HOORAY! What a LAUNCH to our 2022 celebration of Mother Nature’s harvest yesterday with our RECHARGED annual Fall Cardboard Challenge! It was our first celebration of creative chaos and community---Waters-style--- this year together.

This year, we had a special celebration of the 10th Anniversary of Caine’s Arcade! We honored how one person can change the world---big or small😊!

Designing families made innovative arcade games galore! Two new student-created pop-ups were created this year---a Wavemaker Cardboard Maze Challenge led by Ms. Rovito and our ALT Crew's Wavemaker Bake Sale! Thanks also to Room 208 for our Hot Chocolate & Bake Sale signs😊! What fun!

We raised $79 in donations to The Friendship Center to help support their good work! Thank you MS Wavemakers!

Many thanks to Ms. Mermuys, Ms. Rivadeneira, Ms. Garcia and Ms. Rovito for collaborating on this off-the-clock way to celebrate the arts together! Many thanks to all who came out and joined us for this fun community gathering!

A special shout-out to the Gallery-Lange family for all of that a-MAZE-ing cardboard! Thank you!

Any cardboard game ideas and prototypes can be entered in the Radio Flyer game design contest here: https://www.chitag.com/yic

BRAVO EVERYONE!

This month we are wrapping up our collage experimentation and GROWING Self Portrait boxes. Students will be planting our grow boxes with Ms. Rovito!

These artworks will be featured at our Semester 1 exhibit! We look forward to seeing them, and ALL of our artworks and collaborations at our upcoming Harvest Arts Fest. Student still-life collages, printmaking experimentations, Dia de los Muertos artworks, Identity in Ink drawings and other collaborative projects will be featured.

SAVE the DATE: December 2, 2022 (3:30-4:30PM)!

What a meaningful LAUNCH to our student-created Gift From the Heart Literary Salon!

4th &5th graders in Rooms 317 & 319 began their Tres Americas Board Game Collaboration with by unpacking Jane Yolen's Encounter. We are excited to begin this community and parent collaboration with the Field Museum and National Museum of Fine Art. This project is based on students’ Indigenous study of the Americas in their language arts, social studies and science curricula.

Rooms 208 & 202 were treated to a fantastic bilingual storytelling event by Jhonefer Mazegiegos-De Leon and Arturo Lopez (Room 304). The story was called Salsa! A Cooking Poem, written and illustrated by Jorge Argueta and Duncan Tonatiuh. What fun!

Mrs. Johnson shared her favorite Celia Cruz song too--- AZUCAR NEGRA Thank you Mrs. Johnson!

Room 201 and Literary Salon Reading Buddy LAUNCH Read Aloud Frida. We will be sharing our collection of bilingual picture books with some of our youngest readers to begin this Gift from the Heart student initiative. This will be a great way to share our special collection and build friendships across the grade levels. We will be buiding on this model in the months to come!

A special integration project is starting with Room 217’s 3rd graders. We are basing our cross-cultural naturalist study rooted in our all-school Hispanic Heritage Month celebration of the Flags of the Americas. Students studied the plants and animals and habits of Uruguay (the flag/country of their classroom) with Ms. Berezka.

We are looking closely at the Indigenous uses of plants and other creatures in the rainforest community and comparing this study to the original Potawatomi tribe's plants and animal farming of Chicago. We are creating native plants cardboard games for our upcoming Harvest Arts Fest. We will also be studying Black Pheasant, Potawatomi Chief of the Chicago region.

Frida is read aloud in Spanish here by William Estrada, CAPE friend and fellow Chicago art teacher, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eN2tNYu_QiE&ab_channel=williamestrada

Intermediate & Middle School Lunchtime Librarians are cataloging our books now! We look forward to adding more culturally responsive texts.

If you would like to donate any Indigenous Peoples’ Day books to our Gift from the Heart Library, we would greatly appreciate it.

Here is a great Native Voices book wish list created by Amazon, many of which are personal my favorites😊! Please just send your donation to school attention to Gift from the Heart Library.

Thank you in advance: https://www.amazon.com/gp/most-wished-for/books/3099/ref=zg_mw_nav_books_4_3094

We are looking for a replenishing of cardboard egg crates, cereal boxes and paper towel rolls after yesterday’s celebration. Please leave in Main Office. Thanks in advance!

The Art Lab is always busy making and is always making a mess! If you can donate any consumable cleaning and hand wipes to the Art Lab---it is greatly appreciated! Thank you in advance---bulk wipes.

We are also looking for gourds---all shapes and sizes! Thanks so much!

With Kindness,

Mrs. Vecchioni

Email: alvecchioni@cps.edu
Website: https://sites.google.com/cps.edu/waters-art-lab/home
Location: 4540 North Campbell Avenue, Chicago, IL, USA
Phone: 7735345090