Ask your children to sing our newest song “Green Speckled Frogs”!  We have been having fun jumping around the room and “eating some most delicious bugs”!  This song helps students with their pitch recognition as well as counting!

May continued to be a busy month in the garden. The PreK-3 students planted a salsa garden using the square foot garden technique. Tomatoes, habenara and bell peppers, cilantro and marigolds were carefully transplanted and watered. Other vegetables and herbs planted in late spring included Yukon Gold potatoes, cucumbers, three varieties of tomatoes, zucchini and basil. Many varieties of lettuce and D’Avignon and Easter Egg radishes were harvested for the kitchen as well as chives, sage, thyme, oregano and other herbs. At the end of the month, 5th graders weeded and mulched flower beds and the espalier pear tree. They also planted Taiyo, Autumn Beauty and Velvet Queen sunflowers along the corral fence. Many thanks to all of the students, faculty and staff for another successful year in the garden.

We learned about everything from owls to horseshoe crabs.  The favorite was the gray rabbit named William. I think that the children were the most surprised about the life of a bee.  We even saw a honeybee coming out of the cell for the first time right in front of our eyes. We ended the day with a blustery picnic outside enjoying the best hamburgers in the county.

One of our shape friends, Héctor the hexagon, is very hungry. Héctor happens to be from México and he is friends with Frida Kahlo. Héctor took the time to teach us a bit about basic Mexican food. Students enjoyed learning about two types of tortillas (flour and corn), rice, black beans and pinto beans. After sampling each food, we surveyed the class to create a chart showing the preferences of the class. Students were later able to enjoy Mexican cuisine at a restaurant along with their sixth grade buddies and parents.

What famous artist lived in Mexico?  She had only one eyebrow… She lived in a blue house with lots of animals… She had a bad accident while riding in a bus and hurt her back… She had one leg smaller than the other, so she always wore long dresses..She had a husband named Diego…Her paintings were sad because she had a lot of pain in her back… She laid in bed for some years.. She liked to make self-portraits (that’s a pictures of herself)  She was very pretty.  Yes! it was Frida Kahlo. We had a luncheon with Senora Brenna and some friends from 6th grade to celebrate our study at Acapulco’s in Stratford. It was delicious!!

PreK-3 has been learning many wonderful songs this year in music class!  The past few weeks we have been singing about people whom we love and are very special to us!  The children have been learning motions to help them feel the music as well!

We had so much fun wearing a white wig, making Campbell’s tomato soup,  and making Rorschach pictures out of gold paint. We even cut out 100 pictures of soup cans and made a big poster out of them.  What a busy week we had learning about this pop artist. We did such a good job that all of our work is going to be in the Art Show on May 26th. I hope you can stop in and see our display.

We compared 4 different stories about The Three Pigs and then figured out what was the same and what was different in each.  We made a graph of which story was the most popular. In one story the wolf  was made into a delicious soup.  We brought in very nutritious vegetables with chef Dan and cut them up small and had a wonderful feast using “wolf” knees.  They looked just like ham hocks.

We learned how to re-use lots of things.  Many of the children are willing to give their clothes, old toys and games to another child when they are finished with them.  They know that the item must be in good condition and  also nice and clean. The museum had lots of trucks that pushed plastic bottles down a huge hole that led to a conveyor belt. To top off the day we saw earth worms that actually waved HI to us and made the letter J. We learned that the poop from an earth worm is actually dirt, so wash your hands the next time you play outside.

Our study of Pollock was exciting. The children loved looking at the results of our scribbles, loops, zig-zags and squirts.  We made a large picture for the annual UPA auction. It was so big we had to use the PreK-4 class to help us. We made t-shirts that have their names on them with a picture of Jackson.  We hope to get all the children to visit a museum in the near future to see a Pollock up-close.  I am sure there will be some interesting conversations in places where the children go wearing their shirts. They know about Pollock’s problems with drinking alcohol and driving and students have no trouble expressing how they feel about it.