Earlier this month, Alice's school had its first "Exhibit Night." The school is the arts magnet elementary school for the county (as well as housing the honors program). They do all sorts of neat things. There is an actual dance studio, multiple rooms for music, and art has a main classroom and second classroom with a kiln. At exhibit night, the whole school was transformed into an art gallery. It was really neat to see all the student work.
A student-made mural of ceramic tiles
2nd grade ceramics - Alice's is the yellow and brown cup in the center.
This map is in the hall near Alice's homeroom. It is HUGE!
Art by the other 2nd grade classes:
Alice's class did an extensive unit on Japan. They went to a museum to see Japanese artifacts, learned how to play "rock, paper, scissors" in Japanese, and had a visitor come talk to them about Japanese culture. All this was in addition to the more typical types of learning that go on in a classroom!
They learned how to write their names in Japanese:
They also each learned to write another word and created a picture around it. Alice's word was "school":
Next we went to see the instrumental music teacher. He is AMAZING. He had all kinds of instruments laid out all over the classroom for kids to play. Everything was very hands-on. His room was loud and chaotic in a good way. Everyone who walked into his room that night left having learned something new - myself included.
A piano Mr. Reynolds took apart so the kids can see how it works.
Demonstrating sound waves and vibration with a ping pong ball dancing on a speaker.
We also got to meet some of Alice's new friends.
