Our week began with a visit from Cecelia Bledoeg, Emmanuel’s mom. Cecelia shared a few Indonesian shadow puppets with the class and discussed Indonesia’s rich history of shadow puppetry. We felt fortunate to have a member of our community add a layer of depth to our study. On Tuesday, we happily sloshed through the city on our Downtown Walking Tour. Our tour guide, Peter Chausse, kept us thoroughly engaged by sharing tidbits of history about every nook and cranny of Portland. Ask your child about Portland’s smallest park, what bridge we walked over, and where we ate lunch. Thanks to all the parents who joined us! Your extra eyes were greatly appreciated! Our final field trip of the year will be to Reed College Cooley Gallery next Wednesday, May 30, to view the photography exhibit of Lorna Bieber. This is a walking field trip, so permission slip will not be sent home. However, if you’d like to join us, please let us know- we’d love your company. To prepare for our trip to the Cooley Gallery, Jen Downer, Zoe’s mom, is sharing her passion for photography with the class by teaching children how to take portraits. Children will be working with Jen in small groups taking portraits of each other in the outdoor center. In addition, Gregory MacNaughton, the educational outreach coordinator for the Cooley Gallery, will visit our class on Thursday afternoon to discuss the exhibit. Good News!! Lewis’ IXL account has been extended! This means that kids can still access their IXL accounts at home and that our Tuesday after-school IXL club will be continuing to the end of the year. Our last unit in math is all about bridges. On our walking tour of downtown, we saw lots of different types of bridges and we even got to see the Hawthorne Bridge get raised to let a cruise ship pass! We are going to be exploring 3 types of bridges: beam, suspension, and arch. We will be building models of each type of these bridges, which will require some donated materials. We will need cardboard, toothpicks, paper towel/toilet paper tubes, straws, foil, string, wire, yarn, and any other interesting materials you might have lying around that would be good for bridge-building. Anything you can bring in will be much appreciated! Please bring materials in this week and early next week, as we will begin building in the latter part of next week. Theory of Knowledge Projects are due Thursday, May 31st. Thanks for your ongoing support! We feel honored to take part in Lewis’ gracious Teacher Appreciate Week.

This entry was posted on May 22, 2012 at 5:52 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.