Our Art Adventure--Paint My Pottery and Frog and Toad Musical

This week we enjoyed an art adventure field trip where we explored the visual art of sculpture painting and the performing art of musical theater. We began our day by visiting Paint My Pottery at Willow Bend Mall where we were allowed to choose our own special sculpture and used our creativity to paint it. We will get to pick our creations up in two weeks after they have been fired in the kiln and glazed. We can not wait to share them with you all when they are finished! After this exciting opportunity, we went upstairs to the North Texas Performing Arts Center and enjoyed a production of Frog and Toad the Musical. It was great, and we really enjoyed their performance! Here are some pictures from our fun day!

https://animoto.com/play/een3IoSEiw1tZrky40QhqQ

Interesting Insects

This week we have been studying about insects. We learned that an insect has three body parts: a head, a thorax, and an abdomen. They also have two antennas, two wings, and six legs. Ask us to sing our song about insects. It is sure to put a smile on your face and help you to never forget these facts about insects! During our lessons this week, we read a lot of fascinating books about insects. We were especially impressed with Eric Carle's collection of insect stories. One of our favorites was The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  

After hearing this story, we also learned about the life cycle of a butterfly by reading some nonfiction stories about butterflies. In order to help us remember the different stages of a butterfly's life, we used pasta to make these butterfly life cycle plates. Aren't they neat!

Finally, we took some time to make our own insect creations. You can see them in the show below! Don't forget to leave us a comment and let us know what you think of our cool creations!

https://animoto.com/play/4lYMsh6k5yJL7zb4Q7qZwA

3D Shapes

In math, we enjoyed a study of 3D shapes. We learned about spheres, cylinders, cubes, and cones. We talked about how many sides, faces, and corners these shapes have. We also tested them to see which ones can roll, stack, or slide. Finally, we participated in a 3D shape sort where we sorting some familiar foods by 3D shape. Here are a few pictures of our fun shape sort. 

Sing-A-Long Sundae Party

Our Kindergarten-Second Grade students stayed after school recently to enjoy a Sing-A-Long Sundae Party benefiting our Find Your Light Service Project. Our students had an awesome time creating tasty ice cream sundae treats and singing along to some of our favorite Disney songs! Not only did we have a great time, but we were able to continue to add funds to our service project! Here are some sweet pictures from our fun afternoon together! We hope you enjoy them!

Future Conductors in the Making :)

Music Around the World--Session 3--Week 1--Australia

Welcome to our Music Around the World Club! I am so very excited that your child is joining me in this journey as we travel around the world exploring different countries and their unique music. I have two loves in life—music and children— so I could not be more thrilled to share this experience together with your child. We are going to learn to play instruments and sing songs from different countries. Then, we will share our music with you all at a Music Around the World Celebration Night in May. It is sure to be a night that you will not want to miss! Thank you again for allowing me the privilege to work with your child. I can not wait to share this experience together!

We began our musical tour around the world today by talking about the universal language of music and how it can touch all hearts and help all people. Then, we enjoyed singing "It's a Small World" together before flying around the world to Australia. 

The land down under had a lot to offer us! We learned about everything from koala bears to kangaroos and spent a "day in the life" of a girl from Australia on the Time for Kids website. We were also introduced to two of Australia's favorite instruments--bilmas and digeridoos. After listening to one of Australia's traditional songs featuring these instruments, we made our very own bilmas and digeridoos. Boy were they cool too! Finally, we began learning the Australian song that we are going to perform, Kookaburra. It is a silly song that will make you giggle and laugh, while allowing you to soak up the unique sounds of the digeridoos and the bilmas. Here is a show of our first day together. Leave us a comment and let us know what you think about our first week in Music Around the World!

https://vimeo.com/263616829

Color Mixing

After enjoying the story, White Rabbit's Color Book, we had a chance to explore color mixing and see how you can combine primary colors to make a secondary color. We used vanilla icing and food coloring to first create primary colors, and then, we used these colors to make our secondary colors. Check out our video of this cool experiment:

https://vimeo.com/263618622