Lit Circles and Nails!

Little bonus post for everyone!

I promised pictures from my HS Lit Circles and here they are!
The book we're doing is Howl's Moving Castle (which you should definitely read if you have not) and for each session we have some activities, go over the reading from the last time, and then I read some to them and the rest they finish themselves.

The second time we met they were all tasked with bringing hats since Sophie (the main character) is a hatter/Hatter (it's her job and last name). We had some pretty awesome hats and then we described what we thought each personality would be like to match each hat (again, going with the effect Sophie has on the hats she makes) and looked at pictures of wild hats and described what ability we thought each might give it's wearer.

Me in my princess hat :-)

Students in hats!

 Two Fridays ago, we had disguises because the Wizard Howl loves going about in disguise to woo women and to keep people from tracking him down.Some of the disguises were planned and some were "improvised." :-) Then they took pictures of themselves and drew a disguise on top of the pictures. We had everything from a king to a Transformer like thing.

Improvised disguises

One of my 9th graders as a character she likes. 

Another 9th grader. Very cute picture of her too! :-)

 For last week we made slime since Howl throws a fit and slimes everywhere when his hair is dyed the wrong color. It's absurdly easy (you just combine corn starch and water) and it's what is called a non-Newtonian liquid because it is a solid and a liquid. You can shape it into a ball if you keep pressure on it but as soon as you let it go then it "melts." They had a lot of fun with it!

Once a solid and now melting off her hand! :-)

Looking a bit nervous! 

And the final nail "set" for the next few weeks: The Great Gatsby. This was probably my most detailed and it took forever but I am pretty proud of it overall. 

Left to right (top): Daisy, sun/gold/light, money, Gastby's pink suit, and rain

Left to right (bottom): dream dust, T.J. Eckelburg's eyes in glasses, and the green light

So that's it for the world of English at IA currently! Tomorrow I announce the play to the students so there will be more about theater in the future.