Music with Ms. Mckenzie, and Apple Tasting! YUM!

What a musical crew the Whales are! Last week the Whales started music with Ms. Mckenzie! We will be doing music with Ms. Mckenzie every Wednesday. The Whales each have their own musical folder, with musical terms, and all of the songs the will be learning this fall. The Whales so far have learned about Forte (which means loud in music language), and Piano (with means quiet in music language), and crescendo (starting quiet and growing to loud). The Whales have also started the beginnings of learning how to read music. This is such a special opportunity for our Whale classroom. If you would like to access the different songs that the Whales will be learning this fall click here. We so far have been learning; Hey Everybody, El Chocolate, Hasta Luego Winnegago, and Firefly Firefly. The Whales have so been enjoying their first couple of music sessions!

This week the Whales had an apple tasting. We put on our scientist caps and used our 5 senses while making noticings about the different apples we tasted. The Whales were mindful through this process. They shared their thoughts to the group. We all took adventure bites of each apple. We tried Honey Crisp, Red Delicious, Granny Smith, and Cosmic Crisp. At the end we each voted on which apple was our favorite. The Whales were asked to vote with their heart and not with their friend. We talked about how it is totally okay to have a different favorite then your friends. We graphed our votes on a bar graph and talked about which apple was the most popular in the Whales classroom (had the most votes), and which apple was the least popular (had the least amount of votes). The Whales noticed that their were votes for each apple, but the Honey Crisp was the most popular because it had the most votes, and we could see that because that bar was the tallest.

The Whales started their art study on Henri Matisse. Matisse was a still life artist that used shapes, color, and shadow in his art. The Whales will be working on creating their own Matisse apple art by using shadowing to make apples look like they are right in front of you! They are so excited to begin this project!

These Whales are so excited about learning and being in a community together. We are constantly hearing them supporting one another, and being each others cheer leaders. They are kind, hard working, and so full of joy. They are becoming scientists, artists, authors, mathematicians, readers, and so much MORE!