Feel the music!

 

What an amazing day of learning it was in the Birch room today.  The weather outside may be gloomy and dreary, but inside the mood was joy-filled!

We have talked so much about emotions over the year that our Birch children are well in tuned to how they are feeling.  We have talked about the way our bodies feel and look with our emotions, and we have talked about the way colors evoke certain feelings.  Today we wondered how MUSIC might make us feel.  

We have music playing every day in our classroom to set the tone for our learning, but its intent is to provide a soothing backdrop.  What would happen when the music is NOT calm and soothing?  What would happen when the music jumps from the background right onto the table?!

Combing our love of paint, our connections with colors and emotions, our desire to work with a friend, AND music we asked...

How does music make you feel?  

Over and over again, at every singe easel I heard

"This music makes me feel good."

"I feel happy!"

"This music feels FUN!"

and

"I feel like DANCING!"

"It's a happy rainbow of color moving everywhere!"

Your paintings were filled with happy colors and images that made you both feel good.

I heard talk of lines moving, dots dancing, and swirls that were created in time to the music.

So, what was the music we played today that brought forth such joy?

Salsa!

Grab your dancing shoes and a paintbrush and join us!

Our small world got a tiny bit of a face lift today with the addition of some beautiful warm lights.

What happens in winter?

"It's the season of Christmas!" GC

"It's WINTER!" ESE

"I'm going to make a Christmas tree." GC

"I'm going to put a snowman on the christmas tree." ESE

These 2 friends remembered a book we read about a wish tree and started creating a wish tree forest.

CG you were so excited to see the letters we hunted from yesterday's walk on the light table today.  You found your "C" right away.

"I'm going to spell my name!" CG

As you searched for each letter you placed them in the next spot and then...

you couldn't find an "e"

"I'll look on the list!  Nope, no 'E'!" CG

Hmmm, well, what can you do if there is no E?

I love what you discovered!  You can use the wooden letters we have

You went through each and every letter in your name looking for all of your letters until you found them all.   What an amazing morning of work you did!  

You were so excited by your discoveries that you inspired your friends to look for THEIR names!

JB you wanted to find the letters of your name using only our discovered letters.  Just as with CG you noticed that some of your letters were missing.  But not like your friend, you did NOT want to use any of our wooden letters.  You wanted only to use the photographs.  What to do?

You noticed that you could move some of the letters around and they actually looked like NEW letters!

Our "w" looked like an "m" if you flipped it.  Our backwards "z" looked like your "s"!

MT you decided to look at all of our letters and see if they could be something different, and then check them off of our list.

"We need to on another walk to find the other letters." CG

And so off we went on a short walk right around our school!  We walked out the playscape door, around the corner, and back into the front door and we discovered THREE new letters!

Do you play music in your homes?  Maybe today you can change it up!  How does music make YOU feel?

We are feeling GREAT!