Nothing But Words

Kai showing off his creation at the Haverford art show for all the district’s elementary schools View at Picasa Kai showing off his creation at the Haverford art show for all the district’s elementary schools02-Jun-2010 08:45, SONY DSC-W55, 2.8, 6.3mm, 0.025 sec, ISO 100

Kai, learned scholar of Islam View at Picasa Kai, learned scholar of Islam02-Jun-2010 23:28, SONY DSC-W55, 4.5, 14.3mm, 0.02 sec, ISO 125

Kai is having a busy last couple of months in 3rd grade. Last month he was in a recorder concert with his music class. The video below is a small group within the class playing the song Steppin’. In the video it’s hard to understand what the teacher is saying at the beginning – he’s explaining that Kai and a few other kids found the song on the teacher’s web page and started teaching themselves how to play it (the teacher intended the song for his 5th grade class). The teacher spent a small amount of time guiding them through the trickier parts of the song, but they mostly learned it themselves.

Video – Kai and his 3rd grade classmates perform Steppin (Kai is right next to the microphone stand) View at Picasa Video – Kai and his 3rd grade classmates perform Steppin (Kai is right next to the microphone stand)29-Apr-2010 23:29

Today Kai did a presentation on Egypt for his class, which is why he’s wearing a jalabiya in the picture above (Maria covered herself up and took him to an Islamic store in West Philadelphia to buy it for him). He also brought in a prayer rug, drew a map of Egpyt, and made a desert diorama with legos (with a combination of pieces from a SpongeBob set and a Prince of Persia set).

In April, Maria spent a lot of time and energy planning an Asian culture day for his class, and took a day out of work to manage it. Several of her students and another Villanova professor also participated. Unfortunately she was too busy to take pictures, but they had the kids:

• Learn Tinikling dancing from the Phillippines
• Create Mali mud cloth
• Make Vietnamese spring rolls
• Learn some basics of Islamic etiquette, and learn how to write their names in Arabic
• Do an international trade simulation. Maria put this together and it sounded amazing. She had the kids break into groups and pretend to be different countries. Each country had to make various shapes out of paper, as a way to represent their economic output. Some groups got a lot of tools like scissors, rulers, etc, others got a few tools, and some got none at all. They then had a time limit to make as many high quality shapes as they could. I’m forgetting some of the specifics at this point, but they then had a way to pretend to sell their creations, and use the money to expand their tool kits. A key point was to illustrate that it’s hard for a country to grow it’s economy (especially in relative terms) , even when it tries hard, when it starts from a weak position. While it’s a simplified exercise, it’s also an impressive way to get kids to begin comprehending a complex topic.