Klee, Seraut, MLK, Frittata, and Tu Bish'vat

Paul Klee was a Swiss artist whose paintings often contain many different areas of dots, lines and corners.   The children created their own edible masterpieces here.

Pretzel sticks became lines and corners.

Craisins and blueberries were used for dots on our flat bread canvas.

Emma and Alex both spent some time designing!

When snack was over, the children used crayons to make their lines and dots.

Suri was intrigued by this picture and intently studied it.

Everyone interpreted  the "directions" in their own way.

Many beautiful watercolor paints to further inspire.

You can find your child's "Paul Klee" painting outside our room, complete with interesting titles!

Georges Seurat was a French artist who invented a new method of painting,  pointillism.   He put small dots of various colors together and the viewer's eye does the work of blending the  dots into a new color.

Saul is very deliberate in his choice of colors.

Govind knew right from the start he wanted to paint a hot dog!   His pointillism inspired art work, along with  his classmates, is also outside on the bulletin board!

In Culinary Arts, Cheryl had all the ingredients to make a spinach frittata.

 With all the cooking this year, the girls have become very adept at cutting!

The boys and Zoey  were asked to tear the spinach into small pieces. Great for fine motor skills!

The frittata  was ready! It smelled and looked delicious. We were excited to see how many of the children enjoyed the frittata.

In gan, we discussed Tu Bish'vat. After talking about the roots, bark, branches and leaves, we went outside to do tree rubbings.  The girls chose a large tree with a thick bark to do their rubbings.

Alex found a tree with different trunk sizes to do his rubbing.

This was the smallest tree in the courtyard.  The children were able to compare their rubbings from the largest  tree.  This activity was a fun way for the children to explore and learn about trees and celebrate Tu Bish'vat.

To introduce our discussion on Martin Luther King, we gave just the girls a sticker.   At first the boys sat very patiently, waiting for their turn.  

When it became clear we were not going to give the boys a sticker, they were not pleased.  You can see that Daniel is even turning his head away from the picture!  Jake said "You skipped me!"  Even the girls were somewhat surprised, since all the children know we are always fair.  

Eventually our discussion turned to how each group felt, and then we tied that into Martin Luther King and his dream of equality for everyone.  The bus is the prop we used to tell the story of Rosa Parks and her decision not to sit in the back of the bus.

We were thrilled when the children decided to retell the story on their own in centers.    They might not remember specific names or events, but we hope the children internalized some of Dr. King's message.