Monkey Business in Technology!

This week Mrs. Anderson's class got up to some Halloween style monkey business in the Tech Lab. I showed them how to use the totally awesome online program Picture Monkey to touch up their photos. If vampires and zombies aren't your thing you can also use the program in many other ways to enhance your photos - whiten your teeth, get rid of wrinkles, add artistic effects etc. The program is tremendous fun, easy to use and gives great results! You can try it for yourself here http://www.picmonkey.com/

Vampires in the Tech Lab?!

 

This week Mrs. Kim's class got up to some Halloween style monkey business in the Tech Lab. I showed them how to use the totally awesome online program Picture Monkey to touch up their photos. If vampires and zombies aren't your thing you can also use the program in many other ways to enhance your photos - whiten your teeth, get rid of wrinkles, add artistic effects etc. The program is tremendous fun, easy to use and gives great results! You can try it for yourself here http://www.picmonkey.com/

Shipwrecked in the Gym

This week Middle School students enjoyed a fun game of "Shipwreck".  This activity requires students to form small teams and attempt to sink other teams ships.

Islandwood Movie Makers

Mrs. Kim's 4th Grade class continued to work on their movie project. This week they imported their photos into Windows Movie Maker and started adding animation. For each photo they are required to add a transition and a pan/zoom effect. They also learned how to edit the duration of the photo. In their next lesson we will add text and titles.

Physics with Crayons?

The first grade students enjoyed playing "Crayon Physics" this week in Technology class.  The goal of this game is to have your falling "ball" hit a star in various locations by drawing crayon lines and boxes using your mouse.  This "game" allows students to problem solve and think creatively as no two puzzles are alike.   It can be challenging trying to figure out the puzzle, but the children enjoyed finding new and different ways to get to new levels!

3rd/2nd Grade Music- "Who? or "Hoo!" is in the forest?

"Who is in the forest on this Halloween night? Tell me whoo-oo, whoo-oo is singing tonight?"

3rd/2nd grade students are scattered as singing trees during the fun game of "Hoo's in the Forest?" The forest sings louder (crescendo) or softer (diminuendo) to help the Hunter track down the Owl, who's hiding in the forest. It was great to hear students sing expressively with the various dynamic levels!

National Bullying Prevention Month

Did you know that October is National Bullying Prevention Month?  In library this week, students heard age-appropriate literature and discussed elements of bullying.  It has been wonderful hearing all of the different solutions the students come up with as they talk about what was going on in the books.  The younger students heard The Tale of Sir Dragon by Jean Pendziwol.  Second and third graders heard Bully by Judith Caseley, and the fourth and Middle School students heard Bully by Patiricia Polacco.

Lollipop Trees inspired by Hundertwasser

 This week at Art, Kindergartners and 1st graders learned about an Austrian artist, Fiedensriech Hundertwasser and created Lollipop Trees (Spiral trees) Watercolor paintings inspired by the artist.

Hundertwasser didn't like straight lines, but he was fascinated by spirals. Spirals occur all the time in his pictures because he saw them as a symbol of life and nature.

 We learned how to draw spirals and different watercolor techniques.

Dia de los Muertos

 

I missed u CHA!!! It is GREAT to be back!! 

For the past week, 3rd grade students had a great time learning about Mexican holiday, Dia de los Muertos, and creating fastive skull masks. They learned how to curl paper strips with scissors and make tiny snow flakes to decorate their masks. 

 

K-4th PE

Happy Fall Festival Day!  What a great time it is to be at CHA!  This week's theme was "fitness" and our students had a great time participating in the class activities.  Our K-2nd graders played a game of "Crazy Colors" where students would run to one of the colored paddles spread out across the gym floor.  Underneath each paddle was a note card containing the name of the next color students needed to run to.  They also played a running game that involved collecting plastic straws called "Uninterrupted."  3rd & 4th graders were treated to a game of collecting plastic straws themselves, along with a modified version of "Capture the Flag," which can be seen below.  Enjoy the weekend!

