Friday Follow Up-January 8, 2010

Welcome back Diener friends!

The Primary and Inters practiced taking deep breaths and experimenting with breathing and movement using the pin wheels. We did our yoga moves to the story "The Rabbit in the Forest" that told the story of sharing our gifts with others. Then we did some partner moves to "wash windows", row your boat and we made a twisty stair line.
The Uppers worked with breathing and the Sun Salutation. We did a Down Dog Relay and had a surprise yoga pose under our mats that we had to guess.
At the end we all finished with our final relaxation to the song "Peace Be With You"

This week in music, in the Inters and Uppers classes, we started learning about composers. The first composer we learned about this week was Beethoven. We learned a little bit about his life and listened to and watched clips of his music, including parts of his 5th and 6th Symphonies. This month, we will learn about a different composer each week! In the Primary class, we continued to have fun with our favorite songs and movement games.

Primary-We had a wonderful week with Ms. Brook participating in our weekly movement and handwriting groups. We did a variety of exercises with our bodies focusing on body awareness, coordinating both sides of our bodies, as well as coordinating our upper and lower bodies. The letter of the week was "V".

Inters (Ms. Jenni)- This week during our motor group with Ms. Brook we focused on a variety of skills in a variety of different postures. We practiced prone (tummy) postures, supine (back) postures. In addition we worked on rhythm and timing skills while completing brain gym and clapping patterns.

This week in Ms. Emily's speech group we read the book Kipper's Snowy Day . Just like the characters in the story made snowdogs out of snow, we had lots of fun making our very own snowdogs using cotton balls! We even dressed them up so they would keep warm in the cold weather. The students did a wonderful job attending to the project, following directions, and using their language skills to complete the activity. We learned opposites and attributes that related to the book. Everyone had a chance to share their favorite snow activity with the group!

This week in Science, we focused on the Solar System! The primary and intermediate classes had fun watch the Magic School Bus Gets Lost in Space and making their very own Outta This World pictures! The uppers took a look at the Sun and visited the planet closest to the giant star, Mercury. Next week, we will continue to focus on the four inner planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars)

The after school clubs kicked off this week with a bang! We had an awesome time on the social club making snow measures. In Hands on Science, we conducted a color mixing activity and did a fun water experiment with Mr Aaron! Last but not least, we chef'd up some salads this week (Salad People and Fruit Salad) and made comparisions about which ones we like better.