Lower Elementary friends incorporate yoga into retelling a story.  Let's dance Flamenco with our Middle School intern, Ava Locknar! Lower and Middle Elementary students are creating quilts as a part of the More Than Warmth project.  The Lower Elementary quilt will go to Africa and the Middle Elementary blanket will go to Nicaragua. Using role-playing and improvisation theatre,  Upper Elementary students learn strategies to deepen their reading comprehension and language acquisition. If you give students enough comprehension input, the grammar will be there. Upper Elementary students have the opportunity to interview staff at Abintra who speak Spanish.

The students are having a lot of fun working on the Early Childhood porch.  Moving through various stations we practice crawling, balancing, climbing, rolling, and spinning. Walking the balance beam is one their favorite activities.  Beam exercises are great for children, strengthening core and leg muscles while also developing a stronger sense of balance and agility. Also very popular is the “spinning chair" (pictured top right), a small legless seat that requires the activation of legs, feet, and core in order to send their bodies spinning! Before returning to class we strengthen and stretch our bodies by practicing yoga.  Children easily assume the role of animals, trees, flowers, and warriors, standing strong like the tree, hissing like the cobra, and stretching long like the dog. Yoga and gross motor practice help to strengthen the powers of concentration and attention. Self-esteem and self-acceptance are bolstered as children gain control ov...

This week EC, LE, ME, UE, & MS have been working on a Chihuly inspired chandelier to hang at the wine and cheese party.  Be sure to go and see this beautiful collaboration piece in person!      by Rebecca

In our Early Childhood community, Spanish is part of our lives! The children are exposed to Spanish from the beginning of the day when we greet them during carline with, "Buenos Dias. Como estas? Camina cerca de la verja." Once in the classrooms, children learn Spanish by listening to the language and receiving lessons with many different materials informing a variety of subjects. We use Total Physical Response (TPR) to teach commands, such as: poner las zapatillas, lavate las manos, sientate correctamente, caminar despacio, tocar el hombro a la maestra, la clase se levanta, la clase aplaude cinco veces, etc. We reinforce language lessons by creating physical actions involving our entire bodies, which duplicate our messages. Children learn sounds in Spanish through "El sonido de la semana" - the sound of the week. We choose a Sandpaper Letter and we find three objects from a little box that start with that sound (e.g.,...

One of our goals for EC artists is to explore different mediums of art.  This week they explored collage. LE artists began their study of the elements of design: color, line, shape, space, texture, and form. This week they focused on color by creating a color wheel.  Their palette started with the primary colors:  red, blue, and yellow.  They mixed these colors to create the secondary and intermediate colors. by Lily LE musicians started the year off by preparing and personalizing their music folders.   They worked on identifying music notation such as crescendo and decrescendo as Vanessa played a melody on the piano. They also practiced singing in the key of C. In this picture, they are practicing how to sing in their head voice and are creating the arc of the sound with their arm.  ME, UE, and MS went on a field trip to the Frist to see the exhibitions, Sensuous Steel: Art Deco Automobiles  and   Vik Muniz: Garbage Matters ....

Using Total Physical Response ( T. P. R.),  the students experience how learning another language can be fun and easy!  Culture and language are inseparable. In order to value one, they must study both!     Working collaboratively     Tell us something about yourself.    Personalization & Making Connections

Self-regulation is the ability to control your own behavior.  When we have an impulse to jump or shout, to eat too much, to run across the street, or to strike out at something or someone, our self-regulation enables us to make a good choice about whether it is best to follow the impulse.  Our impulses are based in emotion, and our self-regulation is based in cognition. The foundation of self-regulation is developed in the first five years of life, and continues to develop over time as children grow and develop cognitively, socially, and emotionally. In our early childhood classrooms, all of the children are working on their self-regulation skills, whether through completing difficult work from the shelves, remembering not to throw too hard in play, or being patient when frustrated with a friend. When a child experiences challenges or frustrations, we see this as an opportunity to help the student learn.  The most powerful way we can help children learn self-regul...