Tie Dye Day! — The Early Learning Community First-Second Grade

Last week was full of artful explorations! On Thursday students used rubber bands to tie their garments in preparation for our tie dye festivities on Friday. Several students used diagrams and instructions to determine specific ways of folding their garments to create the patterns they wanted. On Friday students had the opportunity to use dyes to color their garments. A HUGE thank you to Mr. Mark for the countless hours he spent preparing for this project. Thank you to Ms. Shelby, Ms. Ren, and our parent volunteers for making this tradition such a huge success. Students brought home their tie dye garments on Friday with specific instructions for washing. We are hoping students will wear their laundered garments to school this Friday for a tie dye class photo!

Friday afternoon Ms. Robin came in to teach us another lesson in our elements of design series. We learned all about lines and experimented with drawing a variety of lines. Students also learned about negative space, patterns, and highlighting. Stay tuned for photos of the cool projects students created with lines.

Nina’s mom, Ms. Anna, visited our classroom to teach us all about a tradition in Russia called Cheesefare Week. We got to sample blini as we learned all about this fun tradition that marks the end of winter and the coming of spring. Yum! This week student engineers continued their coding work with Ms. Cassie. First graders have been learning how to create loops in coding and why it’s necessary to create loops. Second graders are using many of the coding skills they’ve learned to create coding projects. Students have been practicing their persistence and grit, especially when their coding doesn’t work as expected and they have to try, try again! Students have reported that coding is challenging, but fun.

Several engineers have been collaborating in the engineering area of the classroom to build elaborate Rigamajig structures. In our outdoor classroom a trio of students is attempting to build birds nests, in hopes that some birds may come and stay awhile. We’ve been excitedly observing several new signs of spring popping up around campus! We also enjoyed reading with our Dolphin buddies, visiting the Pacific library, and starting a new read aloud called Mrs. Piggle Wiggle.