Feelings/Sentimientos

¿Como te sentías cuando no estabas en la escuela?

 [How do you feel when your not at school?]

Katie's picture of her mother and her.

Sebastian's picture of his family and their house.

His finished picture!  An exceptionally detailed illustrator!

Marcos's picture of himself with his family.  

Richeily is watching and learning.

This is Nitza first time in school and she is a natural author.
Steven explored with the color orange.    

Nitza drew a picture of her family at the park.  

Ralina drew herself with her parents.  

Ezekiel drew a picture of one of his sisters.  

Arianna and Mariangelit drew themselves with their families.

Hunter found himself drawing a tree.  He said they have a little farm.  

The Burchfield Nature and Art Center

We went to "The Burchfield Nature and Art Center" as a follow-up field-trip to the Burchfield Penney Art Center.  We began by sitting outside of the Art Center to do some observational drawings.  What happen to the trees?  How did those tree trunks get there?

Zianiris- The trees are cut because they are getting old.  They don't have leaves anymore. 
Emily-It is because it's getting cold.  When the trees get really big they can fall down and they are thick.  She looks up at the sky, I just found a comet.  She is referring to the exhaust from the plane that left a long white line in the clouds.

Emily

Leylany points to the inside of the tree-trunk.  It has yellow stuff.

Nitza-tumbaron a los arboles.   [The trees fell down.] 

The Tree Trunk

Que haces Jeremie?
Jeremie- Estoy trazando un arbol con hojas. [I'm tracing and making a tree with leaves.]
Se parece como un pescado. [It looks like a fish.]

Jeremie

Jeremie

Why are we here? 

Ruthielyz-tienes arboles y parque y lugares donde puedes sentar.  [There are trees and a park and places where you can sit.]

The Park

What are you all doing? ¿Que estas haciendo?   

Angel- Estoy buscando una flor.  [I'm looking for a flower. ]
 All three of the students begin to dig through the dirt with little sticks and their hands.

Emily, Nitza and Angel

We began our walk along the trail by looking at one of Charles Burchfield's paintings.  

The children stopped to study the first painting along the trail.  

Nitza- ¡Vamos a encontrar Frozen alli. [Were going to find Frozen there!]

Maybe she was talking about the character from the Disney movie, I decided to listen to see where the conversation went.  All the students start walking quickly shouting - ¡vamos a encontrar Frozen!  

We began to follow the path that led us beside the flowing waters of the creek.

We all stopped and looked in awe at the creek.   Why is the water moving?
Jenialee - Because the fish are swimming.  
Emily - The wind is moving the water.  
Angel- Yo vi una tortuga en el agua.

Look closely and you'll see the duck...for sure.

The kids shout together.  Patos...They are pointing to ducks swimming along down the stream. ¿Que esta haciendo los patos?
Ruthielyz - Mira...los patos estan explorando en el agua.  
Emily -Their finding food.  
Zianiris - Their finding her babies.  
What causes the waves and foam in the water?
Ruthielyz - Hay alas y cuando viene tienes que brincar.  Where are we now?
Zianiris - Were at the beach because it has water.     

  Leylany - There is sand too!

Nitza -  ¡Frozen esta alli!   ¿Que es Frozen una persona o el agua en el invierno? 
[What is Frozen?  A person or the water in the winter time?]
Nitza - Es una persona que vive.  [A living person.]
Ruthielyz - Y  podemos jugar en la nieve y en el hielo tambien.  
[We can play in the snow and ice also.]  We follow a trail up from the creek and then go back down the trail again to continue along the creek path.

We continue to walk along the path until there is only water and stones.   After standing on some of the rocks trying to make it across we finally give up.  We help each other down from the rocks and retrace our steps.  Why do the leaves look different? There are leaves in the water covered with mud.
Jenialee - Because they are living in different places.  [Porque viven en diferentes lugares.] The students sit to draw nature.  How do you draw a leaf?  Emily - It has straight lines coming out of it. [Tiene lineas rectas que salen de ellas.}       

Jenialee, Jeremie, Leylany, and Ruthielyz 

Jerielis and Jenialee

Jerielis -  Yo vi un cangrejo en el tunel.  [I saw a crab in the tunnel]

                           

We set off again along the trail.   

I've seen that picture before in the Art Museum when we played I spy.  

We sit down in a place where there are lots of  fallen trees with a graveyard in the background.

Angel, Zianiris and  Ruthielyz sketch nature. 

Nitza's sketch of  a tree trunk

What have we seen today?
Zianiris we saw a crab in the tunnel. 
Nitza- Yo vi un arbol partido.
Chrisbellyz- Yo vi hojas verde, rojas y anaranjadas.  Preciosos colores.
Torres- Que paso con el arbol?
 Pedro- El arbol esta viejo y grande.  
Kierra- I saw two rocks that were big and they made the water go up and down into a water fountain. Ralina-We were listening to the water and we closed our eyes.  There was a beautiful sound.  
Leylany-I saw a tree and it didn't have water.  How do you know it didn't have water.  It fell down. 
Mrs Torres- I wish I had a camera. When the students closed their eyes I saw big smiles on their faces.  
Why were you all smiling?
Ralina- Because it sounded like the waves.  
Jenialee-Because it was sounding beautiful. 
Kierra-It feels like the water is singing and its making me go to sleep.    
Ezekiel-I saw trees and birds.  

Today we reread the blog on November 5th.  The students changed some of the details and they added new information.  We also discussed some of their ideas.  Through our conversation we recognized that we were not at a beach with waves but rather at a nature park with a stream.  Some of the vocabulary words that we used were foam/espuma, ground/suelo, water current/curriente de agua.