Coco Leibowitz

Coco has a talent for observing things from unique perpectives. This is evident in her photography, which I find absolutely amazing. Here's a series I found on my camera that Coco had taken one day when I lent her my camera for a field study. They were taken on the playground in the park blocks. (Speaking of playgrounds: stay on the lookout for photos from playgrounds across the city--it's the next project area for Coco's class!)

Monica

Mina

Torran

Supermarket Sweep

Regular readers of this blog are familiar with the project-based approach at Coco's school. Recently, her class finished their last study area, supermarkets. At first I was skeptical about the value of studying supermarkets, but was pleasantly surprised at the results.

The students visited ten supermarkets across the city from the vegan Food Fight to New Seasons, Whole Foods, Safeway, Fred Meyer, Uwijamaya, and Don Pancho's. They learned about what stores stock, how many employees they have and everything in between.

For their open house they presented their data in the form of a supermarket quiz show and also put on a play about supermarkets. You can tell Coco is from a restaurant family: one of the questions she came up with for the quiz was "What does Trader Joe's sell the most of? A. Meat, B. Bananas, C. Two Bucks Chuck" You guessed it. Two Bucks Chuck is the answer. This reflects the fact that you'll find us at TJ's buying Two Buck Chuck (cheap wine) by the case for the cafe!

Torran's mom, Regan, and crew...

That's Phoebe's dad, Daniel, on the right.

One of the data charts:

Coco's First Basketball Game

Coco joined the all-girls 8-11 y/o basketball league at the community center this season. She is on the same team--The Storm--as her good friend Ariel. They practice Mondays and Wednesdays and have games every Friday night. These girls run! Here are some pics from the first game.

(Apologies for the poor photographic quality--my camera takes crappy indoor action pictures.)

Even though she's a head shorter than anyone else on her team, Coco is a defensive specialist! She runs really fast and sneaks up underneath the tall girls and steals the ball! She had some great turnovers this week and she's proud of her contribution to her team's win (even though, officially, they don't keep score). Coach Paul is a real gem--along with the really sweet girls on the team, he's made Coco feel very welcome.

Future Globetrotter?