Building Continues in the Art Room

The kindergarten artists have added more pieces to their cardboard structures and are now continuing to work on their creations using paint. After being introduced to the 'cool' and 'warm' color families, the kindergarteners made choices as artists about which color palette they would like to use to paint their work.

We will be adding more decorations soon, considering shape and scale in determining how to design our artwork.

Photography, culture and language

Dear Parents,

I know this is last minute but I wanted to give you information about an interesting event this coming Friday. A colleague of mine, Tony Rocco, is the founder of an NGO that engages children - from North Philly and a neighborhood called La Florida, near Cali, Colombia - in a cultural and language exchange program through photography.

Tony and his students are having a fundraiser event this Friday. It seems like a good opportunity for AFS' Lower School students to interact with middle school students from North Philly who already have some experience in cultural exchange and language learning.

Besides, you will get to do some bowling and eat pizza!

P.S: I will be there on Friday some time between 6 p.m. - 6:30 p.m.

Kid Writing

We have been working on our kid writing each week and the progress is quite impressive!  Before we write, we do some simple warm-up exercises to get our bodies ready to write and we practice our letters and sounds.  Then, depending on our previous experiences, we will have a mini lesson to bring us further along in the process.  This past month we have been reading about, discussing and experiencing our fall season.  It seemed a natural topic for our writing.  We reviewed the beginning words and sight words that we have worked with, talked about the period at the end of our writing, and using spaces between words.  The words that we have been using and that you may want to work with at home include:  I, am, as, the, and the 'at' word family.  Hopefully your child has read you all the 'at' rhyming words they came up with in our cat/bat activity.  If not, ask them to share their words with you.  Enjoy reading what we notice or enjoy about Fall.

Halloween Chicken? In Gym?

Yes, the Halloween Chicken paid a visit to our Gym class recently. The students had been working on throwing skills when Mr. C called them together and said that he had a special guest visitor.  He introduced the chicken, dressed for Halloween, reviewed the Chicken Dance with them and the good times began.  Not only did this chicken play the music, it danced and moved about the gym floor inspiring our kindergartners to get funky and dance along.  They had a hauntingly good time!!

Bingo y el escondite

Sadly, we have left "conga, conga". But we have engaged into two different activities: bingo and el escondite (hide-and-seek). This is a way of providing a couple of fun activities while they play! To the it is just a game, but through these games they are learning the numbers form 11 to 20.

We have used bingo numbers and have counted from 11 to 20 to play el escondite. The children love it so much!

Please see the following video.

EC Extended Day's Whimsical Blown Ink!

Our Extended Day students made the most amazing Ink Blown illustrations! It is an open ended creative project that encourages students to use their imaginations. For inspiration, we read the book It Looked Like Spilt Milk. First, we dropped a puddle of ink onto a sheet of paper. Next, students then blew the ink through a straw. Once they had the form and shape they liked, they tried to imagine what their shape could be turned into. They used their creativity to illustrate details with markers and colored pencils to make their shape come alive. Every single one of the illustrations is an amazing work of art!

Sneak Peak at Extended Day's Next Art Project

Here's a sneak peak at what Extended Day's next art project is going to be!

Can you guess what we could be making?

Some of our supplies include...

The Giving Tree Book,

Painting leaves with watercolors,

Tree made by friends with words of kindness.

Stay tuned!