This month, the Primary students are enjoying an obstacle course comprised of gymnastics mats, hoops, an agility ladder, and a balance beam. They are practicing many skills. They are climbing up and down from mats, jumping off the mats, jump through a hoop, performing a forward roll on an inclined mat, walking on a balance beam, and running the moving train around the gym. We cool down with fitness exercises and stretches at the end of each class. Throughout our gymnastics unit, the children are enhancing their social skills, developing strength and coordination, and gaining self-esteem and confidence.

During each class, the children practice learning skills. We practice observing, waiting our turn and following directions. Improving all of these skill areas is helpful for those children still learning how their bodies move. Our lessons help them become more comfortable and happy with themselves as they continue to grow.

 

Our first Lower Elementary Art Club session of the New Year was a big success! We began by looking at images of various animals from invertebrates to mammals, birds to reptiles, and everything in between. After a brief demonstration on how to begin an animal drawing by breaking down the body into simple shapes to act as guidelines, students then chose one animal to focus on for their drawing.

With images as their reference, students worked diligently on their animal drawings, sketching lightly in pencil first and then completing their drawing with darker outlines. Next, students worked on the fur, skin, feathers, or scales of their animal using colored pencils. Once complete, students cut out their animal by following along the outline so that next session they can focus on creating an environment for their animals to live in. These cut-out animal drawings will be glued onto their painted habitat, creating a finished art piece with a complete ecological story behind it!

The Art Studio has been buzzing lately with lots of wonderful clay work from students Kindergarten through Upper Elementary! Students have been exploring a range of clay processes and techniques such as coil building, slab rolling, pinching, and throwing on the pottery wheel. 

Working with clay has many benefits for children of all ages beyond simply providing a creative experience. It is a complex sensory experience that encourages self-expression, helps promote self-confidence, and develops problem-solving and motor skills. Because clay is highly responsive to touch and very forgiving, children become engrossed in their work: they are able to express and articulate their ideas through shaping clay and learning to repair mistakes. Clay is different from other art mediums in that it requires an understanding of the three dimensional world. While working on their projects, students must move around to see their creation from all sides. From this, they begin to understand shape, form, and perspective, and gain knowledge of planning methods and problem solving as they map out their creation.

The clay projects we explored in the Art Studio were designed to introduce new processes and techniques, as well as to encourage individual imagination. Kindergarten students explored the slab rolling technique by creating clay owls to connect with their vertebrate unit. They also created small pinch-pots that they made into candles for a holiday gift. Lower Elementary students crafted a wide range of projects from tiny tea cups to funny face jugs, and funky coil-pots to wheel-thrown cups. Upper Elementary students created a variety of pots on the pottery wheel and constructed impressive slab-built castles! Each student truly enjoyed the process of working with clay and as a result, created many wonderful finished projects.

Primary students have finished learning about our Solar System with our Ocho Planetas song. We just began working on Las Partes del Cuerpo and have done Cabeza, Hombros, Rodillas, Pies, and Mi Cuerpo Hace Música to reinforce the body parts. 

Lower Elementary classes have begun to explore their feelings in Spanish. We have also been working on retelling stories and developing our own stories with vocabulary acquired from those we have read together. 

Upper Elementary just finished listening to their first Spanish novel: Brandon Brown Quiere un Perro. We then did a Movie Talk about El Regalo, making connections between characters from the novel and those in the video. 

Middle School has been using phrases like, “Es una persona que…” or “Es un lugar…” for circumlocution exercises in order to stay in the target language for the majority of the class. They are flying through proficiency based novels and building a solid foundation of the language.