Yesterday, we succeeded in writing our pen pal letters to Ghana. We told our pen pals a little bit about ourselves and then we tried to think of questions to ask them that were both unusual as well as sensitive to their environment and culture.
We asked questions like: What's the first thing you see when you walk out your front door? What's the biggest bug you've ever seen? What do you want to be when you grow up?
Our letters are going to go first to L.A. and then be hand-carried to Ghana in February by a group of kids going with the organization called Kids Helping Kids (www.kidzhelpingkids).
Kyra continued reading aloud Roald Dahl's book The Witches. Finally, we started selecting the pieces we are going to share with you at Friday's reading.
Later in the afternoon we walked to the little park and did "rubbings" of textures found on trees, leaves, concrete etc. in our sketchbooks and then stopped to draw our climbing tree. On the way back we picked up leaves and branches to use for printmaking later in the afternoon. Back at Musically Minded, the students added photos and stamps to their letters to Ghana . We then looked at Asante of Ghana symbols for love, strength, rhythm and patience and with sponge cutouts created paper pattern prints resembling Adinkra cloth. Then we brought out our nature finds and sponge-rolled leaves, lemons etc. to make prints creating wrapping paper, notecards etc. A busy and productive day!