Yesterday, we took our annual fourth grade field trip to Choctaw Days at Lauren Rogers Museum of Art.

Students participated in a variety of stations to learn about traditions of the Choctaw Indians in our area.  We tried frybread, a traditional Indian food.  Students used paper strips to stimulate basket weaving after viewing the basket gallery.  We also experienced and participated in Choctaw dances and created beaded necklaces to simulate ones that Choctaw Indians would wear.  A great time was had by everyone!

For the past three weeks, the students have studied about famous children’s authors that mostly write chapter books for upper elementary age students. The students read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl and learned all about his life as an example. The students then paired up to research their own famous author. Each pair wrote a biography about the author and read a book by the author. The students then wrote summaries of the book, wrote the narrative elements of the book, critiqued the book, and created a book bag to represent the book. The students took all of this information and created a PowerPoint presentation to share with the class. The students put a lot of hard work into this, and it paid off. They did a great job!

Students created a dance, but not just any dance! A dance that showcased particular muscles! Students learned about leading as a dance term and discussed what movement would look like if you were to lead with a particular bone. (We have previously learned all about the skeletal system. We’re pros at that now.) Students then created a dance in groups to jazz music while showcasing four muscles. The audience determined what muscle they were leading with!

The students learned all about the holiday Day of the Dead that is celebrated throughout Mexico and other South American and Central American countries to remember the loved ones they have lost. Students learned that Calaca is the Spanish word for Skeleton. The students also learned about sugar skulls and how during the Day of the Dead celebrations these sweet treats are decorated using symmetry, pattern, color, and repetition. The students took this knowledge and created a Calaca of their own using the artistic techniques learned from the sugar skulls and their knowledge of the different bones of the skeletal system.  Come see our beautiful Sugar Skull Skeletons hanging in the foyer!

The students learned about artwork by famous artist, Alexandra Nechita. This artist began her career at the early age of eight years old – how cool! She incorporated stories in her abstract art and often made the artwork of a colossal size. Each class then read a story by famous author, Roald Dahl, and created a work of art that correlated with the summary of that story using the someone-wanted-but-so-then method of completing summaries. Look at our artwork and see if you can figure out our summaries!

Schipke’s Class  – The Witches by Roald Dahl

Watts’s Class – James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl

Ivy’s Class – The BFG by Roald Dahl

Students created their own marionette skeleton and made a key to show several bones in the skeletal system. The marionettes then performed the song that the students had learned the previous week in music infusion. See the post below about the song!

Comparing and Contrasting. Venn Diagrams and paragraphs.  It’ s a normal thing to do with literature! But why not with music; when you have two different versions of the same song? Students compared and contrasted the original and remakes of “I Will Always Love You” and “Smooth Criminal.”  They used principles and elements of music to listen for timber, tempo, voices, and more!

While learning between incomplete and complete stages of metamorphosis, students compared it with the evolution of music. Students watched the video, Evolution of Music by Pentatonix, and looked for ways that music has changed since the beginning of time. From the beginning years of humming and chants, to adding additional voices and then instruments, the students saw and heard the evolution of music. Then in small groups, the students watched a quick metamorphosis video of either a grasshopper, salmon fly, or butterfly where they had to identify if the insect uses complete or incomplete metamorphosis. Students then presented their insect through the progression of music. The presentations started as the reader chanted the reading of the story of their insects’ life cycle. Students added voices and instruments as the progression of the stages deepened as the cycle continued along with showing their knowledge of the evolution of music.

I think that it was a good lesson! It was also a creative lesson! My favorite part was when she let us do the music with the instruments. I loved watching the video too.           – Laila

My favorite part about this task is that we learned metamorphosis through music.          – Arberney

I liked the part when we played our insects metamorphic cycle with music.- Kaylen

This week, we finished up a unit on Jim Henson.  Students learned that he was born right here in MISSISSIPPI!  We then learned that Henson was the creator of one of our favorite muppets, Kermit!  After talking about how Henson created the children’s show Sesame Street to make learning fun, we wrote our own scripts and created our own children’s show skit.  For the skits, students paired up had to teach their audience how to perform a simple procedure, such as making a sandwich or brushing their teeth.  Once the students created their skits, they each worked to create their own muppet and performed their show for their class!  They did an AWESOME job on these!!