Beautiful Blog in PIctures

Let the pictures tell the story...

Reading Fun:

Building a House: First we need a wall and that is how it started...

A movie screen is created...

And the day ended with a memorable music class in which we explored rhythm, cultural music and interacted with different types  of drums:

Families: Tomorrow is our Bread and Soup Dinner, a fun AFS Community event. It takes place from 5:30 to 7:00 pm in the Cafeteria. We will be enjoying delicious breads, soups and other treats as well with Peter Moses performing at 6:15 pm

Español con los Cardenales: Los colores con Luis

¡Bienvenidos familia, amigas, y amigos! During our recent clase de Español, it was Hannah’s turn to choose our destination to a Spanish speaking country. After our traditional morning greeting in Spanish, she had us go to Venezuela en avión. Upon our return, we settled into this Spanish speaking country and gathered in a círculo. 

Next, we practiced the Spanish vocabulary words for some of the colores. Los Cardinales are so familiar with the names for some of the colors that we decided to focus this session on four basic colors. Luis stopped by to help us recall some of the basic colores such as rojo, amarillo, verde, and azul. We then sang a song and Luis went around the circle asking each of us, ¿Cual te gusta a ti? (Which one do you like?). To response, we said “A mí me gusta ______”. (I like __________.)  

¿Cual te gusta a ti?

 red – rojo

yellow - amarillo

green – verde

blue – azul

We finished our class with our traditional ¡Adios. Hasta luego! song and Hannah squeezing la vaca. ¡Gracias, Hannah!

¡Hasta nuestro proximo viaje! (Until our next flight.)

Paz,

Alicia

Buster Williams and More

January 30, 2013

The Buster Williams Concert!

Buster Williams musical performance was scheduled this morning  in the Muller Auditorium for Lower School and Middle School students. Our children had thoroughly enjoyed his visit in the music room on Monday and after a wonderful group discussion, we decided to that we wanted to join the Lower School students and attend this very special concert as well.  We talked about what we thought we may see and hear and discussed a few important  things to remember when attending a larger group concert.  The children were so excited to be included and in joining our larger community for this event. They clearly felt "so grown up!"  The performance was fantastic and having the opportunity to experience  a live musical concert was wonderful.  Buster Williams interacts so beautifully with all ages of students and we were thrilled that the Cardinals had the opportunity for this unique encounter !

Collaborative Work 

3 Dimensional Art

Our work in exploring sculptures has taken several new directions. This week we noticed that a few of the children were especially interested in  creating sculptures and 3 dimensional art using paper and tape.  The children have become more resourceful in their use of materials and are self directed and  initiate their own projects and work. They have been working in groups and have figured out how to create their art in a collaborative way where everyone seems to be satisfied!  It is quite amazing to observe as the children  cut, glue , tape and wrap paper and tubes together and navigate the complexities of shared ideas and space. 

 Magna Tiles and Lego's

Children are very interested in creating structures and sculptures with Magna Tiles and Lego's.  The joy of working in small groups is observed daily and the children are having so many meaningful opportunities to practice and develop social skills.

Busy Tuesday

January 29, 2013




This morning the Cardinals were very busy working throughout the classroom. There were sculptures being made, buildings being built,

and a large scale, child initiated art project happening back in the studio.

Mid-morning Alicia came to visit bringing with her many Spanish activities for us to exercise our Spanish skills with. She began with our Spanish welcome song as well as our usual Spanish class routine of moving around our circle asking each Cardinal friend in Spanish how they were doing and listening to each individual's reply.

After establishing that all of our Cardinals were doing well, Alicia moved on to a new activity. She brought out four books about different colors and we were able to learn the Spanish names for these four colors and identified which colors were our favorites.




After practicing our colorful pronunciations, we ended our class with a good bye song before Alicia left.

After our Spanish time, we had a great open choice portion of the day with several friends choosing interesting activities. Block building, dramatic play, Lego's, playdough, drawing, collage and books were all active areas of play during our Choice Time today.

After a while, it was decided some outside time was needed and the Cardinals bundled up to head out for a walk.

We wanted to go out and look for some different sculpture-like structures.We left the destination of our walk open ended since we weren't sure where the interesting structures might lead us. We ended up walking out by our caretaker Dave's house and peeking into his tool houses and identifying as many tools as we could just by sight.

As we wandered around the meetinghouse, we looked in on the playground up there and decided to stop for a little while.

All of the toys that used to be up there had been taken out but the Cardinals were resourceful and imaginative. Among the play structures we had a pirate expedition, a tire-swing singing circle, and even an animal hospital that specialized in healing sheep.

Between these imaginative adventures, the Cardinals ran, climbed trees, and had a nice time in the warmer weather.

 Coming back to the classroom, we had a little more open choice time before settling in for lunch.