Fun Run, Bird Research, Storytelling & African Dance

What fun the Whales had this week! The Whales showed up to the Fun Run with enthusiasm and drive! They just kept running and running! We are so proud of the Whales for working so hard. After the Fun Run, the Whales had the choice of laying down to read, or to work on their writers workshop stories. The Whales really enjoyed this quiet time to rest their bodies and to continue to work on their stories.

During the week, we heard from many Whales about their researched bird. We have learned so many unique facts about their different birds. Ask your Whale about their cool fact about their bird. We also learned about birds in flight. We talked about how wings are designed for flying. We looked at the motion that wings use. They flap up and rotate. They do not just move up and down. We looked at how long a wing span would have to be for a human to be able to fly. The wing span would have to be 1 and 1/2 times the height of the person. We measured what that wing span would look like and each Whale stood next to it to see how big it would feel to have wings that would help them fly. At the end of that day, we made different paper airplanes that were similar to the types of flying we learned about (active soaring, passive soaring, high-speed, and elliptical). The Whales tested their paper airplanes in the Atelier.

On Thursday, we had a guest speaker. Ms. Habiba is a oral storyteller and African dance instructor. She came into our classroom to tell the students some different oral stories. The Whales learned about her home country of Ghana. They learned 5 different ways to say thank you from different countries in Africa. Ms. Habiba also taught the Whales an African Dance. She taught us how to move our body to a beat, and we danced along to her drum. It was so lovely to have Ms. Habiba visit us and the Whales had a great time!