Hello Families,
Last week was full week of Halloween and Día de los Muertos festivities.
Recycled Runway
We started the week with a buddies activity: Recycled Runway where the pairs/trios get together and design a costume out of recycled materials. Every pair/trio got to walk the runway afterwards and showcase their creations!
Time to walk the runway!
Thank you for donating packaging material and even bringing some of the recyclable material home with you to put in your bins! You supported a fun afternoon of creativity, problem solving, and bonding!
Halloween Parade
This is the first year that we have had the Halloween Parade back on the UAC campus. We went through each classroom so that we could take a better look at everyone’s costumes. We got to see parenting adults as we zigzagged through the yard/Solar System and upstairs. There was so much creativity in everyone’s costumes, and we even saw some repeat costumes from Monday’s Recycled Runway event!
Thank you to families for bringing in vegan cupcakes and volunteering to support this activity! The Temescalians loved decorating them with Oreo spiders or bats, and then eating them!
We celebrated Día de los Muertos with a procession where different grades shared different elements of the celebration such as loteria cards, calavaras (sugar skulls), and a group of 6th and 4th graders performed a folklórico dance! Our Temescalians worked on papel picado (used to decorate the outside of the art room for the procession), flor de cempasúchil (used to decorate the altar in the Spanish room), and nichos (boxes that were beautifully decorated, with an image of a historical figure that they wanted to honor. The Temescalians carried these nichos during the procession.)
In the classroom, we have continued our study of water and weather and saw the effects of surface tension at work and how it might keep water from coming out of a jar. We used a jar and slowly flipped it over, but key to keeping water in the jar was using a screen to cover the mouth of the jar. While I could still poke a needle through the holes of the screen, it was technically still open. The surface tension from each individual square of the screen did its part in keeping the water in. When we tipped the jar over very slowly, however, it didn’t work quite as well. The Temescalians also wondered what might happen if we used soapy water to do this experiment, since they were drawing from our past experiment of using soap to break the surface tension. When we tried that, we found that there was little difference between tap water and soapy water.
For a bonus science experience, we reaped the benefits of a family donating leftover dry ice from their Halloween celebrations/decorations and we got to talk about dry ice! Dry ice is actually frozen CO2 and it is different from H2O in that it doesn’t go through the 3 stages of matter like water does. Instead, frozen CO2 goes directly from being a solid to a gas. This process is called sublimation. We also talked about safety about handling dry ice and how you cannot touch it with your bare hands or else it’ll hurt you! Also, how you should not store dry ice in your refrigerator because it’ll trick the sensors into thinking that the interior of the fridge is cold enough and shut off. We did, however, let the kids come up and touch the CO2 as it was released into its gas form.
If you’d like to try any of the surface tension experiments that we tried, please view this video them and more!
We finished the week with a trip to the Paramount Theatre in downtown Oakland to see the Oakland Ballet perform Luna Mexicana, a celebration of Día de los Muertos.
Upcoming Events
November
10 – Professional Development (no school)
18 – VIP Day
20 – 24 Fall Break
December
1 – Report Writing (No school, childcare TBD)
18 – Jan 2 – Winter Break