Dear Parents,

During weeks 14 and 15, our group time discussions have been focused on reasons to be thankful, including stories about Thanksgiving, which were presented during circle times. Our students have also been creative in the arts area, especially taking an interest in watercolor paints. After observing a couple of lessons that offer different approaches on applying watercolors, many students have been trying out the techniques during work cycles. They have enjoyed a color mixing work with water and food coloring as well. In addition, the kids have been very expressive with new material that encourages story telling. In general, our students have been inspired to think out-of-the-box and explore new ways to express themselves over these past two weeks.

Art Activities: Painting & Color Mixing

Above, students take turns at the watercolor station that we had set up for the week. Below, some students are seen working on color mixing with droppers and water tinted with food coloring. This work offers only primary colors (red, yellow & blue), so that our pupils may discover on their own how secondary colors are produced.

Language: Story Telling

Story telling has been a hit lately as the kids do their best to retell stories that we presented during group times.

Below, children enjoy story telling with laminated imagery from classics like “Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” “The Princess and the Pea,” and “The Three Little Pigs.”

Everyone’s favorite story last week was “Bark, George! by Jules Fieffer.” We offered a dog puppet filled with stuffed animals to retell the silly story…

Geography: Land Forms

This week in our geography area, we introduced a new felt work that works like puzzle pieces to display land forms including a lake, peninsula, gulf, and an island. To make things more colorful, were added miniature toy animal figures for the kids to display once the material is properly laid out.

Student Lessons

Linnea, one of this year’s kindergarteners, has been teaching small group lessons throughout the school year during work cycles and is now taking an interest in helping us teachers in the making of our works. I encouraged her to make some “math work” after handing her a box of objects to sort through and come up with some ideas. With little help, she came up with two works that our students have been consistently taking off the shelves ever since she had an opportunity to present the work to the entire class.

Here, Linnea presented a math work on division. She demonstrated to the kids how to “equally divide the birds up between their bird baths.” We were pleased with how attentive everyone was for her.

Linnea came up with this work to encourage students to count past 20. She emphasized that while setting up the material, one should “count out loud” as marbles are placed carefully in rows.

During work cycle, Wyatt and Eilish carefully count out marbles from the new math work presented by Linnea.