Think Tank- Impressionism

This was our last think tank of the year. We studied a type of art called Impressionism. The kids absolutely loved it! You can tell how much they enjoyed it by the number of kids who chose to do each activity. They got the chance to use different types of mediums in art, pastels, paint, markers, colored pencils, and crayons. I highlighted the artists Monet, Degas, Cassatt, Pissarro, and Renoir.
The two activities pictured here is to create a landscape postcard and experiment with crayon and watercolor together.

These two activities are writing a letter to a friend from the book Linnea's in Monet's Garden and draw scene of an athlete in motion.

This activity was an experiment with pointillism- did they like the way the dots looked better than brush strokes and why? The class was split on which style they liked better.

This activity had the kids choosing their favorite piece and recreating it. Most kids picked Monet's artwork to recreate. They also made genre scenes that were taken from an everyday activity.

We read about how in the beginning these artists were laughed at and nobody thought very much about their work. I asked the students to determine if this was right or wrong and why.

What an Egg-sperience!!!

We have had an amazing week! Here is a picture of our five baby chicks, which all by the way, have names! So here they are: Midnight is to the left of the feeder bowl, Sunshine is at the top of the picture, then Mohawk, then Little Stripe, and then Armstrong.
We decided to opt out of recess today and play with our baby chicks instead- here are Midnight and Mohawk thinking "I don't think we are in Kansas anymore!" They were excitedly exploring/pooping on our carpet. I nicknamed the chicks the "pooping machines."

Here is Alex with either Mohawk or Little Stripe- hard to tell from this angle.

Look at these smiles, priceless! Thai and Ian are having a blast with their chicks!

Here are Cameron, Jack B, Jake, and Trey with Little Stripe.

Look at these three chicks! Casey, Mikayla and Sammie and the animals of course!

How Egg-citing!!!

Monday and Tuesday have been very exciting days for us this week. Monday morning I heard peeping coming from our incubator. Our first egg was beginning to hatch. Below are the pictures of the process- we started with 6 eggs, when they were candled only 5 were still viable. Our first egg, the one pictured on the blog, hatched Monday and the other four hatched on Tuesday. After they hatch they are moved out of the incubator into the brooder box. Below is a picture of the four that were hatched when I left school today. I just got off the phone and found out that we are now the parents of quintuplets- all five eggs have hatched!!

An aerial view of our brooder box. All of the chicks are goldish brown with one black one with white tipped wings.