Tina West and Becky Cape, 3rd grade teachers at Hoopa Elementary School, embraced the constructive and creative chaos of the maker activity called The Cardboard Challenge.  Students designed and created their own arcade games from recycled materials.  

​Before students see the Chinese Acrobats at HSU's Van Duzer Theater, they are engaging in their own theatre arts challenge.  Juggling provides a series of sequential problems that require the student to calm down, pay attention, listen analytically, observe critically, focus on one activity at a time, plan a learning strategy, go step-by-step, stay on task, screen out distractions, and manage their muscles to act appropriately. They will persevere through a series of minor failures (drops), analyze final results of the process, and incorporate the newly learned activities into a larger pattern of complex learned activities that can be demonstrated and taught to others. It is a limitless, cumulative, branching model which teaches creative problem solving through direct experience and enhances creativity by offering intrinsic and extrinsic reinforcement with every gain in skill! 

Attendance was high at Washington Elementary School's Math Night.  NCAIP designed the math exploration you see pictured in these photos.  Students used the regular hexagons to tessellate the surface while also exploring color, textures and values.  Some students used scissors to deconstruct the hexagons into equilateral triangles, trapezoids and rhombi.  

Naturalists from the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge visited many ECS classrooms today to teach students about waterfowl, habitats and the Federal Junior Duck Stamp Conservation and Design Program.  This program raises funds for habitat conservation and thousands of students participate across the country every year.
 
Using scientific and wildlife observation principles, the program helps students visually communicate what they have learned by creating an entry for their state's JDS art contest. Judges select 25 winners from each of the four grade groups for prizes and one "Best of Show" winner who is entered in a national art competition. The winning national art entry is made into a conservation stamp. In 2016, Stacy Shen, age 16 from Fremont, won nationals and her art was made in the $5 conservation stamp.

The program provides an opportunity for students to express artistically their knowledge of the diversity, interdependence, and beauty of wildlife.​  For more information, visit this site.

Students at Zane Middle School are preparing for the annual theater event with Roy and Annalisa from Amazing Vox.  This year, the 8th grade art students will be making half-face masks to be used in the show.  Mr. Weiderman is collaborating with the North Coast Arts Integration Project to create a mask making technique that will work for a class of 32 eighth graders.  

So far, the mask process looks like this:

What we learned from the first iteration
The paper måché was too fragile and flexible.  We are now trying a material called Pariscraft which is similar to what used to be used to make casts for broken bones before doctors moved to fiberglass which is lighter and stronger.  Here are some images from the second iteration.  It seems to be working much better!

The Cooperation Challenge from the Focus 5 curriculum has students working together and reflecting on inclusive behaviors.  Here, Mrs. Younger's first graders are making groups of more than three.