Holiday Sharing and Diversity

After a lovely Meeting for Worship in the Meetinghouse yesterday, we cane back to our classroom and had a fun time decorating Christmas cookies!  Brian Duggan and Grandma Karen brought in some delicious tree shaped cookies, frosting, and sprinkles!   As many holidays are celebrated this time of year, it is an excellent opportunity to talk about how different people have different beliefs and traditions.  Our conversations have led us to the discovery that we have many things in common as well as many differences.  We talked about how it's okay for some to believe in Santa Claus and for others not to.  We also noticed that we have different skin colors, and then we read a book called, "The Skin You Live In" by Michael Tyler.  We even paired up and and took time to notice and find out what is similar and different about ourselves and our friends.  We celebrate our diversity!

Sledding!

¡Los Colores!

Continuing with the subject of los colores, we have read some books, played games and this week the children had a chance to do some coloring. And once in a while we get to play - at the request of students - La Víbora de la Mar.

I promise I'll post photos next time!

Felices Fiestas

Beginning with Thanksgiving until a little after the New Year's, we have many celebrations. Below are a couple of holiday events involving Hispanic culture, arts and music.

Ninety Miles.

Art After 5: Christmas in Mexico (scroll down). A big gracias to Catalina for informing us about this!

¡Felices Fiestas! (Happy Holidays!)

Color Mixing Chemistry

The Kindergarten students did some "color mixing chemistry" this week in science class.  With beakers of primary colors and pipettes, the students were challenged to create as many different colors as possible.  Students experimented with different shades of green, purple and orange.  We came up with a huge list of descriptive names for our colors.  The students made honey brown, mint green, sunset orange, midnight purple and many, many others!  The students are also going to do color mixing activities in Spanish and art, which will be a great reinforcement of this experiment!

Flower Eggs?

The culmination of our Seed Study includes discussing the life cycle of a flower.  Today we reviewed the reproductive parts of a flower and then we each dissected a flower.

We learned that, in order for a flower to make a new seed that would result in a new flower, The pollen from the male part of the flower (stamen) has to travel to the female part of the flower (stigma).  Then the pollen follows a tube to the eggs where fertilization takes place.  When the flower dies and falls to the ground the new seeds can then germinate and put down their roots.  Check out this picture of the flower.  We scraped some of the green off of the base of the flower to reveal the flower eggs!  Have you ever seen this before??

Giving Thanks

Today we read the book Giving Thanks by Chief Jake Swamp of the Mohawk Nation.  The words are taken from an ancient Iroquois prayer.  The book beautifully expressed gratitude for all of the gifts of nature.  After we read the book the children wrote their own page for our classroom version of Giving Thanks.   It is helpful to cultivate an attitude of gratitude:-)

Winter Program ~ Friday, December 20 ~ 10:00 a.m.

El Día y La Noche

The Day and The Night
An Abington Friends Lower School Winter Program
Friday, December 20, 2013 ~ 10:00 a.m.
Abington Friends School Muller Auditorium

~ Winter Program Concert Attire ~
All children, 3 years old through Grade 4 should dress in black shirts, long, black pants, and comfortable shoes.  Children are welcome to add a white accessory as a way to connect to our program theme (a white bowtie, white hair accessory, a white scarf, etc.)  We encourage children to be creative with this choice!  All children are encouraged to bring their concert attire clothing to school on Thursday prior to the program.  Children will be given the opportunity to change at school on Friday morning prior to the 10 a.m. performance.

Please note that all children will be involved in movement activities on stage and should wear pants and comfortable shoes (no heels please).  In addition, we ask that third and fourth graders wear black socks for their movement performances.

We look forward to celebrating our accomplishments with you on

Friday, December 20^th in our Muller Auditorium beginning at 10:00 a.m.

If you have any questions, please contact Aedín Larkin, alarkin@abingtonfriends.net or Jason Novak, jnovak@abingtonfriends.net.

Shining Pennies

Here are a few photos from our latest chemistry experiment in Kindergarten.  Is there any way to clean a penny once it gets dull over time?  That's the question that the Kindergarten students set out to answer last week.  We tried four different solutions to see if we could bring a shine back to our pennies.  Three of our solutions didn't work, but it was exciting when our last combination of vinegar, water and salt worked and made our pennies look new again!  Take a look on the experiment page of my blog if you'd like the recipe.  I'll post it there so you can try it at home.