Sharing Our Love...

While kindergarten works hard to let their light shine throughout the year, this day was an especially loving day! Jyena and her mother, Joyce, joined our class to share a service project for a local organization in Jenkintown, the Breathing Room Foundation. They provide care and support to local families affected by cancer. They reach out to families to give them "breathing room" while dealing with very difficult circumstances. Using colorful card stock, our class wrote messages to make others smile who were not feeling well and adorned cards with imaginative drawings.

 

It was a wonderful way to make a first time connection with this organization. It is our hope to continue to connect in meaningful and age appropriate ways by possibly making pillows and/or  a quilt to warm more hearts at the Breathing Room. We will let you know when those future projects will happen so that you could join us in the classroom if you are available. For more information, please see their website: https://breathingroomfoundation.org/

    

Our "love" sharing did not stop there as the kindergarten friends excitedly shared valentines with their classmates. Each child passed out cards from home that had been carefully signed with love. Beautifully decorated bags waited to be filled with valentine greetings from friends.

Our friendly celebration was completed by a healthy valentine snack of delicious muffins, raspberries, strawberries, carrots and pink lemonade. Thank you for all of your support and contributions to this very full and loving day amongst friends.

In the afternoon, the love continued as the kindergarten friends wrote letters and made cards for other friends in Lower School. The first grade children have begun a post office in which they have created their very own "hero" stamps as part of their classroom studies.

For only ten cents, individual stamps can be bought and attached to mail that can be dropped in mail boxes located in the lower school hallways. The first graders will then sort and deliver the mail to classrooms. Our class will purchase stamps next week and wait to spread more love through pictures and notes to friends throughout the lower school. It has been a joyful day with so many opportunities to shine our inner lights while supporting and holding up growing literacy skills!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Love,
Kindergarten

Teacher In-Service Day on Friday

This Friday, students have the day off and teachers will be the ones attending classes!  Dr. Natalie Nixon will be joining the AFS faculty and staff for a day of learning and training in the use of "design thinking."  In-service days inspire us and give us the tools to build on our strengths as a school.

To learn more about Dr. Nixon or design-thinking, you can follow the links below!

http://www.philau.edu/strategicdesignmba/meet_the_director.html

http://www.inc.com/natalie-nixon/how-to-lead-with-design-thinking.html

We hope students enjoy the long weekend, and we'll see you on Tuesday!

Los Catbirds: Oso café, oso café, ¿qué ves ahí? / Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see?

Los Catbirds’ interest in a very popular children’s picture book offered the opportunity to link concepts to their Spanish language class experience. Eric Carle’s storybook, “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?” is a classic favorite that los Catbirds enjoy reading over and over. In Spanish class, the students were introduced to the Spanish version of the book, Oso café, oso café, ¿qué ves ahí?, as well as a YouTube video; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3pdqG0XDbg. 

Flashcards were created for each of the characters in the story and many games of matamoscas (fly swatters) were played to help the children learn and reinforce the Spanish word for some colors and animals. To foster their memory skills by concentrating and focusing, we played ¿Qué falta? (What’s missing?) using small figurines to represent each character. 

Additionally, a bingo game was crafted to help support the children’s new knowledge. This game helped los Catbirds strengthen their Spanish vocabulary recall ability using the combination of both colors and animals.  Without a doubt, the rhyming and predictable text make this picture storybook a delight for all the Catbirds, in English and in Español.

Vocabulary introduced:

oso café – brown bear

pájaro rojo – red bird

pato amarillo -  yellow duck

caballo azul – blue horse

rana verde – green frog

gato morado – purple cat

perro blanco – white dog

oveja negra – black sheep

pez dorado – gold fish

maestra – teacher

niños – children

¿Qué ves ahí? – What do you see?

Veo un _________ viendome a mí. - I see a ___________ looking at me.

Mummies in the Morning- Second Grade Book Groups

In small book groups, students are reading and discussing Magic Tree House  Mummies in the Morning and Magic Tree House Fact Tracker Mummies and Pyramids. The reading of historical fiction in small groups prior to our Egypt reading has helped to prepare students to understand the structure of this genre. Also, as a class they have been exploring and listening to books read aloud about Ancient Egypt.

As we begin reading Mummies in the Morning, students are able to find and discuss the character traits of Jack and Annie. They are able to chart  how the actions and thoughts of the characters develop as they read the book. For example in the beginning of the book, Jack is cautious and worried, and he is a child who loves to read and learn. The students are able to find the text that supports their ideas. At the same time that we are following the characters and the plot of the story, students are learning a lot of information and vocabulary about Ancient Egypt. They are demonstrating their knowledge during discussion and as they sketch, fill in charts and write.

Conference Day is Friday

Just a reminder that this Friday is Conference Day and there is no school.  We look forward to sharing your children's goals and accomplishments!

3rd Grade explores littleBits

As we get ready for the Invention Convention, 3rd grade students have been exploring electronic components called littleBits.

Last year, we started an exciting new program in 3rd grade science.  The science teachers from the schools that participate in the 4th Grade Mold Symposium got together and added another symposium, this time for 3rd Grade students.  We decided that an invention theme would challenge the students and focus on creativity and engineering. The 3rd Grade Invention Symposium was born! Teams of students will create inventions and present them in a science symposium that will be held here at AFS in April. The students will need to incorporate a simple machine into their invention and can also use littleBits to include an electronic component.

Want to know more about Little Bits?  Take a look at their terrific website. http://littlebits.cc/

Third grade students have started to experiment with the LittleBits.  With a bit of practice, the students were quickly making all kinds of interesting circuits.

Indian Classical Music Residency

We are thrilled to have the opportunity to have an Indian Classical Music Residency with parent, musician and doctor, Janani Ragaswami. Janani studied Indian Classical music for many years extensively in her native India. She sang and performed for numerous years while living in India and returned to India regularly after moving the the United States to perform in one of the largest Indian music festivals in Chennai. She has studied under some of the most renown teachers in India.

Janani visited this week with all classes in the Lower School to give them an introduction to Indian Classical music through a slide show of traditional instruments and videos of some of the most famous Indian musicians. 

Our focus is singing and Janani started off our study by teaching us a Raaga or series of notes (called swaras) known in South Indian Classical music as Mohanam. Mohanam is akin to the Western pentatonic scale (five note scale):

Do  Re   Mi  Sol  La  Do

You will notice that in order to make the scale, there are several notes that are skipped (fa and ti). This scale is very common in the Orff music education process in which our music program is heavily steeped, so our young musicians were already familiar with this scale. However, they learned to sing it using the Indian syllables:

Sa  Ri  Ga   Pa  Dha  Sa

Using a drawn stair case, Janani taught students how to move up and down the scale. She then taught us how we can play with the scale singing it in an infinite number of ways. Indian musicians do this when they improvise during performances. All performances are based in the moment, improvisations. Therefore, it takes many, many years to train to a professional level where one can improvise freely and in many and varied Raagas. 

During the course of our study, students will learn to improvise using the Mohanam as the basis of their improvisations. We will also learn a song called the Murali Adhara and will perform some of it along with Janani and her son, Rudy in first grade, for our culminating assembly on Friday, March 18th at 8:30 a.m. Stay tuned for more details!

Ask your young musician  about the Mohanam and what they learned from Janani this week!