Picasso at the SAM... a successful field trip from the art to the museum in general

Last Wednesday, the 8th grade class took the bus to an exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum... to see Picasso! Sixteen out of the twenty-nine girls in our class had never been to the exhibition before. Imani Apostal says, "It was really fun! I really liked all of the abstract paintings."

It was really engaging: Each group was lead by a museum docent. The docent imparted a plethora of background information about Picasso's paintings. Not only did we learn about his work, but we learned about Picasso himself. Before we visited the museum, we had a few different Picasso lessons and discussions in Spanish and Art class and it was great to see what we were learning .

Everyone found one piece they really admired. Evy Larsen says, "I love the Dora Maar picture where the woman figure is green and crying. It represents violence and sadness in the war. He made that painting to get him in the mood to make the Guernica picture." Anna Konsmo says of the artwork, "They made me think of art in a new form."

Everyone had a great time at the exhibition, and hopefully we will be able to go back to the SAM again! Payton Curtis says of the experience, "It was so unique!" The experience was so spectacular, the class is optimistic that we will be able to see the Nick Cave: Center of the Earth exhibition on textiles and art in the near future.

Ask your own daughter what her favorite works of art were, and what she thought of the museum!

From Hair and Nails, to Languages and Cities, Theme Takes On a Whole New Meaning!

This is the first week of individual theme. We're working hard to kick it off, and getting nervous. Ruby Wood, who is learning Italian for her theme, says that she is "worried about the stress level but excited to learn what I've always wanted to know." I think we're all excited to start working on our own. Last theme didn't go as smoothly as we hoped, which was probably because of working in a group so we couldn't all do what we really wanted. This theme things are looking hopeful as we begin with more experience and are driven to do something we are very passionate about.

Some of the theme ideas for this term are:

Photography

Gymnastics

Short films

Languages

Cities

Music

Nail art

Knitting

Using natural remedies on animals

Hair

Makeup

History of fashion

Talk to your daughter about what she's doing for her project over the next seven weeks!

Mentoring Girls... To Learn and Give Back

As some of you may know, the 8th graders are currently doing SJCU work: Social Justice Cultural Understanding. In SJCU, we learn about different cultures, biases, and how to overcome and differentiate myths and facts. Previously in SJCU, we read excerpts from The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks By Rebecca Skloot. We read and annotated text, held class discussions, and did projects about Henrietta Lacks' story, and the racism involved.

On Wednesday, we started something new and exciting in SJCU! We are mentoring to 4th and 5th grade girls at Madrona K-8 school and Thurgood Marshall elementary school in areas of reading, writing and math. The goal of this is to empower these young girls, because this age is usually the time when girls start to not speak up in class, and teachers pay more attention to boys. Another goal, is for us to grow more culturally aware. The two schools are very culturally different rom us, and we'll learn from these girls about their own culture, as much as they will about us.

I think it will be a really great experience for us, as well as the girls. At Thurgood, we'll be doing more school work from all over, and at Madrona we will focus on writing and art. If you are a parent, ask your daughter what school she goes to!

Thanks for reading, and we will keep posting about how our experiences are going with empowering girls at these elementary schools. We will be continuing for the whole year, on every other Wednesday morning.

Thanks for reading!

Unofficial Dress Up Day in 8th Grade

The Most Perfect Worlds

Last Thursday, twenty nine "perfect worlds" were in our classroom! The Language Arts assignment was to create our own perfect world- with the perfect political system, monetary setup, the perfect environment, the choice of animals or not... etc. Almost everyone had a certain "theme" to theirs: there was a candy land world, world of movies and entertainment, a stress free world, music world, paradise/island worlds, desserts and sweets world... and many others!

There were four sections to the project, and we had eight weeks to complete it. First section was answering the questions (for example, what are the holidays/traditions?) in a creative way, like in a guidebook, story, or magazine. The second section was to write a "day in the life" story about a teenage girl in our world. Third, was to create an overhead map- many students got very creative at this part; There were collages, maps made of food, drawings, dioramas, etc. The final section was to include at least ten vocabulary words of our world, and what they mean and how to use them.

It was a super fun assignment, and it was great to have so much freedom with it. How many other students from other schools get to create their perfect world they would love to live in, and share it with the community (other grades and faculty came in to view them)? Although this was a challenging academic project- it was hard to think of things such as the political system: it's definitely challenging to think of a completely perfect way to run your world!

We all worked hard on the project, and spent many hours working, although some people learned that although we had two months to finish, we have to make our own benchmarks and use all of the time given.

Thanks for reading about the 8th grade's perfect worlds!