Searching for just the right sculpture treasure

Some of the comments left by viewers of our exhibit included "Your sculptures make me happy", "Very creative...I would love to have them in my home", and "Thank you for sharing your work with us." I agree, I agree, I agree!

Bembo's Zoo

Letters, letters everywhere. It seems as if many of the children came back to school, after the break, with a heightened curiosity about letters. Today, we made letter collages, and all week we have been playing with our wooden letter pieces. Kim and I prepared the Highway Letters so that our race car drivers might perhaps put them all together to make a rambling alphabet road next week. And check out the Bembo's Zoo website.

A Sneak Peek into Our Artists' Studio

The building and sculpting has drawn to a close, the stories are being told and the strawberries will get dipped in chocolate tomorrow...all in preparation for our gallery-style showcase on Friday. Come at your leisure and let their creations take you back to a place where imagination reigns. The sculptures make Kim and I smile...hope they will brighten your day too.

Sculptors at work

Last week, we explored the properties of wood and foil in preparation for starting our sculpture work today. We used wood cut-offs, Beautiful Stuff and cardboard. After our work dries, we will add another layer. Some of their suggestions were to add paper. We also sculpted letters using these wood pieces.

"There's a steering wheel in my heart." --Makayla

We introduced writers notebooks. These can be easily made at home, too. We used story pages with a few modifications. After they draw something, we help them with a word or two about an especially fun detail in their drawing.

We had so much to share and do today...how do we fit it all in? There were animal amusement parks to build, books to share and still more boats to build. On Wednesday, we will dive into a study of sculpture and what materials we can use. Westlake has generously saved their lumber cut-offs for us. In combination with our Beautiful Stuff, recycled material, clay, and foil, we will begin building on Friday.

So Quiet Around Here

You will notice many changes when you come back to our room on January 4th. But for now, the room is quiet...pencils, markers, smocks, paint, clay, blocks...all stand ready to be called into service. What journeys will we take in the coming semester?

All School Newsletter

Kelly Dreier (Half-day preschool teacher) has put together another wonderful all-school newletter.
Check it out!
Second_All_School_Newslett~1.doc‎ (15 MB‎)

Getting ready to set sail!

Don't forget the fruit!

Thinking With A Line

Look what we tried today!

"Thinking With A Line shows you how the edge of a small rectangle of cardboard dipped into paint can become a tool for making lines. By repeating a single line, children discover they can print vertical, horizontal and diagonal lines. They also discover ways to extend, cross and space their lines. They find when lines connect they can form shapes. By combining lines and shapes children begin creating complex structures such as letters, alphabets, patterns and designs, trees and plants, buildings, boats, machines and vehicles." --from Thinking With a Line, by Cathy Topal

Cooking Class

We had a very wonderful (and sweet!) visit from Ellery's grandmother (she is the 'Jean' of the former Peggy Jeans Pies in Columbia). After putting on our very own aprons and hats, we rolled out our dough, filled prebaked pie crusts (as Jean says "The magic of television" was at work in our class) with a homemade chocolate filling, whipped cream and sprinkles! And did you know that each pleat in a chef's hat means they have mastered a certain culinary skill? And that some chefs have hats with 100 pleats?

Snowy Day

The frigid temperatures kept us inside all day today...time for Water Color Extravaganza 2009! We pushed together two tables and had nine (yes, nine!) of our 13 preschoolers busy mixing and painting and ooohing and aaahing over their work. Miss Amanda read The Mitten and we made our own versions and stuffed them with cotton. Miss Jennifer treated us to ice cream sundaes to say farewell for the semester. And what would a day be without a sail on the high seas? We capped the day with a quick trip to South America on yet another pirate ship--but this one was special because it could also go under water!

A Preschoolers To-Do list:

Sculpt with clay, check!

Draw something that I built, check!

And, build a pirate ship, check!

Stormy skies, but smooth sailing!

In Keats' A Letter to Amy the children noticed that the skies were stormy (not at all like our serene snowflake filled skies we made yesterday). So after looking closely at the pictures and deciding what colors we might mix together to make a stormy sky, we donned our smocks and painted the sky...there were claps of glee rather than thunder, however! They all seemed thrilled with the process and proud of the end result. We have taken pictures of some of the buildings in our school neighborhood and will use black and white copies of those to add to our stormy sky scenes (just as Keats did in his illustrations).

And as for the smooth sailing, just ask our sea-faring captains where the ship is heading next.

As we continue to study the illustrations and artwork of Ezra Jack Keats, we are paying closer attention to some of the details in his books. Today we met in two small groups to talk about the differnt types of materials he might have used in his collages. Be sure to check out the work we did yesterday with fabric and yarn. Today, we sponge painted and stamped to recreate the illustrations in The Snowy Day. It even felt like a snowy day in our classroom as we skated around on paper plates while listening to a waltz during music.

Faces everyone, faces everyone!

The possibilities continue to be endless with the laminated pictures of our faces. Today, we put pieces of plexi-glass over them, painted over different details of our faces and hair and then pressed blank sheets of paper onto the glass to make prints. Our prints ranged from whimisical to abstract and again showed us that using our own faces for artistic creations is still quite captivating!

Welcome Back!

It's amazing how much we can grow in just one week! We noticed changes in their writing and attention to details. We read A Letter to Amy by Ezra Jack Keats and then asked them to close their eyes and imagine what they think Peter wished for at his birthday party. Some ideas were balloons, a rocket ship, a letter, a cake and the sun! They drew pictures of their ideas and then added color to them and even labeled some of their drawings. We also explored the Beautiful Stuff and after making their own creations, they accepted my challenge to put everything back in the tubs and then pick out only the circles. It's beautiful, isn't it? And yes, bowling lane constructions continue in the block area!

Capture the light

We passed by the chapel on our way to the commons and wondered what it might look like from the inside. So, with clipboards in hand, we headed back on a beautiful sunny afternoon. We sat outside for a moment and studied the stained glass doors and then stepped inside. We turned our shoes different colors by stepping into the colors on the floor.

Learning with Beautiful Stuff

After two weeks of collecting, it was finally Bag Opening Day!

We gathered at the tables, gave each child his or her bag and then began emptying the bags onto the table. Before this point, we had class meetings to talk about the Beautiful Stuff becoming part of our classroom and that, at least for a little while, the treasures would stay at school rather than be glued together and taken home.
As we sifted through the treasures, we began talking about how to organize it all. The children at Kim’s table thought it should be sorted by the way it felt (soft, squishy and hard). The children at Amanda’s and Catherine’s tables decided to sort by color.
When the ‘soft, squishy, hard’ containers became too full and overflowed, they decided to try sorting by color also.

After we finished mixing our food colors to make ALL the colors in the rainbow, several of them wanted to paint using the colors we created.


Scientists and artists in the same day...just as it should be!

Somewhere between making making pumpkin bread, visiting Michelle's class for worktime and getting a wonderful visit from Ellery's pumpkin growing 'paw-paw', Amanda got the call from the girls. It was time to bowl. So, the "Sweet Biscuit and the Muffins" bowling team hopped into their imaginary car and zoomed off the the bowling alley (aka the cubbies). High-fives all around--each roll was a strike!