Around the World cont.

The week was a bit strange due to my sudden bout of the flu, but we were still able to move forward with our Around the World Unit and Fine Art Friday.  The K-Kids learned about passports and created their own passports so they may "travel" next week as parents come into the classroom to present different countries and U.S. states.  They also tracked Flat Stanley's travels on the classroom maps and looked at many photos from his newest adventures in Arizona, California, and Hong Kong.  They especially loved the pictures of Flat Stanley next to a huge cactus and the Pacific Ocean, and they loved the pictures of Flat Stanley on a ferry in Hong Kong.  We are looking forward to even more travel stories from Flat Stanley next week!

Dot, dot, Seurat was heard in the classroom on Friday.  The K-Kids learned about a different type of art technique called pointillism and the artist who made this style famous, Georges Seurat.  They studied his famous pieces and learned that instead of mixing colors to create a new color, he would put two different colored dots next to each other to trick the eye into seeing the new color.  They chose different teacher-created pictures and dotted colored dots into each picture to create a final masterpiece! In the middle of the pointillism activity, one of the students looked up at me and said, "Wow, that dot, dot, Seurat guy must have had a lot of patience.  This is going to take forever!"  I suppose patience and perseverance were also learned during this art lesson. :)

During Writer's Workshop the K-Kids are experimenting with adding voices to their writing.  They listened to many stories where the characters spoke throughout and discovered that the story was much more interesting when characters were speaking and interacting with each other.  They were introduced to quotation marks, and although I do not expect the children to use the quotation marks perfectly every time, it is wonderful to see them experiment with quotation marks and setting up a conversation between characters.

We also kicked off our "telling time" unit this week in math.  The K-Kids were exposed to digital and analog clocks and experimented with telling time to the hour and half hour using an analog clock.  They created clocks and will use these clocks next week for more time telling activities.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend, and I will see everyone on Monday - healthy and happy!