Enrichment Updates

Art

Second grade artists graduated to the big painting studio where they learned how to independently set up their palette, choose brushes and delve into the exploration of color mixing with liquid tempera paint. At this age creating new colors is rewarding, exciting and often more meaningful to students than actually putting paint onto paper. The building studio is where friends gather to build imaginary cities...and knock them down. Students are often overheard sharing ideas and suggestions with each other as they learn that there are more than two teachers in the room. We circle-up at the end of class where students share their discoveries, observations, questions and offer solutions to problems. You will notice very few pieces of work coming home as students are saving work to display later at the Spring Arts Festival. We wish we had half the energy of these busy art makers.

Thanks for sharing your artist with us.

Jen Rankey and Mary Ann O’Sullivan

P.S.  Don’t forget the subscribe the the Art Department Blog (tesartdepartment.wordpress.com) and follow us on Twitter (@tesarttab1) to keep up with all the wonderful things happening!

Music

This month, our 2nd graders have been working hard on their production Willy Wonka! We had our unfortunate snow/ice storm on the day of our performance. However, luckily, we have rescheduled the performance for Friday, January 29 at 2:30pm. Thank you so much to the parents and students! In the coming month, we will be learning about opera and differences between opera and musicals. Our 2nd graders will also begin reviewing about composing and writing music.

Faith Studies

1 Samuel and 2 Samuel are the saga of King Saul and King to be David.  We will follow David to the Kingship and celebrate his time as king in the month of February.  The big question of how a leader stays faithful to God will be our focus for the month.

Spanish

Second graders have followed short chapters of "Caperucita Roja" (Little Red Riding Hood) with some variations in the story. Students are making connections between the vocabulary worked on last trimester when we were playing the game "El Lobo" (The Wolf).

The chapters are shown in Spanish only, allowing the kids to develop their listening skills.

Through this game, children began using phrases about clothes a actions.

We have talked also about weather and the clothes we wear in winter time.

Children have been practicing names of some animals. They are learning a song about wild animals "Animales Salvajes", repeating words as they see the pictures.

Click here to access a video to use with your children at home to continue practicing some animals!