Two more weeks! 

Here's the plan for May 20-24! Only two more weeks, y'all! Are we gonna make it? ;o)

Check out Mrs. Wills Kindergarten Blog for her Peek At My Week linky! :)

See you in the halls! :)

It's time again for a quick Peek At My Week with Fitchie!

 

 

 

We had our Spring Festival this week complete with Art Show and Talent Show. This first year showed us some amazing gems of talent within our Visual & Performing Arts programs at Christ Academy and we are very excited to continue to watch them grow. I'll have pictures of the event next week after my sweet High School photographers have had time to download! Until then, here are a few pics of the "process" for our Carle-Inspired Peacocks to tide you over! :)

 

 

Pssst... I was inspired by this project from this marvelous art teacher's website, but she did the activity with older kids, so we had to improvise!

 

 

Without further adieu, here are the happenings for this week in Fitchie's class....

 

 

Have a great week!



Alert! Alert! Alert! 

MAY IS ARRIVING IN TWO DAYS! 

How did this happen? Wasn't it just January a few days ago? Mercy! May has sneaked up on me and I find myself in the throes of our Spring Festival (May 2nd at 6:30 pm - hope you can come!), our Year in Review (where we go back and review everything we've hopefully learned over the year) and then..... Graduation  is not far in front of us, only five weeks to go! :) 

That said, this post is a quickie! :) Here are the happenings in Mrs. Fitchie's room this week - April 29 - May 3! Psst! Click on the picture and it will take you to my Google docs drive with a PDF version of the plan. Many of the pictures are linked to the website or resource I  plan on using for this week! If there is no link and you're curious about the activity, drop me a line! 

This post is linked to Peek At My Week from Dee Dee's marvelous website - Mrs. Wills Kindergarten! :) 

Trying a little something new.....

 

Howdy friends! I have a new love.... Visual lesson plans! They are FABULOUS!!!! And I think they will solve a world of hurt for me as a teacher.

 

You see, my struggle is that I'm brilliant and us brilliant folk require more than normal stimulation to keep ourselves engaged... Ahem, snort. Okay, well.............maybe not,  BUT I am a VERY visual person and I constantly struggle with remembering exactly what an activity entails without typing for a VERY LONG TIME to jog my memory of exactly what I was planning to do! The funny thing? If I show myself a picture or graphic... BAM! The memory comes back in full force and I know EXACTLY what I was gonna do!

 

 

Sooooo, when I came across this delightful teacher's blog and saw her "Peek at my Week" , I decided to give it a try! It is my hope to show what we do all week in Little Mozarts and Kidservatory in a fun and interesting way! Thank you Ms. Dee Dee for your marvelous blog! 

 

These final six weeks of school will be a bit challenging for us all and I will be endeavoring to keep myself on track with this new love of mine, so without further adieu..... Feast your eyes on this!

 

 

Click on the picture above and it will take you to google docs and a PDF version of this lesson plan. The pictures in this plan have hyperlinks inserted with more information about the resource or website I am using with that particular grade. Now, it isn't perfect yet because my PDF file keeps making my days of the week box all wonky and it doesn't look quite as beautiful as what you see above, but I promise I'm working on it and it will be even more marvelous next time! Baby steps!! Hope you all like it and say really nice things! (giggle, giggle)

 

 

A little break from the norm....

Beatbox - World Music Drumming 101

In our 5th grade classes, we have been studying World Instruments, particularly focusing on instruments of African descent. With February being Black History Month, we took a slight detour from our drum ensembles and worked on an African American spiritual called Long John taken from a marvelous book by Will Schmid (see above). We discussed the "talking drum" concept and how these were taken away from African slaves by the masters for fear of escaped slaves communicating with other slaves. We further discussed the use of imagery and "code language" in these spirituals that aided slaves in escaping via the Underground Railroad. I wish you all could've been a fly on the wall to hear the discussions and conversations that ensued from this topic. These are some thoughtful and intelligent kiddos we have! :)

Just to bring a little sunshine to your day, here's a quick view of our beat work with some kiddos keeping the steady beat and triplet pattern in... ah.... their own special way, shall we say?

I would recommend keeping it at the small video setting rather than full screen for the best viewing. ;o)





Percussionists Extraordinaire

Our Fine Arts Academy had a special treat today! We have been studying Instruments of the Orchestra and learning all about the different families / sections of instruments. Ms. Andree’s  mom, Mrs. Gardner, an accomplished percussionist, came and presented to our Kindergarten and 1^st grade classes today with her plethora of percussion instruments!

It was fabulous! The kiddos even got to play their very own percussion ensemble right on the spot! 

Now, lest you think we left out the littles, fear not! They had their own private tour of percussion from Mrs. Fitchie & a drum set on loan from one of our sweet families! 

Some of us were not too sure about the loud noises! 

 Some of us dove right in!

 We THOROUGHLY enjoyed our time with these instruments and want to say a BIG THANK YOU to all of you sweet folks who have loaned instruments and spent your time up with the percussion family! Stay tuned! More instrument families to come!!!!