A Sense of Self and Our Five Senses

We continued our exploration of our sense of self this week. At the easels the children drew and painted maps of how they get from home to school and what they see along the way. We made a chart of how many brothers and sisters and (babies to be!) each child has. Next week we will weigh and measure each child so we can watch how much they grow on the outside this year!

We used our sense of touch as we drew with oil pastels on sandpaper. The children did not know what sandpaper was, so it was exciting to feel it and learn how it can make wood smooth. We used our sense of smell (through our masks!) to make spicy assemblages and scented paintings.

Drawing to music trained our sense of hearing as we assigned a color for each musical component: piano (soft), forte (loud), adagio (slow) and allegro (fast). We moved our colored pencils or markers to the music using our whole arm from the shoulder to make our marks. Then we moved into the Theatre for dance and freeze to use our sense of hearing in performing arts. As they froze on a carpet square, a name was drawn from a hat to flip over their carpet square for a question to answer to learn more about each friend. “What is your favorite color?” “Do you have any pets?” It was so much fun to see them dance and learn more about them. Understanding about answering questions and responding in full sentences is something we work on throughout the year.

We read Aliki’s My Five Senses and drew a chart with picture symbols to remind us. Talk with your child about their five senses and how we use them to learn about things. Other books included My Friend Chicken by Adam McCauley and Friends Stick Together by Harriet Ziefert as we focus on what it means to be a friend. We discuss empathy and caring and model behaviors and language to promote healthy friendships. The children are finding friends in the class:

We continued our study of the work of Purvis Young, and how he painted on wood. We made pattern sticks with paint stir sticks as the next element in our “Purvis-inspired” art pieces. Our gallery adventure took us in to see the work of Dr. Charles Smith in the Collections Gallery. We talked about our personal collections of things (rocks, little Legos, princesses…) and the Arts Center’s collection of art. The sculptures in the exhibition Dr. Charles Smith: Aurora led to important discussions about making judgements by looking at people. Are they really “bad” if they are wearing a “jail suit?” “Why is he wearing broken shoes?” “What sound do you think that instrument makes?” We imagined what some of the sculptures might say if they could talk, and posed like some of them.

We begin to explore the alphabet next week, starting with letter A. Letter A is for adventures!