The last story we read is called Me First. It was about two siblings that always wanted to win and be first. By the end of the story they end up helping each other and stop arguing. The kindergartners continued to practice reading along with the purple highlighted sentences. We had a discussion with interpretive questions about the story. Such as, “Why did the kids stop arguing amd start cooperating by the end of the story.” These discussions help the students to delve deeper into the meaning of the story and analyze the characters actions. Many people like reading books but rarely anyone likes doing book reports. Here is a site that helps out kids in elemntary schools in the Balkans – LEKTIRE, book reports are concise but very helpful.
The students are writing down what they were wondering about after hearing the story for the first time.
Sharing why Martha helped clean the cob webs off of Hal.Sharing drawings with each other.
The last couple of weeks we read a Russian folk tale called The Three Wishes. The story was about a poor man and his white who were granted three wishes by an Imp. They did not use their wishes wisely and ended up wishing sausages to be hung from the husbands nose! In the story we learned some new vocabulary words trudged, useless, and slumped. The kindergartners were able to act out one of the vocabulary words, and had many writing and interpretive activities.
The kindergartners are acting out trudging through the gym.This student is sharing his drawing of what he thinks the Imp looks like from the story.The group is writing whether they would or would not wish the sausages off the man’s nose if they were the wife.
A Peek Into the next two weeks
-The kindergartners will be reading a story called Me First.
-The kindergartners will have discussions about the concept of going first and taking turns.
-The kindergartners will learn new vocabulary words: arguing, sprinted, and trotted.
The last two weeks we read a poem called Stray Cat. It was describing a mangy, dirty cat that the speaker of the poem found. We learned about different aspects of a poem, like what stanzas are, who the speaker is in a poem, and how words in poems usually rhyme. We disscused why the speaker used so many describing words for the cat, and decided it was because the speaker wanted you to be able to imagine what the cat looked like.
The children took turns sharing their drawings of how they think the stray cat looks.Sharing what he wondered about while listening to the poem for the first time.
A Peek into the Next Two Weeks
-We will be reading a story about a couple who are granted three wishes
-We will be learning about what folk tale is.
-We will be having a discussion with interpretive questions.
Week of November 6th For the month of November we will be working with shapes and practicing our cutting and gluing skills! Our first project, creating a circle collage, utilized both of these skills as well as stamping circles with paints! The students practiced cutting circles and gluing them, then stamping circles at the end to create a collage.
Week of November 13th We read the book Little Owl’s Night by Divya Srinivasan and worked with shapes to create owls of our own! The students tore squares of brown paper to create the owls body and wings. They cut circles for the eyes and glued rectangles for the legs. Each owl turned out so different!
Week of November 27th Our last project of the month began with the story The Mitten by Jan Brett, a winter classic! The students began our mitten project by using q-tips to stamp circles of snow onto our sky background. Then they experimented with chalk pastels to create a colorful, blended mitten. After cutting out their mittens they decorated them with construction shapes, stickers and pom poms. We glued our mittens to our snowy blue sky background, just like Nicky’s mitten flying through the sky in the story!
Week of October 1st:
To begin October and our unit on creating “Colorful Masterpieces”, we read I Don’t Draw I Color by Adam Lehrhaupt and Dr. Seuss’s My Many Colored Days. Both books talk about how important color is in art and how color can convey emotion in our artwork. We learned how color can help
us understand our emotions and shared with each other our favorite colors.
We also talked about how sometimes we feel sad or happy or tired and how we can feel more than one emotion at a time! As a class we shared how we were feeling that morning and then used those colors to create our very own colorful masterpiece!
Week of October 9th: We continued our unit on creating “Colorful Masterpieces” with a lesson on lines. Lines are everywhere! All around us! There are so many different types of lines, which we discussed while matching examples to the lesson board.With the intention of practicing some basic cutting and gluing skills our project began with cutting out different types of lines. We worked on holding our scissors properly and following the black lines on the construction paper. Using glue sticks, the students created a line collage!
