Student+Summaries

Tuesday, March. 24th
Project Maya rensizzle today was very productive. I think that Sabrina and I accomplished a lot of work. We came up with an idea to create silk screen logo for Project Maya to raise money. I think that many people will purchase these bags because they won't feel embarrassed or shy to wear the Project logo.We simply created the initials PM in different fonts. today...Deisy, Karla, Azaria, Sylvia, and Tsechu all overdubbed their voices on Dennis's song "todo es mi familia" adding beautiful harmonies to our Project Maya anthem... Today we were shown how to do the Mexica dance from Dennis and it was interesting. Later we were shown a new song that goes like this "todo es mi familia (familia) and later everyone sang the words to the song. I was reluctant to sing, but I sang a long with Sylvia, and Deisy was insisting so I thought I would give it a try. Later i just worked on the portfolio page on the wiki, and I began to work on my artifact collaborating with Sylvia for our portfolios. Also today was good because in E.T.'s class there was food like brownies, rice, tacos, etc. When I first walked into the classroom, Dennis was teaching Rachel & Sylvia a native dance. It seemed **REALLY HARD** to do, so you know I wasn't even going to attempt to try it. Later, he introduced some songs and told us that he'd be able to teach us it. There was one in particular that really caught my attention because the lyrics were so //beautiful.// It talked about how I'm a kid from the earth and my heart is a star.. aww!! Overall, today was a very productive day for our group. I finalized the flyer for the Cinco de Maya celebration & went through my pictures from Mexico and I tested out a slideshow with music in the background & also thought about different things that I plan on doing throughout the week. Today, Rachel and I learned the introduction to a Mexica dance. Then Denis taught us all a song, "todo es mi familia." We then worked on the wikispace and then went for lunch. Afterwards, I sang part of the song we learned earlier with a few others down in the music room (*how embarassing) and then I worked on an artifact with Azaria for my portfolio. Today was a very interesting day. At first Diesy and company were planning out the different activities and times that we should have the children's caranaval and then after we showed Nick our plans we had to fix some minor details in order for it to work out. However my favorite part of the day was when we went into the music room and recorded for Dennis's song. I never recorded a song and Deisy felt like she was a pop star so I let her live her dream and she was great with vocals. However in the middle of the song we kept repeating the same line over and over again to the point where Deisy started laughing and then I couldn't help to laugh as well which ended up in both of us laughing for the remaining 10 seconds of the song. For the last few minutes of class Dennis, Diesy,Rachel. Dylan and I brainstormed some ideas for the third grade lesson on mammals and non-mammals and found out the hard work and time that goes into lesson plans. Even though we didn't have a solid lesson plan we did have certain ideas that we wanted to work with and we took them home with us to think about so that we could have a solid lesson plan for the next day.
 * Gloriana**
 * Dylan**
 * Azaria**
 * Kristina:**
 * Sylvia:**
 * Karla:**

**Wednesday, March 25th **
Teaching the litttle kids was a pleasant surprise...they were very attentive, interested, and very knowledgeable. Tomorrow, 2 more classes to teach... Today was kind of like yesterday for me, I continued editing the wiki and working on my portfolio. At the end of the day I saw all the bags and shirts that were made and helped the others clean the art room. Today was awesome. Teaching the third graders is so far the highlight of my week. It was interesting because Dennis sort of gave us a little preparation of how to work with the little kids. Because little kids have small attention spans we had to make sure that we had activities that would involve a lot of thinking as well as physical movement. It was surprising that the third graders knew so much information about the animals we were doing presentations on, they kept adding additional information that I'm sure most of us fellow project Maya members didn't know. I enjoyed working with the third graders very much and they were such active and funny kids that they brightened my day, hopefully we get to work with them again in the near future.
 * Dylan**
 * Azaria:**
 * Karla:**

I felt that today, I accomplished more than I did on the other days. In the morning, some of us taught a lesson to the third grade. We each chose an animal to teach about. I did the snake. While doing research on my animal, I learned new things about its significance to the Mayan culture. I was nervous about going to teach the third grade. For one, I didn't think I could go up there and talk to little kids. I was afraid I would start laughing. It turns out, it was easier than I thought. The kids were a big help-they were eager to participate and they were really cute. They knew their stuff. After talking about the animals we had, we did a dance with them. Well actually, Denis did. None of us really knew the dance. They then had a chance to color. I think that it seemed so easy because Denis helped us out a lot. Tomorrow, we're going to have to do most of the actual teaching/talking. I'm a bit nervous but the kids are going to be younger so I think it may be easier. For most of the afternoon, I continued work on my portfolio peice. We then went downstairs to help with the screen printing. I got to go to the laundromat and dry the bags with Dylan. That was an interesting experience since I've never actually done laundry before. The most interesting part about it was that it was so cheap. I never knew that.
 * Sylvia:**