Art: Drip, tip or blow

Building on their discovery during their painting with different materials experience, the girls made a painting with all drips, tips and blows.  They started with beautiful handmade papers in rich colors then used spoons to apply a puddle of color.  Then, they tipped and twirled the paper to control the direction of paint or blew the paint into spindly lines with a straw.  Of course, they practiced first on an iPad app that has a drip and tip tool.  They also were introduced to the idea of transparency which is the see-through quality of some paints.  Ask your daughters if she was more mesmerized by the puddles of swirling colors or the skinny crooked lines when making her painting? 

Technology: Scribble My Story

Welcome to technology class! The Kindergarten girls have been working hard exploring apps on their iPads. We are currently learning about Scribbly My Story. The girls created a three page story entitled "All About Me." The text is pre-written and they are able to change words in order to personalize it. For example, when talking about their favorite foods, they could choose from fruit, cupcakes, and spaghetti. It turns out we have a lot of cupcake lovers! They illustrated their books using tools from scribble press in order to draw pictures of themselves, their home, and their favorite foods. The picture below shows them immersed in their work.

Art: Discovery Paintings

Imagine being told you can use many art materials but could not paint what you already know. That was the challenge for kindergarten this week!  They used the familiar materials from the Painted Quilts project: crayons, colored pencils, markers, graphite, tempera paint, and watercolors. They started with a continuous line and then explored and discovered new techniques.  Ask your daughter what she discovered? Here are some to share: making a border or frame; blowing on watercolor to make twig lines, and putting water over marker. 

The Owl Gate, A Scavenger Hunt, and Resilience!

This has been a beautiful week for spending time outside and enjoying all that the Bryn Mawr campus has to offer! After a short walk through campus, the girls discovered the Owl Gate this week. Each one got the opportunity to walk up the the gate, put her hands on it, close her eyes, and make a very special first wish on it. Some wishes have already come true and others we are still anxiously waiting for! After their visit, the girls enjoyed drawing and writing about their wishes in their storybook. We will continue to visit the gate throughout the year as we are constantly thinking of new wishes!

In math we continue to work with our numbers; writing, counting, ordering, and showing them in a ten-frame. Today each girl worked with her special friend to find a set of numbers 1-12 hidden around the room. The girls had such fun searching for each number and practiced working together to find a complete set and then put the numbers in order from smallest to biggest.

Our value this week is RESILIENCE.

re·sil·ience

 noun \ri-ˈzil-yən(t)s\

: the ability to become strong, healthy, or successful again after something bad happens

: the ability of something to return to its original shape after it has been pulled, stretched, pressed, bent, etc.

(http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/resilience)

We have seen many resilient Bryn Mawr Girls work tirelessly to learn to cross the monkey bars. They are learning to be resilient when something is difficult, whether in the classroom or on the playground with friends.

Ask your daughter how she showed RESILIENCE at school today!

French: Songs

The girls have been learning lots of new French songs. Here are two of them. One is a welcome song. The other song is about what animals you could find on the farm.

P.E.- Let's Get Moving!!!

Our slogan for the year in Physical Education is “Let’s Move!”  In Kindergarten we started with a Cooperative Games and Following Directions unit.  This teaches each student how to start working together to play different games and activities.  We learned the rules to many different tag games and reviewed how to do all of our locomotor skills (walk, jog, run, hop, jump, gallop, skip, slide, and leap).  We will continue to master these movements throughout the year. 

Art: Painting in the easel room

This week the girls painted at the easels!  Their challenge was to paint all the negative space (the remaining white spaces) on the paper. 

Art: Painting shapes for paper quilts

After a look at some of the bold and beautiful quilts made by the women in Gee's Bend, the girls painted the shapes for their paper quilts.  They chose either square, rectangle or triangle and repeated the shape floating, touching, overlapping and inside each other.  Each new shape changed the space around the shapes.  This unit is an introduction to positive and negative space in compositions.

Art: Paper Quilts

To make paper quilts the girls used art materials to translate their tactile experience with fabrics.  Each fabric: corduroy, satin, burlap, velvet, and leather, has different textures.  With colored pencils, markers and watercolor the girls made patches of "fabric" in their paper quilts. 

K: Shiny shapes

The girls have been feeling different fabrics and using art materials to re-create the fabrics on their  paper quilts.  Today they made shiny shapes by rubbing graphite hard and using a metallic sharpie pen. 

Art: Experience

Kindergarten explores the theme EXPERIENCE in art throughout the year. They work with textures and different materials and techniques to represent them. They create patterns through printmaking with physical materials. They tell their own stories and relate to children's books to inspire works and ways to work. 

Welcome to Kindergarten!

Our first days of school were filled with new friends, teachers, singing and exploring! We are enjoying each moment with these wonderful girls who are filled with curiosity and a zest for learning.
                                        

We learned our first Lower School Value 

COMPASSION

Each day we discuss ways to show compassion towards our new friends. It is a thrill to add a ribbon to our classroom value wreath when a child shows compassion towards a friend.

Today was exciting when each girl chose her keepsake Poetry-Song Book.
We illustrated our first song, Rise and Shine. Ask your daughter to sing it for you!

We hope you enjoy a few class pictures from the first days of school.

                    

French: Bienvenue

Bienvenue - Welcome

We have been having lots of fun learning new French words.  Emiline, our French snail, has been singing and playing games with the kindergarten girls, and we have even been singing a few French songs.  The girls have been playing a game where they pretend that they are French girls during carpool and say "Bonjour" as they get into the car.  This week we are starting to learn animal words.  If you have pets at home, you could ask your daughter if she remembers the French word for that kind of animal.  

Music: Welcome

Hello from Ms. Wilbur and welcome to our Kindergarten music class.

We have been singing a song about a naughty kitty cat and acting it out.  Today, I told the story of the naughty cat and the farmer and we played the story on the barred instruments.  Ask your daughter to sing you the naughty kitty cat song!