This week we welcomed a new student and a new teaching assistant: Matthew, a 1st grader and Abby Prescott, a fine artist and printmaker, who joins us on Thursdays. Both have made wonderful contributions to the program in their first week and we are fortunate to have them with us! Welcome again Matthew and Ms. Abby!!!
This week was super fun for the children, as we made our own soda's, sculpted faux confections, conducted taste and smell experiments, created abstract paintings of what specific smells "look" like, and also made paintings of cupcakes and other sweet treats, all in honor of Valentine's day next week. On Thursday we squeezed in a "creature" making activity for the string mache exhibit (2nd floor landing), as it was begging to be inhabited by life forms that could crawl, creep, fly, hibernate, spy, etc.
Here is a post about our soda making experiments to start off the week, contributed by Lily, a 2nd grader:
"Hi! Today we made sodas. Hopefully
we all had fun. One of the
ingredients was vanilla extract. Other
organics used were cinnamon, lime, and sugar. The students enjoyed hopefully every thing we did today. I believe the students were born to be flavor
chemists.”
A big thank you to Lily!!! The students' soda reviews ranged from "yummy" to "yucky" and we encouraged them to try different proportions or to omit an ingredient that maybe didn't work for them. Admittedly, my own soda concoction needed less lime and cinnamon and more sugar... when at first you don't succeed... try and try again. We recorded our recipes so we could duplicate the ingredients or revise as needed. Following the soda making activity, we went to the computer lab to design labels for our sodas. We used the "Pixie" program and asked students to consider colors and shapes to best represent their soda, as well as the size and color of their font.
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| Daysha |
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| Joel and Sam |
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| Emerson |
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| Dexter and Leila |
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| Dexter |
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| Dexter, Leila and Jessica |
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| Matthew and Emerson |
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| Matthew (hmmm, maybe too much cinnamon???) |
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| I believe Joel's final description was "This is yucky!" |
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| Jessica recording her ingredients |
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| Cyrus measuring the sugar |
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| Joel and Lily |
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| Cyrus and Vaughan, taste tasting |
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| Leila, measuring out the cinnamon |
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| Joel's "ELI" soda label design |
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| Lily's soda label design, in progess |
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| Daysha's soda label design |
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| Lily's soda label design, close to complete |
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| Cyrus' soda label design, in progress |
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| Jessica's soda label design |
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| Leila's in progress design |
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| Leila's completed design |
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| Vaughan's soda label design |
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| Cyrus' soda label design |
On Tuesday, we made "faux confections" using Playdoh or Model Magic (student choice). By the end of the class, we had an entire table of beautiful and inventive confections!!! Sydney, a 4th grader, created a quick confectionery slide show of the images she found on the ipad during snack time, so I asked to her introduce the lesson along with the additional image searches she saved on the 4 other ipads. Sydney defined the term "confection" and asked the students about their own favorite treats (responses included snickers to jolly ranchers, etc). She then shared her slide show and images (super job Sydney!!!) and I followed up with a demonstration on techniques to make our faux confections. Needless to say, by the end of class, we had some serious cravings! The results were display case worthy (to say the least) however due to popular demand, I conceded and let the students take them home that evening : )
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| Norah, YUM!!!! |
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| Emerson, so fun!!! |
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| Matthew (This reminds me of a mini Claes Oldenburg sculpture! Nice job Matthew!) |
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| Sydney (can I have a bite?) |
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| Hayden (I love this shape! Nice job Hayden!) |
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| Porter, sculpting a mini-man confection |
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| Daysha (This reminds me of a spring bouquet!) |
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| Daysha sculpting a small bowl form |
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| Matthew and a very inventive treat! |
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| Emily, care to share? |
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| Leila's super styling vehicle |
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| Leila |
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| Matthew |
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| Sydney |
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| Daysha |
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| Hayden |
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| Porter |
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| Emerson |
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| Joseph (I love the pink and brown combination) |
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| Our table full of yummy confections! |
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| Our confection designers with their art |
Below are images of the students during our smell tests. I used some familiar and some not-so-familiar food items (cinnamon, ginger, cloves, onion powder, mustard, lemon juice and caraway seed). I also included one trick item, my dog Sophie's dry dog food: some students claimed that this smelled like chocolate and others said that it smelled like... can't say here, but not very pleasant... The children really got a kick out of this activity. It was hilarious to see their expressions when they conducted the smell tests and to witness their excitement when they had identified a smell correctly!
