Erin & Tohanash's Class Notes

Hard to believe we have been back at school already for over two weeks! We had a nice week of re-mote learning together, where we observed and drew our narcissus bulbs, learned a new poem, and shared stories. But we are beyond happy to be back in the classroom! We have been bravely facing the frigid January temperatures, digging, running and playing together outside.We celebrated Eider’s 6th birthday with chocolate cupcakes and watched the amaryllis bulb he gave us bloom into deep ruby red blossoms. The gorgeous flowers inspired us to paint pictures of them using the primary colors red, blue and yellow. We learned how to mix two or three colors together to create the palette we needed to rep-resent the petals, stems and pot. We added white as a tint to lighten some colors. The results are spec-tacular! This color mixing led us to discuss how to make different types of brown, inspired by the book The Colors of Us by Karen Katz, where the main character learns how to mix colors to create the many skin tones of her friends, neighbors and family. We decided we will paint our own self portraits, and will use our powerful observational skills when mixing colors to represent our skin tones. We looked at self portraits painted by Horace Pippin, Frida Kahlo, Kathe Kollwitz, Vincent Van Gogh and Jean-Michel Basquiat to inspire us. The poem we have been learning, “Has” is a sort of riddle about what makes up our faces. Everything is tying together quite nicely! We have also been reading The BFG by Roald Dahl. Ask your child about snozzcumbers and capturing dreams in glass jars. We continue our alphabet work with games like sight word/letter Jenga, Alphabet Memory, and writing with play dough. Some of us are writing short illustrated books, as well. It is great to be back at work together!