Sunshine and Pansies

May 20, 2016 by admin

Yay for spring! The trees are starting to bloom and it has turned to bare feet weather – our favorite kind. Once again we have been taking advantage and spending as much time outside as possible. There has been so much digging going on, made much easier with the use of three new shovels donated by the Randalls. An emergency escape route has been completed, and a new in ground pool has been started. We planted some pansies in our garden and sowed some flower seeds that will hopefully grow over the summer and into the fall. There have also been lots of baseball games, biking, running, police and bad guys, and babies crawling around. For Monday art we were introduced to comics. We read some Calvin and Hobbes, and checked out several Garfield and other comics brought in by our resident comic artist. We discussed how the storylines are usually rather brief and that they are often told through the conversation bubbles of the characters. The children then created their own comics using paper that had rows of boxes.
At the art table this week the students made self-portraits. We introduced the word “accuracy” and demonstrated how to use skin, hair, and eye colors that matched our own. Many artists preferred to use their artistic license to create freely, as many famous artists have done in the past. They will be displayed on the last day of school for all to see. We began to focus on the sun and its’ role in creating weather. We read about the sun warming the air, earth, and water and how sunlight is necessary for all living things. We read again about how sunlight is necessary for the process of photosynthesis, where plants create their own food, and how plants are the basis of the food chain.

Henrietta and Wolfgang and Foxy-Loxy shared an incident with the class when Henrietta called Wolfgang a mean name and he said he didn’t like it. The class brainstormed some ideas about how Henrietta could respond to Wolfgang, and they had many helpful suggestions, such as offering a hug, apologizing, and offering a toy. We then brainstormed what Foxy-Loxy’s role should be, and everyone agreed that Foxy-Loxy should stand up for Wolfgang and tell Henrietta that name calling is unkind and not to do it.

On Thursday we pulled out the parachute and the children chose three activities: Ring Around the Rosie, bounce the yarn balls, and Great White Shark/Crocodile. They had a lot of fun and were so careful to keep the predator under the parachute safe by keeping their feet still. Friday students revisited shadows to continue with the theme of light. We read several books about shadows and watched a video of a shadow puppet show of the Three Little Pigs. We then cut out printed animal shadow puppets, or created our own, and then had a fabulous time taking turns performing and spectating. The children enjoyed it so much that they spent the entire morning working together to perform some very entertaining stories.
We spent the rest of the day outside, having another picnic lunch, then bringing some afternoon reading and writing work out so we could continue to enjoy the sunshine. We also played a new version of Duck, Duck, Goose, where a child would pick a word from the middle of the circle and read it or have help from friends to read it, then go around the circle tapping heads while saying each letter of the alphabet. When they landed on the first letter of the word they read, that child would be the “goose” and get up to chase the reader around. It was a lot of fun and very entertaining!

Two new songs we learned this week: