kites and coal

Everyone quickly broke into bands this morning after a quick hello, and the day began!Thor and Mark talked to the currency group this morning about the currency of time.During the Flying Fish's morning writer's workshop, Natasha Mei and Bruno Kai explained the symbolism of the willow branches, tangerines, and red and gold banners that they brought in to celebrate Chinese New Year.They taught their band how to say happy new year in two different ways. Bruno showed Aidan how to write happy in Chinese. Clementine gave Natasha and Bruno a new years card made with red and gold colored pencils.The Ninja Cats experimented with building car models from a sketch that Chane made. They were testing out how to make a potential energy car - without burdensome yet, to a Ninja Cat's mind, absolutely necessary decorations that would ultimately weigh it down.The Flying Fish explored the purpose and placement of kite string on the kites they made last week. After testing several different connecting points, they made some interesting discoveries.Aidan and Lola discovered that you can make a kite stay up in the air with just one finger if you put your finger in the very middle and run forward.Bruno Kai and Ninja Ben decided that the kite worked best when the string is attached to the middle.Natasha, Clementine, and Logan noticed that the kites flew best when they were perpendicular to the wind.The Undead Goats shattered a mirror for their high speed photography experiments, and while I don't have photo proof to show, I was assured that it did work!Henry and Isaac continued working on their motion video production, and Josh worked with Ben and Connor on logic problems. They started with some more basic problems, but then Josh stumped them with this one and they'll probably be thinking for a while.In the afternoon we had a visit from one of the artists behind the Beehive Collective's incredible poster, "The True Cost of Coal," and an enormous tapestry of the poster itself.After getting a very close view of the poster, we sat back and listened as Zeph explained the origins of the poster and the intricate story that it tells about the coal industry through imagery of nature as its medium.The bands split up and took pieces of the poster to interpret the story being told in each of their sections. They talked about the different characters and symbols used to represent different parts of the story and interpreted what everything meant to the larger narrative.After some exploration under the tapestry...... the flying fish headed out to the front of the school to test their kites. Unfortunately the camera battery had run out so we didn't get photos, but Mackenzie wrote, "We were turning heads left and right and putting smiles on the faces of passersby. There were some really great observations about wind and how it travels down the street and can be blocked by buildings. The fish were delighted when a gust of wind picked up their kites and made them fly with out having to run. Ben and Bruno told me all about how they could feel the kite poofing up with wind through the kite string. Lola, eyes alight, recalled a line from the poem we read last week, "Who Has Seen the Wind?" by Christina Rossetti, and said, 'We can see it right now in the kites!'"