December welcomed a study of the letters H and I and numbers 10 to 20.
“H” week inspired crazy hair and hat week! We read Crazy Hair by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean and invited each child to draw a self-portrait with crazy hair for their journal. We all wore crazy hair or hats to our virtual class during “H” week. It is fun to use your imagination and pretend to be someone or something else.
We read the book, Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy by Lynley Dodd and invited the children to create their own Hairy sock puppet using cut-off socks. The children also explored the math concept of “one more” by practicing simple addition using characters from the story.
H is for home, house, and habitat. Since we are all at home, a study of houses was in order for H week. We made two-dimensional houses using geometric shapes of a variety of textures.
We celebrated Hmong culture by creating special Hmong Culture Celebration hats. We encourage a visit to the Lakefront to the Lao, Hmong, American Memorial and to the Arts Center to view the Collection Highlights: Hmong Textiles to learn more about our Hmong community.
Letter “I” week brought an Inuit culture study including an Inuit inspired igloo building project using sugar cubes, marshmallows, and special frosting as mortar. The children were able to do some research to learn about Inuit culture, like where they live and their way of life. To stick with the theme of ice, we tried ice cube painting with frozen watercolor or food color. The children became scientists and watched the colors mix as the ice melted.
Inspired by the flags by Christine Wong Yap in the exhibition Between You and Me, we created our own flags using felt shapes. We discussed layering, small, medium, and large, and composition.
Tempo, which is the musical term for “speed”, has been our main focus in our music classes over the past few weeks. The four tempos we’ve investigated include: largo(slow), andante (walking pace), allegro (lively), and presto (fast.) Using the tambourines, rhythm sticks, rainsticks, and jingle bells that we created, we kept the beat to a variety of songs and experimented with how the beat determines the tempo of a song. We even sang a song about these different tempos! Ask your child to sing “The Tempo Song.” Check out the lyrics in the Musical Monday post from “I” Week if you’d like to sing along!
In Spanish and American Sign Language, we have continued to practice la familia (family members) and los sentimientos (emotions.) Recently, the King and Queen of Sign Language returned from a trip to Ecuador with their cousin, Benito, and shared all their favorite activities from their journey. As they spoke, they reviewed the family vocabulary, and even introduced two new family member terms: primo (boy cousin) and prima (girl cousin.) If you need a review of la familia in Spanish and ASL, check back in the “H” Week posts from November 16-19. We are looking forward to beginning animal terms in both ASL and Spanish when we come back from winter break.
In December, we added an additional, optional story time to our virtual schedule three days per week. We love reading to the children and having the opportunity to share some of our favorite books and foster the love of reading. Small group classes added a new dimension to our virtual learning. The topics of Questions, Curiosity, Games, and Wonder inspire new lines of thinking and opens up more conversation among the children.