Creative Arts Chronicles

Our first month of Creative Arts Fridays has been a huge success.  The children are adjusting nicely to the routine and enjoy the independence involved in switching classes.  It has been fun for us to get to know another group of students as well.
            In Poetry workshop, we have written Bio Poems which will be on display at Open House.  Some of us have even written bio poems about characters from our books. We have begun studying Walt Whitman and his influence on American poetry. Click here to listen to a wax cylinder recording of Whitman as he reads from “America.”  Everyone agreed that it was cool to hear Whitman read his poem, especially since he has been dead for over 120 years! We learned that Whitman often wrote in the style of free verse poetry and used the poetic technique of “catalogue,” to write some of his poems.  We began preparing for MCAS by answering questions about “The Runner,” and discussed some test taking strategies when answering poetry questions. We will be using Whitman’s poems as mentor texts, as well as a collection of poems by Georgia Heard, called Falling down the Page, to write list poems in the coming weeks.  Too much fun!!!
            The children are excited about chorus and sound really good already! The concert in December will be great, we can just tell.
            It is so exciting that we get to have Art class on Fridays with Mrs. Hess!  Who wouldn’t want to spend forty minutes creating art and letting the creative juices flow? We are so lucky! In Art class, Mrs. Hess has been discussing elements of art and has been working on a unit on Value.   Grandma Moses is the artist of the month for 4th graders!  The students have been working with colored pencils and they will be creating landscapes by painting. Today was our first day painting! The next focus will be on using Value and Form with three dimensional shapes.  There will be a sculpture component to this next phase of the Value unit.  We can’t wait to see what is created.
            We are really excited about working in our technology lab.  This summer we got new computers in there, and we are learning how to use them.  We have learned to sign into the computer using our user name and password.  It is exciting to think that everything we save in our folders will be available to us next year, and even after we leave Kennedy School!  We have learned how to use Microsoft Office in order to format and type our biopoems.  In the next few weeks we will begin to learn about different Internet websites.
Artfully Yours,
Mrs. Merten and Mrs. Williams