 



2nd grade-music notation

In music 2nd graders have been working on notating Sol-Mi-La on staff whiteboards, both with the seperate syllables and also as part of a few 3 pitch songs. It was great to see their effort towards writing music. Great job 2nd grade!

Fruits & Veggies in First grade

First graders this week continued learning the fruits and vegetables. They began creating books that descibe the color of each fruit and vegetable.

MS Technology

Students this week learned about the Internet. We discussed what it is composed of, how we could measure the size of it and who it was invented by. Some students were surprised to find out that it has not been around since the mid 19th century as they thought!! In the Cascades group we also got into an interesting discussion about how French scientists are investigating the use of spider silk to enable communication between devices (read more here http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/10/spider-silk-computer-chips/) and in the Olympics group I showed the boys how you can trace an IP address to the subscriber's longitude and latitude. Brain Pop has a good introduction to the mechanics of the internet which you can see here http://www.brainpop.com/technology/computersandinternet/internet/preview.weml username is chatechlab and password is chestnut.

Color My Grammar - Technology

2nd and 3rd Grade students have been using this week's technology lesson to enhance their grammar skills, practice their keyboarding and learn some new techniques in Microsoft Word. Having typed up a piece of writing they chose from their writing journals, they had to use the highlighting tool to highlight verbs, nouns and adjectives. We will share them when we are finished!

Middle School PE

 Middle Schoolers were treated to a great game of Barricade Dodge Ball this week. This is a safe and fun twist on traditional Dodge Ball. Today's game was brought to the class by Lillia Herman.

Middle School Music

 It's been great getting back into the routine with band students this week! Students are starting to play through exercises as a group with more ease and confidence,  and the winds have learned fingerings for their first 3 notes Intonation has improved a little each rehearsal and it's exciting to think about the groups potential!

K-4th Grade PE

This week's focus was geared towards working on our dribbling and handling skills. Basketball and hockey were the two main sports that we highlighted. Students dribbled a basketball with an emphasis on using only one hand at a time. We also partnered students together, with one person acting as a defender, attempting to steal the ball away from the offensive player who was dribbling. Our K-2nd graders took part in some stick handling work for hockey, weaving in and out of obstacles as you can see here. Have a great weekend!

Visitor in Spanish Class

During Spanish class this week, Señora Oneto came into the classroom to share her "about to be published" Spanish book, Liliana la Iguana with Ms. Conrad’s, Mrs. Johansen’s, and Mrs. Douglas’ class.  She explained the process of publishing her book to the kids and then she read the book in Spanish to the children.  The students had a wonderful time listening to her stories. Muchas gracias Señora Oneto for coming in to share your story.

Scholastic Book Fair is Coming

In library this week, students viewed an authors' video on the Scholastic Book Fair.  Students and teachers will be filling out their wish lists early next week.

The Book Fair will be open Wednesday, October 17 from 3:00 - 5:30, Thursday, October 18 from 3:00 - 5:30, and Friday, October 19 from 3:00 - 7:30.

If you're interested in previewing some of the titles that may be available, please click on the link of the book fair link at the bottom of the Chestnut Hill homepage.

Thank you for supporting CHA!

4th Grade Movie Makers

The Fourth Graders have embarked on their Islandwood Movie project. Working in pairs they will be combining still photos with text, graphis, animation and music to create a souvenir of their Islandwood experience. The first job was to learn how to use Flickr so that they can choose the photos they want to use. With approximately 752 photos to choose from this may take a while! See the photos for yourself at http://www.flickr.com/photos/34997242@N07/sets/72157631725161819/

Third Grade Tech

This week the students learned how to combine the outputs of two programs using the Snipping Tool. they created illustrations using Paint which they then snipped, copied and pasted into the data table they made last week using Word. If you don't know how to use the Snipping Tool get them to show you, it comes in very handy if you ever need to take a snapshot of something you are viewing on your pc!