Musical Friday

 

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Today we made a special visit  to introduce our musical selves to our wonderful music teacher Jason. In his music room we examined what we know about music making and musical instruments. We discovered we all carry around amazing instruments inside our own bodies and explored our voices learning how to manipulate the sounds we make naturally within a musical context. We were then given a mysterious instrument hidden from view to which we applied our detective skills to try and guess what it could be. We were delighted to find it was a slide whistle and we participated in an activity connecting what we hear to physical movements like drawing sounds with our fingers in the air moving upwards as the slide whistle slid to a higher pitch and moving downwards when the pitch slid lower. Then we even sang along with the slide whistle and our finger-air drawings exercising our ears and voices in pitch matching. We slid out of our whistle activity and right into learning a new hello song and ended our time with Jason with an activity listening to an orchestral piece and using "dancing hand spiders" which allowed us to translate musical concepts like tempo and dynamics into visual expressions such as when the music got softer, our hand spider dancing matched with smaller dance moves, and when the tempo picked up our hand spider dancing matched with faster twirls and wiggles.

Our musical connections actually started yesterday when Samuel shared of some musical instruments brought back from the Dominican Republic by his parents. The three different percussion instruments both excited our music loving ears and inspired our continued quest to live through acts of kindness and we discussed ways to be kind to these musical instruments so that everyone can continue to enjoy their music.

We had an unexpected musical sharing time with the Doves' class and Kindergarten in which Raji played guitar for us and friends sang and shared music they have learned together.

Our First Art Experience With Sam

Today was the first scheduled art time with Samantha Matlock, our Lower School and Early Childhood art teacher.  Sam had visited with our class last week and made connections with the Cardinals playing and talking  in our classroom environment.  When Sam arrived early this morning  in our class, several of the children stopped what they were doing and came over to see Sam and to ask her if "she was going to stay in our class and play  today."  Sam explained that she was going to read  one of her favorite books about art to the class this morning.  The children were drawn to Sam's warmth and gentle manner and were eager to listen to her story.  We gathered on the Meeting rug and Sam began the conversation by asking the children if they ever had feelings or emotions that kind of felt like a color.  She asked if there was a color that they could name  when they felt very happy and full of laughter and joy.  "Orange", " Yellow ", "Pink" were a few of the colors the children immediately thought of.   Sam asked if there was a color that matched when they felt sad or angry  or frustrated.   One child called out I think it would be blue; dark blackish blue." The children were engaged in this brief discussion and this was a perfect time to introduce the book My Many Colored Days , by Dr. Seuss.  This rhyming story describes each day in terms of a particular color, which in turn is associated with specific emotions.  The book  is beautifully illustrated and the simplicity of the text helps the child to see the connection between feelings and color.

Sam invited us to visit her art room.  The children were thrilled to be invited to the art room and felt like such 'big kids' leaving our classroom, walking in the halls and sitting at the big art table on stools!  The Cardinals' were in their glory and so very proud....  they have passed the art room many times and have enjoyed looking in through the glass wall and have even watched as their 2nd grade partners have art! We  played a an I  Spy game where the children looked with their eyes at the student painted art tiles on the ceiling and Sam identified something that she spied and the children needed to find that tile and point to it. Through this activity the children practiced visual discrimination and appreciation for art.  We had a wonderful first experience with Sam, our art teacher today and look forward to our next meeting on Day 1 at 8:30.

CONSTRUCTION AND BUILDING
The children were so excited to re-visit the building tools that Wyatt had brought to school yesterday.  Measuring with the stick rule was an absolute favorite and it was fascinating to see how the children applied the knowledge they learned yesterday to their play today.  When asked what they were working on, responses such as " I'm measuring. I need to see how long this is" or " This is what you have to do if you are a construction guy. You have to know about measuring",  reflected the level of role play that was beginning to emerge.   The children experimented with the level, screwdriver and hammer.  They measured almost everything in the classroom and pretended to be reading the numbers when they finished!  We have observed a tremendous increase in interest and activity in the block area as well.

 Stella's Dad Andrew, gave us sandpaper to help us sand the wood radius that Marty gave us from the building site of our outdoor  classroom play structure. The children loved sanding the wood and working with  'real wood and sandpaper.' This experience was so authentic and using the materials that came from 'the real construction workers 'seemed to empower the children and connected them to building in a more meaningful way. 

 

Kindness Sticks 

The children are loving the experience of creating kindness sticks!  As we mentioned earlier this week, we have been talking about  our class community, our school community and actions that help to build and develop the communities that we belong to.  How we treat one other is an underlying theme in all of this work.  Discussions about acts of kindness have been on-going over the last several days and we wanted to think of a way to celebrate our acts of kindness.  The Cardinals love to collect sticks and we had an idea to combine their love of stick collecting, art and kindness into one project!  Our first few beaded kindness sticks are beautiful!  The children love working collaboratively on these sticks and they are beginning to appear in many parts of our classroom!  Stop in to see your child's work.