After demonstrating a few collage techniques (creating a paper spiral, folding the paper accordion like, rolling the paper) it was exciting to see each student incorporate those types of lines into their collages. Each student ended up with a 3D line collage that they cut, folded and glued together themselves!
Week of October 16th: Our third lesson in our unit on “Colorful Masterpieces” began with a discussion about the color wheel and more specifically warm and cool colors. We talked about what a warm and cool color is and looked at examples of famous paintings that were good examples of each, including paintings from Picasso’s Blue Period and Van Gogh’s warm sunflower paintings.
Using lines, we drew and then painted lines onto watercolor paper using only cool colors. It was neat to see how the cool colors mixed together!
Next we traced our hands onto a separate paper and painted them in warm colors. After cutting our hands out the students glued them onto their lined cool color painting. Our end result was truly a masterpiece of warm and cool colors, the little hands making the project all the more special!
Week of October 23rd: In the spirit of it being the week of our Halloween parties we worked on cutting and gluing shapes as well as painting pumpkins to create our own nighttime pumpkin patch!
Week of October 30th: This week we talked about the changing leaves and colors around us when we go outside to play. We used these colors to create a fall tree collage! Practicing our gluing, cutting and drawing skills the students worked hard at creating their final project. We began with gluing the grass and sky using square tissue papers. Then we drew circles on red, orange and yellow papers to cut and glue down for our fall trees. We finished our projects using brown tree trunks and drawing lines on our trees for branches. Such a fun project that involved many of our basic art skills!
The last two weeks the kindergartners listened to a story called, Jamaica’s Blue Marker. This is a story about a little girl who has a classmate bother her. In the end, she finds out the little boy is going to move and is upset about it. She gives him her blue marker as a going away present since he didn’t have any art supplies of his own. The students completed writing and drawing activities such as, if they were Jamaica, would they be happy or sad about giving Russell the blue marker, and they had to draw a picture of what Jmaica’s face looked like when she yelled at Russell to stop.
This kindergartner is sharing what she was wondering about after hearing the story for the first time.These students are acting out a scene from the story where Jamaica gives Russell her blue marker.At the end of the story the students evaluate how they did with different skills during the story. For this story we learned about sharing ideas. The group came up with the idea that they would work harder on sharing questions during the next story.
A peek into the next two weeks
-The students will listen to a poem about a cat who has no home.
-The students will learn what a poem is.
-The students will continue to practice choral reading.
For the first month of art class, the students learned about primary colors, the color wheel, how we are all unique and using our senses. They also learned about two artists, Piet Mondrian and Henri Matisse. Henri Matisse was a French artist who was known for his use of color and for his paintings. Piet Mondrian was a Dutch abstract artist who had a huge impact on 20th century art.
These students are working on renditions of Mondran’s Composition ll in Red, Blue, and Yellow. They learned about primary colors, lines, and how to use glue sticks with this project.
The students learned what a self portrait is. We talked about how everyone is different and special. They looked in the mirror at themselves and looked at their features.
To celebrate fall, the young artists made fall trees using cut up vegetable to stamp in paint for the leaves. Since the theme that week was the five senses, we talked about how the vegetables looked, smelled, and felt.
In September, the students met Ms. Lisa our music teacher, learned the rules for music, and how to use certain instruments. The instruments we learned how to play were rhythm sticks, castanets, and maracas. The students also learned musical terms such as staccato, legato, allegro, andante, and adagio.
Singing hello to Allie the Allegator. Ms. Lisa has the students watch Allie’s mouth while they sing hello to her, so they know whe to start and end singing. This teaches them how to follow directions and how to sing together like a choir.Using egg shakers to match the beat of the song.Using maracas to make the sound of a train. The students marched in a circle like a train and had to listen when Ms. Lisa rang the bell and played the train whistle to know when to start and stop. The song played in defferent tempos as well, so the students practiced walking slowly, at a medium pace, and at a fast pace.
