Thanks for reading the blog. Let me just say that these kids are smart, and endlessly creative. The way our arts integration is going to work is that we are doing four three week chunks of arts integration. The first three weeks, which are the 14, 21 and 28 of October, we have been mostly been looking to expose the students to creative drama work while incorporating science and a little work with reader's theater at the end.
On this visit, on October 14 (sorry I'm late getting this and the other one up!) I knew that the students had been taught some of the major bones in the human body. I wanted to teach why bones are important and give the students a chance to explore what their bones are doing and how they work for other creatures on earth.
We started the lesson with having each student introduce themselves and create a sound with their name. For example, when I said Mr. Savage, I said "Saaaaavvvvaaaaagggggee" like a fog horn with one group and "Ssssa-a-a-a-a-vvvv-aaaggggeee" Like starting a motor with another group. The students created some animal noises, used interesting voices, and made other robotic or mechanical sounds to say their names. Then with those noises, each student found a repetitive motion to make that corresponded with their noisy names. Each person then became part of a human machine (which I wish I'd grabbed a video of! Maybe Miss Brown can do that another time).
This picture is us introducing ourselves ---->
The students explored what their machine could be doing, and we talked about how important even in this made up machine, taking parts out changes what it can do, and limits our ability to do what we were designed to do. The students made some really awesome comparisons to what we need for our own bodies. This led to a demonstration of animals in a power point and their bones. The students identified what bones we had in common and different from animals like King Cobras, Jelly Fish, Ducks, Kittens and so forth. With each animal, we moved like them and talked about how those bones helped us move, or served other purposes.
When we finished this part of the activity we asked what bones do in our own bodies. They came up with "Supporting" "Protecting" and "Giving Shape" or "Forming." Smart kids, right? So we then acted out what would happen if we missed certain bones. Like "Shaking hands without phalanges" or "standing without a spine" or "moving without tibia and lower bones."
Ultimately these kids came up with some fantastic ideas and were able to really discover how to build upon the things that they actually know, and get up and learn those things with their own bodies. I'll bet if you asked your kids at home to explain or try some of these same things, you'd be amazed to see just how much they retained. Their human machines are pretty great.
Until next time!
