This first session of dance class with Ms. Elisabeth was amazing! Students went from learning the positions in ballet and finding the beat in kids bop to a dazzling performance at our annual Christmas show! Congratulations to all our wonderful dancers, Ms. Elisabeth and Ms. Lexa for a great end of 2018!
If you are interested in having your child join one of our dance classes for the 2nd half of the school year, please stop by the school office. Dance begins Wednesday, January 16th!
Enjoy some snap shots from dance so far this year!
The last story the kindergartners listened to was The Fire Cat. The story was about a cat who got into trouble a lot and didn’t have any friends. One day he chases a little cat up into a tree, and ends up getting stuck. A fireman comes to rescue him and ends up taking him to the fire house to become a fire cat.
Throughout the story the group was able to participate in discussion, share their opinions, and practice reading parts of the story aloud. They also completed comprehension activities that went along with the story.
The students are sharing their drawings of the fire cat chasing smaller cats
A Peek Into After Break
– The students will be listening to a poem called Every Time I climb a Tree.
– The students will learn about rhythm in poems.
– The students will learn the vocabulary words: skin, dodge, spot.
Ms. Dayna, the new art teacher, took this time to observe the students abilities and enjoy the season with them. We can’t wait to see what new projects she comes up with for after break! Welcome Ms. Dayna!
This month in art classes students were presented with seasonal projects in a variety of mediums: oil pastels, water color, tempera paints and paper.
Primary students made snowflake paintings using crayons to resist the water color and experimented with the effects of salt in watercolor. They also worked in tempera paints in a guided painting of snowmen.
Lastly, all s the students made paper ornaments to take home for the holidays. Primary students practiced threading with their ornaments and the elementary students flexed their origami skills folding German stars.
Each class begins with the children singing “It’s music time today!” Then, Ms. Lisa and her puppet sing good morning to each student by name and have the student sing good morning back to the puppet of the week. This is a favorite part of music for the kids.
“Hello, Pork chop!”Each music class has also been a review of whole notes, half notes, quarter notes and eighth notes.
Above, the music class is singing and pretending to be elephants.
The kids are enjoying using bells to accompany their songs!Time to add some movements to the song!Five golden rings?
The class has also learned the musical terms “Alegro” -Fast, “Adagio”-Slow, and “”Ondonte” -walking beat/ medium.
We have also begun practicing for our upcoming Christmas Show during music class! We can’t wait to sing for you there!
Lava Lamp: The students observed that when you mix oil and water together they separate from each other. The oil ended up on top because it has a lower density than the water. We then added food coloring and watched it fall through the oil and mix with the water at the bottom. We then added tiny pieces of Alka-Seltzer which created small bubbles of carbon dioxide gas that would rise to the top. The gas would then escape when it reached the top and the colored water would fall back down. The students learned the reason the Alka-Seltzer fizzed in such a way is because it contains citric acid and baking soda and the two react with water to form sodium citrate and carbon dioxide gas.
Traveling Water: The students learned that water has a lot of molecules that are held together by electrical molecular bonds. So we took a glass of water with a piece of string and and dumped the water along the string and into the empty glass. Because water has such strong hydrogen bonds it allowed the water molecules to stick together and travel down the string and into the empty cup.
Dissolving Sugar: We dissolved sugar in both cold and hot water. The students were able to observe that the cold water wasn’t able to dissolve as much sugar as the hot water. The reason the hot water dissolved more sugar is because it has faster moving molecules which are spread further apart than the molecules in the cold water. So with bigger gaps between the molecules in the hot water, more sugar molecules can fit in between.
Have you wondered what the kids who take Tae Kwon Do do in class? Keep on reading to find out!
Each week the Tae Kwon Do students bow at the beginning of class and reply to each request of Master Barnick and other instructors with a “Yes, Sir!” Respect and following directions are lessons always being taught in between each kick, punch and block.
The class started off this session getting out some energy and practicing following directions by running drills and having to run a certain way to prepare them for upcoming stances they will learn.
Here is a group of white belts with a yellow stripes practicing their punches and stances.
The student below is practicing keeping his knees up using the floor ladder!
Here a child is practicing their board breaking by using different kicking techniques. The students each have a certain style of kick they must learn based on the color of their belt.
Below, Master Barnick gives this student a high five after working with her. He encourages them to cheer for one another and be supportive of their fellow classmates.
In this lesson, a student is working on her balance by jumping from pad to pad on the ninja bridge. An extension of this lesson is ducking and blocking to avoid being tapped by the “sword”. The children are always practicing patience while they wait for their next turn.Fireball is a favorite game of the students that they get to play at the end of each session if they had good participation.Each student who completes all of the activities for that session each week, earns two stripes on their belt at the end of the session .
