[Week 02] Morning Programs

CREATOR SPACE ADVANCED

This week we did our first group project! Students created board games and made shrinky-dink board game pieces while we wait for our clay sculptures to dry. We also started making paper templates for our onigiri creature plushies.

DRAMA: SHARING STORIES
At the start of our second week, five new students have joined our class with potentially more on the way! This week we are focusing on “The Importance of Play”, and are exploring how the ideas of “Instinct, Generosity, and Freedom” can be utilized during both play-time and show-time. We have begun to learn several new performance games such as “Slo-Mo Olympics” and “Pop-up Story Book”. These games invite players to make strong choices while challenging them to listen to both verbal and non-verbal cues. Every day students are challenged to “fail spectacularly” and support each other through the struggle. Exercises like “Monikers” and “Lines & Blobs” help us to find commonalities and build trust within our ensemble. We have begun to push the boundaries on what “performance” and “play” mean and even created a human generated “Rainstorm” inside! Let’s just hope the roof of the Band room holds up for another week!

HNS: EXPLORERS

This week we had two field trips!

On Tuesday, we went to Mānoa Stream with Mr. Cory Yap to do a stream biodiversity study. We used the paʻepaʻe method to chase fish into the nets and caught three native oʻopu, about 40 mollies, and a snail or two. The stream water was cold and refreshing and although it rained part of the time, we enjoyed helping to protect the native species and seeing them in person. We also collected lots of seeds from a big lauhala tree to take back to our classroom to use as paintbrushes

On Wednesday, we visited the University of Hawai’i Insect Museum where two graduate students showed us preserved specimens of insects and their kin (related organisms such as spiders and scorpions). Along the way to the museum, we took a short tour of many of the interesting trees on campus and looked for their flowers and seeds, including: lauʻae ferns, breadfruit, plumeria, sausage tree, lantern tree, and kupukupu ferns. Then we explored the Japanese garden behind East-West Center where we saw crayfish, a frog, koi, mollies, shrimps, swordtails, and other fish up close.

Back at school we caught roly polys, beetles, ants, spiders, an inchworm, and a flying bug and looked at them with magnifying glasses to try to identify them. Does anyone know what the black beetles that you can find easily in the grass are called? We searched online and found lots of candidates but couldn’t figure it out!

HNS: OBSERVERS

This week we learned about seed dispersal through out Whirling Wonders Activity (see photos).  We also continued to nurture the plants we started last week by watering and measuring them.  Some of our plants are growing really tall!

We also went on two field trips this week.  Mr. Cory Yap took us to Manoa Stream where we caught a lot of invasive fish using the traditional fishing techniques we learned last week. The fish we caught were put in buckets so we could project the native fish in the stream!

For our second field trip, we walked across the UH Manoa campus to the UH Insect Museum where we learned about a lot of different insects and were able to look at their many preserved specimen’s, We also visited the Korean Temple and Koi Pond on campus.

HNS: RESEARCHERS
The students were able to help our native stream animals this week by catching and removing 85 fish that considered invasive and a threat to our native fish. We also found 1 native oopu!!
For our second field trip this week, we visited UH Manoa’s insect museum. This little museum on campus is home to million of preserved insects from all over our world.

LET’S PLAY SPORTS
This week in Let’s Play Sports, we worked on basic skills of soccer and we ended with smaller games of soccer. Students were also able to learn various cardiovascular activities, which they absolutely loved. Next week we will dive right into basketball and the basic skills needed to play the sport. It was a great week!

LITTLE JOURNALISTS
This week the Little Journalists practiced their camera skills, taking photos of animate and inanimate subjects. They also continued their work covering other Summer Programs classes, building their interviewing chops on both in-person and online interviews.

STEM: DISCOVERY
This week in STEM Discovery, the students learned about the different states of matter. They got to observe and play with oobleck, which most students thought was solid and liquid because of its unique qualities. The students also used their observation skills when combining mixtures to make play-dough. They also got to see the reaction of salt and water through a painting. The students will continue to use their planning and building skills.

STOP MOTION ANIMATION
This week, we continued to work on and eventually finished our 2nd project, a 2-D stop motion animation story on letter-size paper). Then we began Project 3 which is similar to the last project, but with more guidelines. For Project 3, students must include multiple moving things, color, 15-20 slides/drawings, as well as a foreground, middle ground, and background. Once they are done with their drawings, the students take photos of each page, upload them to computer, and create stop motion animation video with video editing software.

STORY ART, SMART ART, LET’S GET ARTED
This week in Let’s Get Arted, students colored their writing adding descriptive details. Students practiced using interesting words to help show and not tell in their writing. Students described characters actions in their stories. We read “Ish” by Peter Reynolds about a creative boy who learns that thinking “ish-ly” is far more wonderful than “getting it right.” The story is about a boy who loves to draw but in one split second, all that changes. A single reckless remark by Ramon’s older brother, Leon, turns Ramon’s carefree sketches into joyless struggles. Luckily for Ramon, though, his little sister, Marisol, sees the world differently. She opens his eyes to something a lot more valuable than getting things just “right,” she opens Ramon’s world to ish-ly thinking! Students learned about kindling our creative flames with care.

We played drawing games. One of the games we played was called the “Squiggle Game,” where two students each squiggle a line for the other and trade sheets of paper. Then they made a drawing from the line their partner made.

We continued writing creative tales. We built silly stories with story element cards. Each student got a setting, character and event to create a fun story about. Students really enjoyed the surprise element of not knowing what their silly prompt was going to be! Students also enjoyed reading another award winning wordless picture book “The Journey” by Aaron Becker. The story is about a lonely and board girls’ creative adventure to stop her boredom and make a friend. Even though these are wordless books, students paid close attention to the details to follow the story. This story was great practice for students to use their descriptive writing, coloring their stories with words and images. The students came up with beautiful and creative stories and illustrations.

Students work on publishing their stories by either designing paper books or typing their stories into google slides to be shared digitally or to be printed. We are also working on making individual digital/hardcopy portfolios for our published works to share with family and friends at the end of the summer.

On Friday, we went on a field trip to the Hawaii State Art Museum (HiSAM). We had a blast at the museum! Students learned about an array of artwork while looking at how color is a building block of many pieces found in the museum’s collection.