Famous African Acrobats

We enjoyed a great lyceum today put on by the Famous African Acrobats. The group was founded in 1997 in Mombasa, Kenya, by Abdul Maluzi, and they are currently based in St. Louis, Missouri. They have performed in schools, circuses, theme parks, resorts, and cruises. The kids were amazed at their skills in gymnastics, jump roping, juggling, limbo, balancing, and human pyramids. What a great show!

How do they do that??
How low can he go? Actually, they lowered the bar even further than this!


Jumping rope looks pretty easy....

But try it again on your hands! One performer actually jumped rope sitting down with his legs straight out in front of him. The rope is going so fast you can hardly see it.

Again, balancing these block looks easy...

Now try doing a hand-stand on the blocks! Next, he balanced on just one hand.

The somersaults through a hoop were great. They went so fast that several of my pictures were blank - I couldn't snap fast enough!

Ever try balancing head-to-head?

Wow - what strength!

The kids sat in awe during the whole performance, and hopefully, they all heard the last comment by one of the acrobats -

DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!

December Students of the Month

Mr. K. came in today to present the December Student of the Month awards, and also to give pencils to everyone who has a January birthday.

Congratulations to this month's winners!

Back to Art Class

We went back to the Art Room on Friday to work more on our painting projects from last week. Today, we learned how artists mix colors to get the exact shades they want. We only got the primary colors (red, blue, and yellow), plus black and white, to paint our pictures, and then we had to mix the colors ourselves.

Some of us were still working on the transfer process.

Ready to paint.

We have to put on a paint shirt to protect our clothes, and then, finally, it's time to add color!
We use ice cream bucket covers to mix the paint.

Look! I made green!
We had to leave our finished paintings in the Art Room to dry over the weekend. They will be on display next week for everyone to see!

Snowflake Snowmen

It's winter and snow is everywhere! It's even been snowing inside, but the snowflakes in our classroom are made of paper instead of water. We have been learning how to cut snowflakes this week, so by the end of the day our floor has been covered with little scraps. We've spent lots of time picking up!

To make our snowmen, we cut out three circles, folded them, and then cut little snippets to make snowflakes.

Next, we stacked them up, glued them to blue paper, and added details.

These glue sticks work pretty well, and they aren't as messy as regular glue.

Don't they look cute?

Art Class

One of our special classes each week is Art. We go to the Art room for a 50 minute period and work on lots of neat projects, using a variety of materials. This week, we started a new project that involved drawing a picture using pencil, and then tracing over it with a sharpie marker. Next, we taped the picture up to the window and transferred the image to special paper for painting. Next week, we will paint our pictures. Watch for next week's post to see the final projects!

This is fun!

Mrs. S. gives us directions, and also suggestions as to how to make our pictures better.

We could use magazines for ideas for animals and outdoor scenes.

It takes a lot of concentration!

We sometimes share ideas.

Sometimes we need an eraser, too.

This underwater scene should look really neat when it's painted.

We add lots of details to our pictures.

Good think the pencil is nice and sharp!

Almost ready for the marker.

The newspaper protects the table from marker soaking through the paper.

It's fun to use markers.

All done with the drawing and tracing steps.

Now to the window for the transfer step.

The light makes the marker show up really well!

We're all looking forward to next Friday when we can paint our pictures!