February 6

Welcome to February. We have been so busy in kindergarten. We started our new PYP unit on weather. Earlier this week we had so much fun learning about the four types of clouds. We read Eric Carle's book called LITTLE CLOUD about a cloud who loved to change its shape. We made our own little clouds with cotton balls. By the end of the project our fingers were really sticky!



On Friday the entire kindergarten went on a field trip to Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis for their Kinder Konzerts education program. When we got there, we got to take a tour of the big stage that the musicians play on each night. We listened to several musicians introduce their instruments to us. We compared and contrasted their different sounds before listening to a story without words---just music. We were not allowed to take pictures while we were on stage, but check out the many instruments we listened to:


Can you name all of these instruments and remember which group they belong to?

Once we finished listening to the musicians play for us, we went to the "Sound Factory." We learned the musical terms for fast and slow...presto and largo. We compared these terms to a rabbit and a tortoise. We listened to fast and slow pieces of music and waved our musical streamers like we were conducting our own orchestra:

We also got a chance to play several instruments ourselves like the violin, cello, snare drum, and several different sounding percussion instruments:


At the very end we listened to several pieces of music that were fast and slow. We moved the parachute up and down to the beat of the piece--and used motions that were presto and largo. This might have been our favorite part, and a great way to end our day: