Parts of the Body, Presidential Letters, Programming, Picture Studies and Public Speaking …What a perfect week!

 

Last week, like most weeks, was a busy one at the Yadkin Valley Community School. If you weren’t here, this is what you missed:

• Parts of the Body: We took a fieldtrip to Millis Regional Health Education Center to learn about the human body. The kids have been learning the internal and external parts of fish, birds, reptiles, amphibians and mammals. Soon they will begin their study of the human body. This fieldtrip was a great transition. At the Millis Regional Health Education Center, the students participated in two programs: “Bones, Muscles and Skin” and “Gross Encounters”. They also enjoyed time in a room full of interactive exhibits pertaining to the human body.
• Presidential Letters: After a long wait, the kids finally received a letter from President Barack Obama. Toward the end of fall, the students wrote letters to the President. Most of their letters focused on the concern the children have for people in our community that are homeless. The response we received encouraged our students to play an active role in solving these types of problems in our community.
  
• Programming: Rick Brown, Mr. D’s friend, came to the school to talk to the children about computer programming. He was wonderful with the students! He gave them all a general overview of how computers work and then spent some time with individual kids who were interested coding. We hope he will come back and volunteer again soon! Resources: Why Kids Should Learn to Code,  Four Reasons Why Kids Should Learn to Program,  and Teach Kids How to Code and You Give them a Skill for Life.
  
• Picture Studies: For art this week, we did picture studies. Most weeks, the art lesson involves creating something. Some kids love to draw and paint; others do not. Picture studies are an excellent way to teach kids to find and remember details, skills that are also important in reading, science and research. For this activity, I showed the students a picture for a brief period of time and then turned the picture over. They tried to recall as many details as possible. After they had listed as many as they could remember, we turned the image back over and discussed as a group any details we had misinterpreted or had not seen. For our first picture study, we used two paintings by Peter Paul Rubens. I chose this artist because I thought the images would be intriguing to the students. This is a great way to introduce students to art history. Resources for Picture Studies: Cottage Press and The Reading Mother
• Public Speaking: The kids enjoyed The One and Only Ivan as Mr. D read it aloud to them. Several projects were completed during the weeks that we were reading this book. As final projects, the younger kids put on brief skits about the story using small figurines and the older kids held a mock presidential election, with each of them running as a different character from the book. After campaigning for a week, each candidate gave a speech and took questions from the audience. Then the rest of the class stepped into the voting booth. This was a very interesting exercise!