Involved In Our Tuesday Work and Play

February 12, 2013
 Journal work today was quite heartfelt and reflected sensitivity to feelings.  We asked the children to draw a picture of someone they loved and then had the opportunity to dictate a story about their picture.  The highly personal connection helped to facilitate their focus and attention when working on their journals.  The children spent longer periods of time drawing as well as dictating their ideas and thoughts.

Donny and his family shared a family tradition with all of the Cardinal friends at school today. His family celebrates Fat Tuesday each year by eating delicious donuts and they generously brought yummy tasting donuts for all of the children to enjoy.  The children had a special picnic snack on the rug and especially enjoyed picking their favorite type of donut from the big selection! We visited Crissy, Debbie, Tricia and Jason and offered them a tasty treat as well!  We loved visiting people around our Lower School and bringing special surprises. Thank you to Donny, Wendi and Don for thinking of us and for including us in your family traditions at this time of year. Connecting home and school is so important to our children and we welcome any and all opportunities to support this connection.

As we walked into Jason’s music class today, we discovered a circle of interesting instruments set up for us. We found rhythm sticks, wood blocks, tone blocks, and claves for us to try! After identifying each instrument, and discussing how to play each and how they all sound, we used our new instrumental skills to add a percussive element to a song we had learned the week before. Using our instruments and our marching feet to keep time, we sang one of our favorite songs while moving around the circle. After our performance, we held on to our instruments with us to sit and listen to a story read by Jason about a famous dancer nicknamed “Bojangles”. This dancer, we learned, lived in a time in our history that was much less fair, and he was often not allowed to perform on stages, even though he worked very hard and was very good. Eventually, though, Bojangles was able to gain the fame and recognition his skill deserved. Jason used this story as a springboard into a thoughtful discussion about how, with hard work and lots of practice, we can achieve any goal whether it is to become a famous dancer, musician, or anything we think we might want to do. We not only learned a lot about this fascinating historical character, but also were able to incorporate our rhythmic percussion with the words of the story. We added our voices and our instruments to a repeated segment of the story demonstrating the musicality of everything around us whether it is a singing voice, or a written word.

The block building is developing so rapidly in our classroom. The structures are becoming more involved and elaborate and several children who had not been as interested in building this year have now become much more interested.