From the reservoir

I just like this picture

On the last day of school I gave away lots of paper, markers, crayons and other supplies. Looks like we didn't do much coloring, as these Crayolas are in pretty good shape. I made them into about 5 or 6 sets containing some of each color group. Seems like there's too much red and orange, and not enough green and blue. It's okay, the kids were happy anyway. I like to start off the school year with new clean crayons.

Seen on a boring walk

So, I first saw this poetry station, which contained multiple copies of a poem about a dad who wears shorts that his kids find embarrassing.He wears them anyway. (Why do people do things like that? And then write a poem to cement the idea into the universe? These are rhetorical questions.)  And next I found this very ironic sewer cover. 

I'm just blogging to mark the days, I guess. Waiting for something interesting to turn up.

Doodles

Just messing around in the sketchbook.

The Last Day of School

The last day was Friday, June 24th. I got a paper-plate award:

 Then my friends and I went to the Rochester zoo for 'Zoo Brew' Friday, in which you drink adult beverages and walk around the zoo. This is a big social thing, apparently. Here's our selfie. It was hot and humid, of course. 

Here's a silly one of Shizuka and Anna.

The highlight of the event was a guided tour of the elephant barn, with one of the zookeepers. (The tickets for the tour were provided by a generous donation from my parents; thanks, Mom and Dad!) The proceeds go to maintaining habitat and preventing poaching in Africa.

We learned way more that we needed to know about how to take care of elephants in a zoo, and some of it was eye-opening. One of the workers was recently in several southern African countries, where ivory poaching happens every day. 

It was a nice ending to a good school year, and now I can do a zoo lesson next semester, with firsthand information!

Tyierrah's Beautiful Shoes

Get out your sunglasses because here she comes with her super sparkly new shoes!

More from the 6th Grade Art Journals

Blogger wouldn't let me put these last photos into the L-O-N-G post below, so here are the bobcat pages. We have bobcats in the forests of NY, but we're all glad we've never met one. They're fierce.

6th Grade Art Journals Extraordinaire!

This is a long post with lots of pictures. I'm so proud of these students and all the good work they did this year in ESOL!!

We worked on our journal pages all year. The last thing we did was make the covers. We sewed our pages in with a 7-hole pamphlet stitch. The students really followed directions well, because this is a multi-step complex task. In 3 dimensions! 

Here are the front covers. We saved the exciting stuff for the inside pages.

We learned to make 5-pointed origami stars with one cut of the scissors.

 In the fall we collected some leaves to paint and describe.

In December, we wrote a sequence of events about how to decorate a Christmas tree.

We learned how to make a paper snowflake. We also painted some Skittles and their package. Paint one, eat one! Next, we started our unit on the wild animals that live in the state of New York.

Here's a black bear (you have to use your imagination) and an abstract design.

 Jamile learned about screech owls and gave her slide presentation on them.

This is Jomar's great horned owl. He did great research work for his report.

This is Yariel's snowy owl.

Adrian learned about barn owls. These students all did a wonderful presentation.

A Visit to Skaneateles, NY

It's a pretty little tourist town about 2 hours from Rochester.

The lake is spring fed and icy cold.

Local Scholar and Artist Visits 35A Every Morning

This young man visits before breakfast to write or draw something. Then he climbs on a chair to find his country!

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