Dec 06 2012
Yesterday at the Rhythm Discovery Center, we learned that forte means loud and piano means soft. Today, we experimented with dancing to music that was forte and piano. When the music got really loud, friends were encouraged to make their bodies “big”, reach tall, and do big movements. When the music was piano, we crouched down low, were quiet, and made small movements.
Dec 05 2012
Today we began filming our puppet show movie! Before we even began filming the show, we sat in a circle, and we each took a turn filming the person next to us. The children were so excited to film each other and LOVED watching the whole slide show together.
I thought we would only get a 3 or so out of 14 scenes done today, but we did them all! The children LOVED filming, setting up props, speaking in puppet voices, being the director. They really did such a nice job taking turns, practicing, etc.
Tomorrow I will be editing the scenes with Jason because he is our editor and then Friday we will reshoot any scenes that we think need to be done again.
I cannot even tell you how fun this process was today. Seeing the children so excited about something that they thought of is such a thrill!
Today, Reid and William from Mrs. Clark’s class came down and shared with us that we will begin recycling again at our school. The children asked some great questions about what to recycle and were really respectful!
Dec 05 2012
Today, during free choice time, two students from Mrs. Clark’s class came and spoke with our class about recycling. Mrs. Clark’s friends and Miss Cegielski’s friends are heading up our school’s recycling program. They came around to each class to talk about why we need to recycle and what each class can do. They also dropped of a recycling box. As of today, any paper that would otherwise be thrown away will now be thrown in the recycling box. On Fridays, a team from Mrs. Clark’s class and/or Miss Cegielski’s class will come to collect our recycling. We’re excited to be a part of our school’s initiative to better care for our environment!
William and Reed come by to talk to our class about recycling and drop off our recycling box.
Dec 05 2012
We have started to learn how to tell time in Room 108! Our class was so excited to learn this concept and have grasped it quickly! We started by building a big clock together and talking about the observations we made about it. Students immediately noticed that certain numbers were across the clock face from one another. Yesterday, we talked about the hands of the clock and practiced moving the hands while reading a fun story called What Time is it Mr. Crocodile? Today, we learned a new math game!
During this game, students work with a partner to roll two dice, add the number, and fill in the corresponding time on the clock. This reinforces what we have learned about the clock face and the hands of the clock. We also started to talk about elapsed time using more complex time problems in our journals.
Encourage your children to read analog clocks at home to tell you what time it is– they will be happy to share their knowledge!
Dec 05 2012
Today we went on our field trip to the Rhythm Discovery Center downtown! It was incredible! The Rhythm Discovery Center is basically “An instrument museum” (Greyson’s words). We learned about different types of instruments, many we had never seen or heard of before! Our guide was fabulous and gave us an opportunity to play many of the instruments, including a giant tam tam and a giant gong! At the end of our visit, we formed a drum circle and played with our guide. We practiced playing fast and slow, soft (piano) and loud (forte). Afterwards, we had some freestyle time and friends were given the opportunity to play and dance. It was such a joyful time.
Afterwards, we had lunch in the Indianpolis Arts Garden. To our delight, several choirs were there singing Christmas carols. It was such a peaceful and enjoyable lunch! I was so proud too, our class had many compliments about how good of an audience we were being. I was so glad our class was able to end our field trip with a real life performance- it just seems fitting. The perfect ending to the perfect day!
