Friday was a busy day at Emerald Hill, with much more to come this week as well! Second Grade students traveled around the world during their "Continent Day" activities in the morning. Each classroom was a different country for students to explore. They were treated to a lesson and activity in each room.
When the students got to Asia, Mrs. Rathbone showed them Asia on the map, then focused on the Orient. They talked about their art form called "origami." They listened to Mrs. Rathbone tell them the story of The Paper Crane by Molly Bang. Then instead of making an origami paper crane, we made a twirly bird. The students then had a chance to make the bird fly and see what magic it could do. (It did loop-d-loops!)
Mrs. Atherton had students traveling to Europe where the students learned about a specific castle called "Neuschwanstein" which is the castle that Walt Disney got his inspiration for the Cinderella castle. Mrs. Atherton explained that most artists were from Europe, so they got to recreate their own Neuschwanstein castle while listening to Tchaikovsky, a famous European composer.
In Mrs. Sergek's room, Antarctica, students talked about what it's like in Antarctica and what you'd see- mostly ice and penguins! To demonstrate how blubber keeps penguins warm, students put one hand in ice-cold water. Then, they wore a 'blubber' glove and put that hand in the water to see the difference. They were really surprised how much warmer just a thin layer of blubber kept them. While waiting for their turn for the experiment, the other students created an Antarctic landscape by painting with ice!
South America was the focus of Mrs. Say's classroom. She read them the story, "The Great Kapok Tree"
and looked at different animals that lived in the different levels are the rainforest.
In Miss Hallock's classroom, students were treated to a trip to the continent of Australia. Since Miss Hallci has travelled there herself, it was close to her heart. She had authentic pictures displayed children could see including the Great Barrier Reef, the Sydney Opera House, the Outback, kangaroos and koalas.
The activity that the children did was dot art. In Australia, you see art that is made from dots. Children saw boomerangs with dot art painting. Also, they have people called the Aborigines, similar to Native Americans, that paint their bodies with dot art. Each student was given an animal found in Australia and their job was to paint it using dots of different colored paint.
The 1st Grade Concert was the highlight of the afternoon. All of the first grade classrooms participated by singing a variety of songs such as, "Jingle Bells," Frosty the Snowman," Celebrate Kwanza," "Spin the Dreidel" and "Silent Night." Some students were also fortunate enough to have the opportunity to play the bells and triangles. Along with singing, the students also performed a variety of signs as well. Thanks to Judy Dishman and Cathy terWeele for all of their time and effort preparing the students for this festive event!
