3-Day: Exploring Artists
Welcome back, 3-Day Families!
Your children made such a beautiful transition back into school after February break. We were so proud of them. They settled into our routines with such ease, almost as though they had never been away.
This week we tried our first ever artist unit! On Monday we talked about the word “artist,” read a book called Oooh, Matisse, discussed his collages and then children made their very own with brightly colored shapes and glue that we had previously cut out for them. Take a look at the board outside our classroom - you will be very impressed! Children also played in brightly colored blue water and dug and stamped in blue and green kinetic sand. They also built structures and rafts from both Magnatiles at the light table and Playstix at our manipulative table. All the bright colors made us feel like we were in the middle of a Matisse collage ourselves!
On Wednesday we read The Magical Garden of Claude Monet. We also looked at a huge book of Mondrian paintings, created our own Mondrian graphic paintings at the easel and started our collaborative Monet Waterlilies painting at our big table. While exploring Mondrian, we started a discussion encouraging children to put the paint brush back with its corresponding color! Speaking of color, we learned a new song about all the colors in the rainbow and children used scarves at music to sing The Rainbow Song.
Our first Lunch Bunch was lots of fun! Your children did a great job preparing their food at the table, opening and closing containers, and cleaning up (with a little help). We talked about eating only our own food (even though so many of us wanted to share), saving our treats for the end, and really enjoyed socializing and staying late like the “big kids do”.
On Friday we explored sculpture while looking at pictures of works by Henry Moore. We made a salt dough with a softer consistency than clay so children were able to manipulate the material to make masterpieces of their very own. Children loved working with the dough, so we are planning to continue our sculpture exploration on Monday. In addition, our own version of Monet’s Waterlilies will be on display in our classroom after school on Monday, once children glue their lily pads to the beautiful blue water they created as a class.
On Friday we noticed that all of our artists’ names began with the letter “M,” as do many of our 3-Day names, and the new month we have started: March! We will continue to recognize and discuss letter patterns at school - please let us know if your children notice any at home.
The children have been working on counting, patterning and identifying shapes at our table activities. They have already come so far this year, we are so proud of them. During the rest of the year, we will continue to work with manipulatives to reinforce these skills and to improve their fine motor skills as they point, grasp, pinch and hold the small pieces that we have put out for them.
Next week we will transition into our exploration of outer space and get a jump start on some spring seed planting. Get ready to blast off!
Have a wonderful weekend,
Karen and Emily