angel island

The Coyotes and the Phantoms took advantage of this gorgeous day to take a trip to Angel Island by ferry to explore the geology of the island and its history as an immigration station for San Francisco. They were out the whole day, so I don’t have any of their stories to tell, but I’m sure they’ll be full of them when they get to school in the morning.

mapping local food

Using materials they purchased at the Ferry Building Farmers’ Market yesterday, the Sand Leopards cooked their own completely local (local meaning produced within 70 miles of Brightworks or no more than an hour’s drive away) meal for their lunch! Everything local – including the sugar and the salt! They looked at maps of California after they ate to chart where each ingredient had come from.

topography

Today:
More lego topography maps with the Rubber Band and the Coyotes…

… and debunking myths about pirate treasure maps with adults from the neighborhood.

mathy maps

Maps is such a great arc for exploring math!

The Rubber Band has taken the concepts of longitude and latitude literally and have been adventuring into the world to find the measurement of a minute of longitude. They spent all of last Thursday converting a coordinate from degrees, minutes, and seconds to decimal degrees after learning that the measurement changes depending on where you are located on the earth.

The Coyotes and the Phantoms worked together today exploring arrays and how they help illuminate the concept of area.

They are also exploring topography using legos. The Coyotes created their own topographical maps indicating level by which color they were using.

journeys

I liked these four photos below, collected – they tell a sweet story that these Phantoms took the week before spring break to Bernal Hill:

When you follow a map, you should consult a friend.

Sometimes you take the unmarked trail.

Often you must sit and consider the landscape before constructing your own map.

And it’s pretty great when you find where you’re supposed to go.

This week a few of the Phantoms took a trip to Golden Gate Park with a route of interesting places to see throughout the park. They planned out their journey at school and then did the trip in person, finding that small detours along the way made for great stories and added more depth to their understanding of place.

The Coyotes took a trip around the city to visit all of their houses. They did major show and tell of their homes and got special treats from their families. Each Coyote took charge of the map when it was their turn to take the rest of the group to their house!

And from today, a glorious sunny Community Friday:

coyotes exploring

The Coyotes have been busy! They spent part of their day planning for their home visit field trip tomorrow by looking at a map of San Francisco and plotting their course by car to each of their houses.

They’ve been watching this video and having dance parties to get their wiggles out and to become familiar with the locations of the fifty states in the US. They are playing a game called Stack the States and have been doing research in books while playing so they can answer all the questions.

They are working with square blocks and rulers to explore area and perimeter with some of the Phantoms.

The Coyotes are writing fantasy stories based on maps of their own creation! They started by looking at maps from fantasy stories and different images of the world, and then began drawing their own fantastical maps of their own made-up worlds.

topography and anatomy

There was the hum of focused activity in the school today as the Brightworks kids continued in their exploration of Maps. Here’s a few highlights:

The Sand Leopards drew maps of the different systems in the body and created games out of the different processes that happen in a human body. They had to do the research to be anatomically correct and create realistic rules to represent what happens inside the body to not only create a good experience for the game players but also teach the roadblocks and winding paths of the anatomical figure. At the end of the day they played their games and shared with the rest of the band.

The Rubber Band created their own Lego topography landscape using different colors for different layers to represent altitude. They charted their 3D landscapes in two dimensions from an aerial view on graph paper, which proved to be frustrating for them all! After many mistakes, nearly all students created a blocky, 2-D topography. Christie reports that they will tweak these rough maps into rounded, realistic topographical representations.