What a delightful way for the children to spend Thursday afternoon.  They were treated the the 6th grade performance of Peter Pan!  The children found the costumes, sets, acting, and singing magical.  For over an hour they were totally immersed in Neverland.  They were so well behaved, too.  After the lights were turned on in the auditorium, a teacher of older children came over and complimented the children on being so good.  If you have time this weekend, come so the musical.  You will be glad that you did!  (An added bonus is that the auditorium is air conditioned!)

 At some point, when preschoolers are taught about art, the inevitable giggle over nudes will need to be addressed.  This year, I decided to approach it head on by telling the children to think about how hard it is to paint someone naked since people have the same color skin all over their body.  Anyone can paint people with different colored clothes, but how could an artist paint someone's body if the skin is all one color.  If is pretty funny to overhear the children talk when they come across a picture of a nude in our art books.  To quote one child, "This is not a funny picture, he has to be a good artist to paint this naked person!"

The children are looking at paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir this week.  It is fun to hear the children try to say the French names.  One child began to talk about A Pear August Renoir.  We will be learning about his this week and next week.  As the children learn about Renoir's art work, they are learning about the terms portraits, landscapes, and still lifes.  The children are using the 'detective eyes to describe the pictures in detail.  By doing this, they are also making wonderful discoveries.  They noticed that the water in the painting, Bridge over Chatou, is multiple colors!

 

A T chart....

Each week, before the children learn about the artists, I ask the children what do they know and what do they want to learn about the artist.  This is a great way for me to assess what the children have been learning during the Art and Artist unit and what I should make sure I cover during the week.    This week, when I told the children that we will be learning about Edgar Degas so we need to make a chart to find out what do they know and what do they want to learn, a child piped up, "You mean we get to make a T-chart?"  Teachers who use graphic organizers to help their students learn, could truly understand the joy I had when I heard that little voice filled with excitement.  The class came up with the following T- chart for Edgar Degas:

Initial T chart created on Tuesday

By Thursday, the children had been finding out the answers to their questions as I read them books about Edgar Degas and through the slide show  I made of The Clark's Degas collection.  They were pretty excited when their T-chart was:

Thursday's revised T chart

Today there was a flurry of creative pictures as the children created various ballerinas.  Before I left school, I hung up a sample of their ballerinas on the bulletin board.  They made ballerinas with pastels since Degas used pastels.  As a nod to his sculpture Little Dancer of Fourteen Years, the children drew ballerinas and added real tutu!  They also experimented with creating dancers who looked like they were moving.   The children are so excited about this unit that even the boys were happily drawing dancers in tutus!

Sunscreen

  Wow!  Summery weather has arrived quickly.  Your child’s skin is so soft and wonderful.  If you would like to protect it with sunscreen please send it in so that we could apply it.  Don’t forget to label your child’s bottle.

In order for the sunscreen to be on the skin long enough to be effective, please apply it before you child comes to school in the morning.  We will apply the sunscreen that you send in during the afternoon free play time so that it is on the skill long enough prior to being outside to be effective.

When I asked a child what exciting activity he had planned for the weekend, he announced that he was going to go to The Clark to see paintings by Claude Monet.  The children have developed a personal relationship with him, they like to say that he looks like Santa Claus.  This week, the children have had fun learning facts about Monet and looking at his artwork as we cover the wonderful information that preschoolers need to learn.  We have looked at various versions of the Rouen Cathedral and talked about the times of day that Monet painted the cathedral.  We have counted ducks in the Duck Pond, used our detective eyes to identify the seasons in the paintings.  Of course we identified colors and shapes.

Last week was a big week for learning about plants.  Hopefully, you have picked up the plants that the children germinated from seeds and planted them in the ground.  The children kept journals to record the growth of their seeds.  It was fun seeing the children examine their plants carefully and try to draw what they saw.  Some children wrote using preschool spelling what they saw, and other's dictated their observations to an adult.   When the children dictate to adults, they are encouraged to use complete sentences.  Not only did we grow seeds in the classroom, but the children planted lettuce in the raised garden in the preschool playground.  Last year the weeds overtook the lettuce that we planted, we are hoping that this doesn't happen this year.