing of It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.
Jeff, the middle school science teacher, invited classes to go up to the “Haunted Science Lab” where the 8th graders led different experiments and explained the science behind each station. (The current 8th graders were my first class of 3rd graders at TBS, and the first class of stand alone 3rd graders! Jeff shared that the 8th graders had such fond memories of going up to the middle school lab when they were 3rd graders that they wanted to bring it back to share with the elementary kids! I’m so glad that they did!)
There were “invisible eggs”, pink jello in a brain mold, cups and string that made an eerie sound, a plasma ball and fluorescent light bulb experiment, dry ice and dish soap bubbles, and shrinking aluminum cans! It was a fun way to interact with the phenomena that exists in science every day. The Temescalians went from station to station with expressions of awe and wonder as they interacted with the 8th graders.
To cap off the Halloween festivities, we had Halloween writing where they could choose a prompt like, “What if the monster under the bed was just misunderstood?” or “Why is Frankenstein’s monster getting a tailored suit?” or they could do free writing about anything Halloween related. They love sharing their writing! They also had a chance to share their Rocket Writes about either “If you had a store, what would you sell?” or writing about their Halloween costumes. In reading, we introduced the idea about visualizing and picking just one scene to zoom in on and illustrate. We used the example from Atalanta the Huntress. Temescalians could decide to illustrate from the mentor text or choose a scene from their books to illustrate. Finally, we introduced the letter “e” in handwriting! We are slowly but surely working through the alphabet!
We followed up Halloween with a field trip to the Oakland Museum of California on November 1! The California Indian Lifeways program was split into two portions. We first had a workshop led by Corrina Gould, an educator of Ohlone descent who shared about her people, what the land used to look like, traditions from her culture, and what she is doing today to preserve her culture. (You can read more about her here: Learning from Ohlone History Today) You can also read about how a clapper stick is made here! In an effort to educate and bring awareness about the loss of shellmounds (similar to sacred land and burial sites in the Ohlone culture), she often goes to Bay Street the day after Thanksgiving to remind people that the largest shellmound in the area used to stand 3 stories tall where the shopping center currently stands. She is also involved in trying to preserve and introduce a different vision for the development of the land where another shellmound has been paved over on 4th street. For more information, check out this website: Save West Berkeley Shellmound and Village Site.
In our docent led tour of the Natural Sciences and History galleries of the museum, we got to see flora and fauna from different ecosystems and regions of California, as well as see artifacts like baskets, tools, and clothing from the Ohlone people. This museum is a rich resource of many dioramas and hands on activities, but it is too much to really take it all in during the one hour tour. If you have a chance, go back and visit the museum at your leisure. They offer free admission on the first Sunday of the month, and they have half price admission, food trucks, and musical guests/dancing on Friday nights!
We wrapped up our week with an assembly where the 8th graders talked about the branches of government in the United States and went through different propositions. (Please vote on Tuesday!) Cerrito Creek defined different words used for people who move from one place to another, by choice and not such as “pilgrim”, “refugee”, “tourist”, “alien”, “vagabond”.
We wrapped up the assembly with the Elementary teachers performing “Ghost of John” after having only learned it on Wednesday. Thanks for leading us in this song, Iris! It was a bit nerve-wrecking for us, but we can do hard things! (Password: TemescalCreek! )
“Ghost of John/Tom”
Have you heard of the Ghost of John?
Long, white bones and the flesh all gone!
Oooooooh!
Wouldn’t it be chilly with no skin on?
We had a design challenge for Super Science and Art on Friday! We have been learning about seed dispersal, and with the stipulations of 1 sheet of 8″x 11.5″ paper, 1 piece of tape that’s 6 inches long, and 1 bean, Temescalian pairs were tasked with creating a way that a seed would be blown away the furthest from its starting point. Another piece of information was that all designs would start on the ground, and then a box fan would be slowly turned up to higher levels. The first iteration had elements of cylinders, airplane wings, and sails. Some Temescalians were flabbergasted by the task, but we had them activate their inner coaches: “Just try it!” “You can do it!” We also emphasized the need to work together and gave Temescalians specific phrases to use when generating ideas with their partners: “What if we…?” “And how about we…?” “What do you think?” We also made clear the type tone that they needed to have when working together: calm, “Green Zone”, as if they are making suggestions.
We concluded that cylinders let air go right through them. The design needed something to catch the air. Maybe moving the placement of the bean could help further the distance it travels.
Pairs had an opportunity to evaluate and change their design and we’ll test these 2nd designs on Monday!
Other glimpses of Temescalians during the week:
Here are some upcoming events:
November
6 – Make up picture day for those who were absent
8 – Math Night (6:00 – 7:30pm) Come by and play some math games with us!
16 – GrandFriends Day at the UAC
19 to 23 – Fall Break (no school or childcare, although Sarah’s Science is available from 11/19 – 11/21. Please click here to sign up.)
