Weekly Update 5/18/12

Look at all those pretty patterns!!! 

Last week Sigma finished sewing all their pillows.

Mrs. Kurpiarz, the Family and Consumer Science teacher, let use come in for one week for each cooking and sewing class.  Mrs. Ziegenfuss taught us how to hand-sew our pillow openings closed during team time, and we helped each other figure out how to do it.

Thank you, Mrs. Krupiarz!  

(Note Mr. Aho trying to cover up Eddie's University of Michigan pillow 

with his Michigan State Pillow!)

Mrs. Ziegenfuss demonstrating hand sewing on Mick's Lamborghini pillow.

Lauren and Katherine working together on Katherine's chili pepper pillow.

Mr. Aho let Matthew and David R. sew his MSU pillow.

Anna and Mili sewing their "friends" and tie-dye pillows.

Lucas sewing his junk food pillow while Gina sews her neon pillow.

Cici was one of the first people done with her junk food themed pillow.

Morgan hard at work on her flannel sheep pillow.

Kevin made a hawk pillow.

In language arts and social studies we are continuing to learn about Greek and Roman Mythology.  It is a favorite unit for most of us.  We  learned that a lot of myths include heroes, who are humans with exceptional skills.  We also learned a lot about the gods from our classmates' Prezis.  We also learned that every myth explains something about how the world is or about human nature.  During free reading time, many of us decided to read extra myths!

Hannah

Lucas

Anna

Jake and Max

GREEK MYTHOLOGY GODS AND GODDESSES PREZIS

In team time we made Prezis (a presentation program) about chosen Greek gods to share with the class. Last week our classmates showed us how to make a Prezi.  This week we got to choose a god we wanted to learn more about. We did it with or without a partner.  We learned that Prezi can make you dizzy because of all of the rotations that you can do to it.  Most of us thought Prezis were more fun to watch than Keynotes.  It is really easy to put in pictures and videos and design your own presentation, and we were excited to learn something new.  Some of us still like Keynote, though, so we will probably use both in the future, depending on the project. 

Here are a few of our best presentations: 

       

Gina's Athena Prezi

Hades on Prezi by Shane and Nicholas
("Hades gotta hate."~Shane)

Aphrodite on Prezi by Mili and Anna

Apollo on Prezi by Elton and James

The Greek god: Hercules on Prezi by Max and Samson

Persephone on Prezi by Sammi

On Tuesday we had an all-school assembly to hear the Thomas bands and chorus.  The chorus, symphonic, concert, and jazz bands performed.  It was fun to see our classmates performing and doing something that's not school-related.  We liked how they played "The Star Spangled Banner" and "Mission Impossible."  We also liked sitting on chairs instead of the floor!  We are proud of our talented Sigma band members:  Andrew, Morgan, Jaz, Mick, Mili, Nicholas, Elton, and Hannah; and our chorus members:  Anna, David P., and Sammi.

Concert band directed by Mr. Berry

Chorus directed by Ms. Horton

The audience

Weekly Update 5/4/12

Word as Image

This week in team we learned about a book called Word as Image by Ji Lee, who was a creative director at Google and is now at Facebook  The challenge is to create an image out of a word, using only the letters in the word itself.  In order to create our images, we really had to play around with the letters in our words without adding extra parts or symbols.  It was harder than it looked at first!  We each made at least one image that was related to what we learned in school, and the other could be about what we wanted.  Then many of us used keynote to animate our images.  We even watched all of them and voted for the top ten!  

Here are Sigma's winning word as images:

As a follow up to our cooking class, this week we had a sewing class. We are making pillows.  Below Mrs. Krupiarz is explaining the directions and supplies.  We all got to machine sew and turn our pillows, and next week we will stuff and hand sew the openings closed.  Check back next week for some great pillow pics!

       Morgan is threading a needle to start sewing her pillow.

Mick is pinning his pillow to know where to sew.

 Eddie is making sure that his sewing machine is threaded correctly before he starts to sew.

 Josh is rethreading his sewing machine.

Mili and Anna pinning their pillow.

Lauren and Katherine are hard at work.

From front to back, Cici, Jaz, Sammi, and Gina.

In language arts and social studies we are learning about Ancient Greece and Greek and Roman mythology.  James taught all of us how to use Prezi, a presentation tool that has one huge board with slides coming out in different directions instead of having slides in a row like in Keynote.  It is more challenging to type things in Prezi, but we think it looks better and is fun to watch.  He was assisted by Kyle and Shane.  We are using Prezi to make presentations about gods and goddesses that we want to learn more about.  We are including summaries of myths and lots of pictures and videos.  We will post them soon.

James introducing Prezi.

Kyle manning the controls.

Shane helping Nick start a Prezi.