Imagine

For this activity we painted to different genres of music. We chose a slow classical song and a fast rock and roll song.  Before painting, we talked about the word synesthesia : how using one sense might evoke another sense. We closed our eyes and listened to the music while we talked about how the music made us feel. We started with Beethoven's Für Elise. "This music makes me feel like somebody has been hurt," one of of our friends said. We asked, "what color might you use to paint that?" A friend told us, "I'm painting darkness." Next we listened to loud rock and roll.  The children immediately began moving their bodies. We asked them how they might move their paint brushes to this music. "I'm going fast!" "I'm going crazy!" "I feel it in my body!"

We have noticed throughout the school year a pretty strong interest in music. We thought this might be an interesting topic to explore . We started the conversation by asking the children what they already  knew about music. We got answers like, "it makes pretty sounds", " music makes people happy" and "instruments make music". We have been listening to a variety of music in our classroom and have had great talks about all the different kinds of instruments there are, along with recognizing that there are different styles of music. We even realized that music can sound different depending on the country you are in. We found Ireland on the map while we were listening to Irish fiddle music. Listening to music makes us want to dance, there has been a lot of that. We have spent time as a class making different sounds using our bodies. We have talked about the word beat and realized that we can keep a beat using our hands, our feet and even our mouths. Everyone

This activity invited children to explore sounds they can make by tapping on jars of water. They noticed that the sound was different depending on the amount of water that was in the jar. We supplied paper and a marker and had the children draw a line across their paper and then circles across the length of the line. They "wrote" their own song by painting the circles different colors. Some chose to paint a pattern of colors while others painted the colors more randomly. When they were finished everyone got a chance to name and play their very own song. 

We have been working hard getting ready for Valentine's Day. We made beautiful heart garland out of newspaper we painted red. The children made Valentine's Day presents for their loved ones. Two hand prints make a lovely heart, painted craft sticks make a cute frame. The seniors made awesome invitations inviting everyone to a special Valentine's day lunch. Lunch was a huge success! There were balloons and a special treat and lots of happy faces. Happy love day 2016! I think it might be of note to mention that our blog is seven years old today!  Happy Birthday! 

In the midst of our preparations for Valentine's day, and talking about kindness, friendship, and love, we realized just how many symbols were associated with the holiday. Most significantly, the heart shape. We read a Valentine's day story and discussed how the hearts we saw on the pages were symbols for the feeling of love. We touched on the concept of symbols a few weeks ago when we were talking about maps. Symbols are an important part of emergent literacy.  Literacy put simply is the ability to associate symbols with meaning; a letter to a sound, a word to an object. The  understanding that symbols represent something, that they have meaning, is essential. We decided to explore story telling through symbols. First we worked as a class to "write a story". Then we gave the children small pieces of paper to create their own stories. On the second day, we introduced blocks with symbols attached and encouraged the children who were interested to create their own stori

The last couple of weeks we have been exploring one of our favorite shapes, the heart. We gave the children a number of different fine motor experiences all inspired by heart shapes. White chalk hearts on black butcher block paper, oil pastels in various shades of pinks and purples... The children colored and cut... An outline of a heart in a frame and colorful gems... On our playground we found leaves that were heart shaped. We put them on our light table to trace.