Primary Social Studies is starting a brand new unit on The Story of Humans, covering the journey of human beings from pre-historic times through our modern innovations. This week, they read a book about the human body explaining cellular structures and anatomy at their level. Check out this anatomy puzzle they made on Friday!
Raising Funds for a Spring Dance
The students in our High School Career Exploration class all earned Safe Food Handler certificates and have been raising money every week by selling quesadillas and fresh lemonade at lunch. All of the proceeds will go toward putting on a school dance in May! The Career Exploration students are also busy planning and preparing for the dance. This week they created playlists, planned menus, and scouted venues for the event.
Our Primary Language Arts class worked incredibly hard on their independent research projects on an animal of their choice! Every student had the chance to present to family and friends on Wednesday -and they crushed it! Complete with handmade masks and scientific facts, the Primary students really impressed us this week.
A Marvelous Mural
Our very own high school art sensation, Danae, finished an ambitious mural on the playground! She specializes in nature imagery, especially trees and flowers. Come check out the gorgeous desert sunset complete with native plants!
Kino kids built and launched their own rockets in Physics! They tested different engines to power them into the sky (and all the way into the parking lot with an engine that was a little too strong). The students also used angles and distance to calculate the height of the rocket’s ascent.
Dawn’s Eco-friendly Humanitarian Project
Dawn is taking yet another wonderful step toward making Kino an environmentally-friendly community! She and her students developed a partnership with Sister Jose’s shelter and have been collecting plastic bags to be woven into mats for unhoused people. As you can see, Darion is embracing the project with open arms 😊 The project is ongoing, so if you have plastic bags at home, please donate them in the blue bin in front of the school!
This week at Kino, our History teacher, Dean, lead his World History class in building an adobe oven! The students learned about the southwestern tradition of mixing native soil, clay, and plant materials to create bricks, and contructed their own functional oven.
The Big Birthday Celebration!
On Thursday, the entire school gathered during homeroom to celebrate the birthdays of Korbin, Jocelynn, and Charlie! We had a massive celebration with Eegee’s and cupcakes for everyone. Thank you to Kino parents, Tanya and Jessica, for bringing treats for us all! As you can see, they were a big hit.
Larissa, our wonderful Music teacher, put on a winter holiday concert for the community! The Primary and Midlevel students performed a series of songs and had so much fun doing it. The evening was full of laughter and fun. Cosme performed a violin solo in front of an appreciative live audience!
Kaitie’s Math Poster Project
Kaitie’s math classes have been conducting hands-on, creative projects. Kaitie sure knows how to make math fun by integrating art and writing! Check out these quirky graph osters.
The Math 5 class explored proportional relationships between two variables in representations and used them to make predictions! The Algebra 1 group compared different linear relationships between two variables in different representations and interpreted the meanings of their slopes, y-intercepts, and intersections in context.
Check out the ways that Kino teachers and students have been working together to make learning fun with examples from this week!
Offering Classes Based on Students’ Interests
Chess Class came about by popular demand! Kino students have loved chess for years and we responded by offering them a class to explore strategy and build their skills. See Rex taking on the Chess teacher, Scott, on Wednesday.
Hands-on Projects
Caroline’s High School Advanced Psychology class learned the functions and names of the lobes of the brain through a hands-on project: making brain hats. Students also had the chance to take apart an anatomically correct model of the brain and compare it with a preserved sheep’s brain.
Student-Led Activities
Dean’s Junior High Ancient Societies class has embarked on a multimedia research project. Every student chose a civilization that interests them and they are going to present, teaching each other about different ways of life in ancient times.
Exploring the Community through Field Trips
Lisa and Noelle teamed up for a joint homeroom field trip to the Desert Museum! Students from every age group attended and had a blast learning about the animals of the Sonoran desert.
Individualized Learning and Independent Studies
Kino students have a diverse array of interests that may not always align with what the rest of the class is doing. Through individualized curriculum and independent study, everyone can explore their interests at school. Amaya is learning to fuse her love of digital animation with computer programming by making her own custom video game in Flow Lab.
Music lessons are tailored to what each student wants to learn. Sani is practicing new songs on the guitar with Larissa while Joan continues building her percussion skills with Scott.
Brian is conducting a Sewing and Fabric Arts independent study with Becky. This week, they worked on making dolls based on the cast of the musical, Hamilton.
