Jackson Elementary School - Judith Kerrigan-Krodel and Michelle Gholl - 7.00 hours
Shadowing - Jan Elftmann - 3.50 hours
This week started out with greeting a new student in Ms. Gholl's class. Two students and I went down to the office to show the his way through breakfast and up to the classroom. I loved seeing these two students be so helpful and accommodating to the new student. I know how it feels to be a new student and how wonderful it feels when you have students there to support and welcome you to the school!
In the afternoon, we had an impromptu drawing lesson with the students inspired by the book Draw! by Raúl, which is a Minnesota Star of the North Picture Book Award nominee. The book is all pictures and no words and portrays the author going on a safari through his imagination. On the safari, he drew everything he saw. For the lesson, the students drew along with the artist of the book. It was so neat to see them so excited, and I thought it was a really smart way to get the students interested in a book with no words!
On Thursday night, I met Jan Elftmann at the Science Museum of Minnesota to assist and shadow her during the Science Museum sleepover. It is a sleepover that various schools, families, boy and girl scout troops, etc., come to where they spend the night exploring the museum and enjoying various activities. For this particular sleepover, it was fifth graders from a bunch of different schools. I helped Jan at the station called Chain Reaction where students were able to build contraptions and see how a small ball would travel throughout the reaction. Jan and I also made structures called exploding sticks that involves tongue depressors and tension. It's a really cool truck!
Some students took their own direction and made houses for dinosaur figurines, masking tape and PVC contraptions, and my personal favorite, a student that taped two dinosaur figurines and a small shark figurine to a PVC pipe with packing tape, which he then proceeded to carry around proudly. Very entertaining! And, as Jan said, "Play is important." I couldn't agree more! It is really important to allow kids to play and make a mess. This nurtures creativity!