to “The Littles,” the book series that we have been reading for the past 6 weeks.
Parker, Kobi, Malinee, and Anjali wrote creative stories about the Littles at Prairie
Green School. When writing these stories, the children worked on adding details to their stories, and using words to convey emotion and excitement. One common theme was learning how to describe the environment and surroundings from the
perspective of a six inch person. Jorge and Julianna created dioramas from a scene in the book that they read. Jorge focused on reading for detail when creating his diorama. He also focused on the size comparison and difference between the Littles and the other people in the story. In addition to the diorama, Jorge also incorporated his recent family vacation to Rocky Mountain National Park and created a story about the Littles with the Park as the setting. Julianna’s diorama was a scene from the end of the book so she decided to write a summary that included the main events in the book up to that point. When she read the scene from the book she worked on proper phrasing, pauses, and expression.
Claire decided to study constellations and focus her presentation on the book, “The Stars” by H.A. Ray. The constellations she identified were The Big Dipper, The Little Dipper, The Great Square, Cassiopeia, The Twins, and Orion. When she was on vacation in Michigan, she stayed out late
one evening to star gaze and found those easily seen in the August sky. Orion and The Twins were not able to be seen. Claire’s research and discovery led to understanding that we can only see part of the night sky due to the Earth’s tilt on its axis. Claire led the kids into the gym for her presentation and her demonstration helped us all understand this challenging concept.
Caroline wants to be an electrical engineer when she is older. She experimented with snap circuits and decided to figure out how helicopters fly. She had prior knowledge of the four forces which act on a airplane: thrust, drag, lift, and gravity. She extended her knowledge by studying Bernoulli’s principle, which explains how airplanes create a lift.