This class takes their second belt testing this Monday! Wish them good luck!
This month I focused on colors while contiuing to practice with art materials. The primary students learned about warm and cool colors. They found out that warm colors make you think of warm things like fire and the sun, and cool colors make you think of cold things like water and the earth. The students used oil pastels to color their papers then cut them up in strips and glued them to construction paper.
Next, the Primary students learned about complimentary colors. They found out that complimentary colors are opposite of each other on the color wheel, and when they’re combined in the right way create white light. For our project, the students glued down the center of a flower and then glued the complimentary color of tissue paper around for the petals. Then to add a finishing touch, the group decorated the center of the flower with different lines, which they learned is a segment that has a start and an end.
Welcome to another month of science! Mr.John has kept us busy with new science experiments.
During each science activity, we always come up with our own hypothesis. A hypothesis is an educated guess. A great part about Mr.John’s science class is that it never matters if our hypothesis is wrong or right! Mr. John always tells us that it is okay to be wrong because sometimes even scientists are wrong! That is how they learn what works and what doesn’t work.
Don’t forget to check your students science paper in their folder ever Thursday to see what their hypothesis was for that weeks experiment!
Distribution of Weight
Materials needed to complete this activity at home:
Books
A piece of paper
A couple of rubber bands
Question of the week: What will happen when we try to balance a text book or multiple picture books on a piece of paper? What about when the piece of paper is turned into a cylinder?
Well, the flat paper got squished by the books! Then Mr. John turned it into a cylinder using rubber bands. What happened next?
The cylinder of paper supported all the picture books! Amazing!
But why was the cylinder of paper able to hold the book, but the single piece of paper did not? SCIENCE!
The average weight of a piece of paper is .7 grams. It makes sense that it wouldn’t be able to balance a book! It just collapses under the weight of a book. This is because the paper is unable to keep it’s shape. It wants to return to a flat position. But, when Mr.John uses rubber bands to keep the paper in a cylinder shape, it all changes.
The secret to the paper’s new found strength is the geometrical shape known as a cylinder! Cylinders are one of the most structurally sound and strongest geometrical shapes. They are able to be strong because they disperse stress throughout their entire shape. If the rolled-up piece of paper were a perfect cylinder, the strength of it would be even stronger!
Teflon Tape Secret Message
Question: What will happen if we write a secret message on a strip of Teflon tape?
Materials Needed:
Teflon tape
Permanent marker
This week Mr. John introduced us to polymers! On the Teflon tape Mr. John wrote GO BUCKEYES! Then he stretched the tape out so much, we couldn’t read his message anymore!
Then he pulled on it again and SCIENCE made the letters legible again! But how?
Teflon tape is a type of polymer called polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE). That’s a really long word for a kind of polymer that has long chains of molecules lined up side-by-side and on top of each other. Polymers like to be near each other. After Mr. John stretched the tape, the polymers that make up the tape were all puled apart. When Mr. John pulls in the opposite way on the tape firmly, the polymers become reconnected together which allows the message to be legible again.
Friction
Mr.John was absent this week, so I (Miss Ame) stepped in with a shortened version of science for our classes.
Materials:
Spider print out
Sewing thread
cardboard
Match
The spider was glue to a small piece of cardboard. On the other side of the cardboard was a match attached to it with glue. In between the match and the cardboard was a piece of thread.
Using our imagination we pretended that the thread was the spider’s web. While I was holding both ends of the web tightly, the spider did not move. He was suspending sitting still in his web.
I then asked the student’s what they thought would happen if I let go of the string that I was holding our spider. Would he fall? Would he stay hanging on his web? So each child shared their hypothesis, all starting their sentence with “My hypothesis…”
On the count of three I let go of the spider…..and he fell quickly to the end of his web! But why?
Because of friction!
When the thread is held taut, it touches the match. This causes friction between the match and the thread, which is strong enough to stop the spider from moving down the thread. But, when you let it go slack it no longer touches the match. This means less friction, so the spider slides easily down.
How much fun we have had in science this month! Thank you Mr. John!
Floating Eggs: The students discovered that as an egg ages, air enters the egg and the air cell becomes larger. They learned to test an egg for freshness they can place it in a bowl of water. The fresh eggs will lie on the bottom of the bowl. Eggs that tilt so that the large end is up are older, and eggs that float are rotten.
Invisible Ink: We dipped a paint brush into lemon juice then drew pictures onto different colored paper. After the paper totally dried we used a hair dryer to heat the paper up revealing the original pictures we drew. The students discovered that lemon juice is an organic substance that oxidizes and turns brown when heated which is why we were able to reveal the hidden pictures.
