This morning we started our day with Art as Thursdays are Great Artist Days here at school!
We had two new watercolor paint sets so we took turns painting with watercolors and coloring with colored pencils. Most of the children drew and painted rainbows since that is what we have been learning about but they had the choice to paint and color whatever they wanted to.
After art time we got our outdoor clothes on and went for a walk with Elia's grandma! The children thought it was fun to have a new visitor here during the day and kept saying "Grandma look...look Grandma!" We stopped at the park and played a little while before walking back to school again. We hadn't been to this park for months so the children loved it. They enjoy playing on the swings and pushing the little ones on the swing. The twisty slide was fun too. Kane would count from 10-1 and then say BLAST OFF! while he pushed himself down the slide. Tanmay was a great helper with Elia since she couldn't go down the slide herself, he held her on his lap every time that she wanted to go on the big slide. They had such fun together.
Once we got back the little kids played with color bears, and the big kids played with the colored glass stones and color cubes at the table while I prepared lunch.
Our lunch menu was turkey slices, broccoli, carrot sticks, apple, naan, and milk. They all loved the turkey and naan! Yummy!
After lunch everybody cleaned up their spaces, washed their cups and hung them up and went downstairs for their Great Artist Lesson.
Today we learned about Paul Gauguin. The children were surprised to find out that he actually lived with Vincent Van Gogh for a while, but Gauguin and Van Gogh didn't get along very well. We guessed that was probably because Van Gogh was kind of a grumpy man.
Paul Gauguin did some bold experimenting with color, which was really fun for the children! Instead of painting the grass and trees green and the sky blue, Paul Gauguin would paint them totally opposite colors like orange trees and green sky.
For our project the children started with a hilly landscape theme, then added things like trees, flowers, bushes and sun. Then we used bright colored tempra paints to paint the scene. The pictures turned out really pretty!
After our artwork was finished we joined again together and sang our new spring song "Spring Is Coming" then we read the book "Rain Drop Plop". Then I tossed the ball to each student and when they caught the ball they told the class something that happens in the spring time. The children really liked doing this so after we were finished with the spring time theme I started saying names of objects in our classroom or colors and tossing the ball to the children. When the ball was caught the children were to say the letter that the word began with. A couple of the children were stumped a couple of times but for the most part they did really well with this game too. We practiced spelling the words FUN and SUN and thought it was neat that they were the same ending just a different beginning letter.
Then we said our goodnight poem and got tucked under our blankets for a nap.
After nap we've had a request for hot cocoa-since the weather is getting warmer we might as well have the hot cocoa now before it get's too hot out! So we're having hot cocoa and chips with cheese dip for snack and then spending some time outside before we go home for the evening.