Before we began the activity, I shared that the nose has about 1,000 different smell receptors and is capable of identifying over 10,000 different smells! Each smell molecule locks into a smell receptor which has the same shape and sends the message to the brain. Following our experiments, we created abstract paintings of what we imagined specific smells to look like!
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| Emerson, Matthew and Aidan |
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| Leila and Jessica |
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| Emerson |
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| Suzanne |
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| Elizabeth |
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| Sam |
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| Aidan |
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| Leila and Jessica |
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| Matthew |
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| Jessica |
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| Sam |
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| Liam |
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| Matthew |
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| Emerson |
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| Daysha |
Below, the students are creating abstract paintings based on what a specific smell may look like:
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| Matthew (orange), Aidan (lemon/lime), Emerson (apple-green) |
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| Jessica (lemon) and Elizabeth (lemon/lime) |
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| Daysha (pomegranate) |
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| Matthew (orange) |
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| Emerson (green apple) |
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| Aidan (lemon/lime) |
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| Suzanne (red apple) |
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| Jessica (lemon) |
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| Leila (lemon, blueberry, strawberry) |
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| Jessica (lemon) |
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| Liam |
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| Jessica |
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| Leila |
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| Leila, stage 2 |
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| Leila, complete (lemon, blueberry, strawberry) |
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On Friday we were inspired by the paintings of Wayne Thiebaud who created some of the most famous (and delicious) paintings of desserts : ) He used vivid colors, painting shadows in shades of in blue/blueviolet or yellow/yellow-orange with highlighted edges to create a halo effect.
Before we began our paintings, I asked students to look at the shape of a cupcake from above (bird's eye view) and from eye level, to note how the shape of the cupcake changes from a circle to an oval depending on one's point of view to the object. Students "got it" and did a great job capturing the shape of the cupcake or confection realistically! Interestingly, I didn't mention how the base of the cupcake tapers and for most students, this subtlety was ignored. There is always next time : ) I also asked the students do a quick sketch on paper, (the same size as their canvas) to get a feel for the proportions of the cupcake or confection in relation to the background space.
Here are the desserts we carefully observed and painted on square canvases, using any colors the students' desired. Each student had the actual cupcake or confection in front of them on the table. Once our paintings were complete, everyone enjoyed eating a heart cookie and sharing the other treats. Yummy-ness for the eyes and tummy!
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| From Dominick's new "dessert case" |
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| From Whole Foods |
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| From Whole Foods |
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| From Whole Foods |
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| From Dominicks |
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| From Sugar Fixe |
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| Jessica |
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| Max |
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| Dexter |
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| Daysha |
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| Leila |
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| Joseph and Dexter, completed paintings |
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| Sam |
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| Jessica |
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| Max |
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| Sam's completed painiting |
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| Jessica's completed painting |
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| Leila's complete painting |
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| Max's nearly complete painting |
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| Daysha's completed painting |
On Thursday we paused from our theme "The Art and Science of Taste and Smell" to invent some creatures for our string mache exhibit on the 2nd floor landing. We also welcomed Abby Prescott as a teaching assistant to Beye Discovery on Thursday afternoons.
Abby has several + years of experience working with
children in the summer programs offered through the Oak Park Park
District and currently coaches women's basketball at OPRF High School. This week, just
before parent pick up, Abby organized some fun games for our Beye Discovery students using the soft toys they made before the holidays. Do scroll
down to see some action photos below!
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| Meeting Abby and sharing things about ourselves |
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| Porter at work! |
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| Daysha, Hayden, Vaughan, Joseph and Sydney |
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| Max |
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| Emily's butterfly |
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| Max's little man |
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| Hayden |
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| Sydney |
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| Ben |
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| Elizabeth |
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| Daysha |
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| Porter |
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| Liam |
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| Daysha and "caterpillar" |
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| Norah |
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| Ben |
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| Ben's creature |
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| Hayden |
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| Emerson |
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| Hayden |
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| Emerson |
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| Joseph |
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| Leila |
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Can't wait to see all these creatures in their new habitat on the 2nd floor. I'm hoping they will be moved in and settled by Wednesday!
Below are the action photos of the students playing a game in the hall, organized by Abby. My apologies for the blurriness (I like the effect though), however since my flash is history, it's hard to get a good photo in the hall unless I set the shutter at a slower speed.
