Miss Endoso’s second grade class has been very busy working along side their middle school buddies on a project dedicated to the decoration of shoes and the creation of art murals. The students were teamed up with a middle school buddy from High Tech Middle Media Arts to write a fairytale, design and participate in the creation of art murals depicting the fairy tales, and to paint a pair of canvas shoes.
This shoe project was designed to give some joyful color and hope to the needy children of Africa. Each pair of shoes is being sent to orphaned and needy children in Northern Uganda. The murals are part of the Art Miles Mural Project, which is going to be part of a 12 miles mural in support of the UNESCO Decade for the Culture of Peace and Non-Violence Among Children of the World, (2001-2010).
The goal of the project is to create Global Harmony through Art. To date, over 1,400 murals have been painted by over 30,000 children and adults from 100 countries.
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‘Through My Eyes’ is the first photography exhibit created by the three third grade classrooms at Explorer Elementary Charter School. This year our third graders have been looking closely at photographs and learning how to take their own pictures. This is a peek at the first half of their photo journey. Each child participated in and contributed to 6 different exhibits including: Self Portraits, Best Part of Me, Elements of Design, David Hockney, Color Books and Photo Portfolios.
Special thanks to Elisa Thompson and Outside the Lens, a literacy Through the Arts program, and a special thanks to the San Diego Foundation Teacher’s Fund for the grant that started this journey.
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Room 3 and Room 4 have been learning all about APPLES. In class, the students have been doing a variety of activities involving apples, including: sorting & graphing in math, writing apple stickers stories & reading a variety of fiction and non-fiction books in language arts, observing and labeling the parts of an apple in science, tasting different kinds of apples, and making apple sauce. As a culminating activity for this unit, they
visited Corcoran Ranch, an apple orchard located in Ramona. The field trip included an educational presentation all about apples and how they grow by middle school students who work on the ranch. After this presentation the children were set free to pick apples from the hundreds of trees in the orchard. Every child was allowed to pick 15 apples, and even enjoy some right off the tree. There is nothing like the taste of an apple picked by your own hand on a crisp, fall day.
Room 1’s first grade class and Room 13’s fifth grade class Buddies enjoy the fruits of their labors. These pictures show the buddies working together on planting day, on harvest day and finally enjoying the radishes at their tasting party.
Planting Day
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Harvest Day
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Radishfest Tasting Party
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The students of the High Tech Village, in Liberty Station, Point Loma are participating in Pinwheels for Peace on September 21st, 2006. Pinwheels for Peace is an art installation project, encouraging children to make a public visual statement about their feelings on the subject of tolerance, cooperation, harmony and peace. The High Tech community embraces this project and the opportunity to make peace personally meaningful for each student. Pinwheels are symbolic of childhood and a carefree movement enhanced by the wind or the breath of a child. The project Pinwheels for Peace encourages children to consider their concept of peace and create a pinwheel as an outward demonstration.
The result will be an installation of Pinwheels created by each student in the village visually expressing their thoughts and feelings. The first Pinwheels for Peace were installed on September 2005. It is estimated that 500,000 pinwheels were planted in over 1,350 locations throughout the world. Nita Trocosso, art teacher at Explorer Elementary Charter School, one of seven schools in the High Tech community, learned of this program and saw the incredible opportunity that it posed for the children. Two art teachers, Ann Ayers and Ellen McMillan of Monarch High School in Coconut Creek, Florida, conceived the Pinwheels for Peace project. Explorer Elementary Charter School's employs a social emotional curriculum enhancing children's ability to communicate their thoughts and feelings in a healthy nurturing environment. The entire High Tech Community participated in the Pinwheels for Peace project as a healthy outlet for creatively exploring and expressing children's feelings about peace.
Explorer Elementary Charter School: 2230 Truxtun Road,
San Diego, CA 92106
Phone: 619. 398. 8600
Fax: 619. 398. 8601 E-mail: info@explorerelementary.org
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