Expedition Express: The Art of the Story
History is the study of people and how they lived across time and regions of the world. The Mayan civilization began over two thousand years ago, but we know their story because of the art and artifacts they left behind. Stories can be brought to life through the traditions of visual art and oral storytelling.

Questions to Ask Your Child:
How do you think art tells a story?
What evidence do you see around you of art that tells a story?
What similarities and differences have you noticed of how people live in Mexico and The United States?

Crew News
¡Bienvenido a México! The Bell Crew has flown across the border to learn about life in Mexico! The first part of our journey involved engineering an aircraft that could “carry” 24 passengers (22 students and 2 teachers!) south of the border to the capital of Mexico—Mexico City. It took the crew two and a half days to complete the engineering challenge of transforming three enormous refrigerator boxes into an airplane and then designing and building wings that were suspended off the ground. The flight itself was a memorable event—complete with in-flight snacks and entertainment (a tourism video of Mexico City). While using a world map to track our travels, we learned about the seven continents and the five oceans as well as how to use a compass rose to describe the relative location of places on the map. Upon arrival in Mexico City, we experienced a local market and learned a bit about buying and selling our wares with pesos. So far the sights have been amazing!

After a brief touchdown in modern day Mexico, we took off on our real adventure (via time machine) to explore ancient Mayan life. Our first Case Study—The Mayan Story—will work to answer the question: How does ART tell a STORY? We will spend several weeks learning about the various forms of art that have given modern day people clues about how the Mayas lived—i.e., wall paintings, sculpture, architecture, pottery and more. We will be sculpting clay pots, weaving small mats…and perhaps even designing and building a Mayan pyramid! All the while, we will be exploring the notion that history is the story of people’s lives across time and across regions of the world.

We are keeping scrapbooks of our journey but we will also keep you posted on our learning along the way!
¡Adiós!

SELS News
I am currently finalizing plans for spring fieldwork. This is a brand new expedition, so connecting with new experts always takes a bit more time. I will get dates to you soon as I can. Our spring fieldwork will involve a trip to the Nevada Museum of Art as well as a Reno Mural Tour (possibly on two different days in May given the demands and scope of each outing). In addition, we will have the great privilege of working at SELS with a professional Reno muralist, Erik Burke, in late May. You can see his work in Reno on the walls or at his website (http://eriktburke.com/). It will be a busy spring…so thank you all in advance for your support in making our exciting fieldwork possible.

Upcoming Fieldwork:
o Arts for the Schools/drumming performance: Friday, May 19th
o Bell Crew Campout/Donner State Park: Thursday, June 8th (tentative)

Highlights
Students: The Bell Crew members have been working hard on using integrity to produce quality work. I have seen wonderful improvement in the quality of their writing in particular. Congratulations, Crew!

Parent Volunteers: Thank you again to Loren McCormac, our Harvest of the Month volunteer, and to Jen Trombetta, our fieldwork coordinator. We appreciate you!