The Arts Center’s theme of Care crept into the curriculum in the yellow Class. We created postcards inspired by the concept of care. We discussed what care is, how we care for ourselves and each other, nature, and pets. We used food boxes as the base for our collage postcards. It is a great way to use recyclables to create art. We plan to mail the postcards to people we care about.
What is a compliment? We discussed ways to compliment others, not just for how they look, “I like your dress,” but for who they are inside, “I like the way you know all of the names of your friends in class,” or, “Dad, you are a good cook, I like the food you made for me for dinner!” Practice coming up with meaningful compliments to share with one another at home. It is good for the children to notice the world and people beyond themselves.
During art time we dipped colored chalk into water and drew on black paper as a science experiment. We explored printing with corks, a new way to paint without brushes. We made our first initials of our names with corks! Save your corks to donate for future projects!
We went to the ceramics studio to create clay candle holders. Ask your child about the steps in the process. We started with a ball of clay. Then what? We added texture to continue our senses study. We learned about the kiln, bisque firing, and glazing ceramics.
Our Zoo Phonics character was Catina Cat. We talked about how tricky the English language is when the letters “C” and “K” can make the same sound, like “kitty” and “cat.” We also learned about how C sounds different when it gets together with “h” to make the “ch” sound.
We incorporated new poses into our yoga practice including cat/cow, cobra, cow face and camel pose. Corpse pose is the same as Savasana, final relaxation. Inhale, exhale…Namaste.
We read Circle by Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen. Ask your child about the shapes and what was behind the waterfall. They each got to imagine a shape to complete the story. The classic children’s story, Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina had us continually counting the peddler’s caps as the monkeys kept stealing them off of his head while he slept!
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett brought out our imaginations of what kind of food we wanted to fall from the sky. Ask your child what the funniest part of the story was to them. Was it the huge pancake that covered the whole school? The frankfurters? The tomato tornado? Maybe they remember some details, like who told the children the story? How did the idea even begin? (Grandpa was making pancakes for breakfast and one got flipped and flew into the air and landed on who?—Henry!)
We learned about the primary (first) colors: red, blue, and yellow and how they can mix together to make new colors, secondary colors: orange, green, and purple. Ask your child about mixing red with yellow, blue with yellow, and red with blue. What is the outcome? What if we mix all three colors together? Each child will select their favorite primary color as their candidate to vote for in the Primary Color Election. We read the book Color Dance by Ann Jonas that showed us the secondary colors as they observed the colored scarves mixing in the story.
In music we learned about the clarinet, castanets, claves, cymbals, and crescendos. They listened to examples of clarinet music and saw a real instrument. They tried their hand at playing the castinets and matching the beat. We moved our bodies with the crescendos as we listened to Sprach Zarathustra from the 2001 A Space Odyssey movie.
We drew letter “Cc” in melted crayon on a hotplate. We learned about how some solids become a liquid when heated. “C” is for cold, but our C’s were hot this week!
For math we glued corn kernels onto sticks to make counting corn cobs. We added some butter (yellow watercolor on top!) Your child can count their corn over and over. We talked about eating corn on the cob!
We hiked in the community to places including the Courthouse, the boardwalk, the Lottie Cooper boat, and the Coast Guard station. We talked about water safety. We stopped to play on the boat at Deland Park. It was a great adventure finding “C’s” all along the way!
D week ushers in dinosaurs, dominoes, dance, downward facing dog, and drawing and so much more!
Love Notes To Mom 
Airplane Pose 
Tree Climbing