Arts are an integral part of Shorecrest
The Experiential School students celebrated the arts last Friday with joy, imagination, creativity, song and family. The children in the Alpha classes enjoyed movement and improvisation with Wayne Berman and decorating treasure bags and tiny pots - complete with planted seeds - with our own Mrs. Debbie Becker and Mrs. Lori Bell.
The Junior Kindergartners engaged in healthy movement activities with Christie Bruner, drawing and pipette painting with Mrs. Anne Healey and /or ceramics with Mr. Tom Davis. We are so grateful to the visiting, local artists who gave our young students the opportunity to experience new art mediums, ways to move and to express themselves!
Following the interactions with their talented new friends, the children had the opportunity to participate in a musical program about our home city of St. Petersburg, Florida, with the Lower School students by singing two baseball songs to celebrate our long relationship with America’s favorite sport!
A family picnic and chance to admire the artwork of students throughout the school were a great way to end an awesome day for everyone!
A visit to the St. Petersburg Museum of Fine Arts was a great follow up to our week of celebrating the arts as well as a way to culminate the visual arts experiences the Junior Kindergartners have had with Mrs. Gootson throughout the year. With the guidance of two knowledgeable and child-oriented docents, the children explored this wonderland of art. They enjoyed viewing works of art new to them and identifying them as abstract, realistic, portrait, still life or landscape. The children were most excited to see the originals of works familiar to them, such as the Poppy by Georgia O’Keefe. Many of them are looking forward to using the passes they received to return to the Museum again to share their knowledge.
From Caterpillar to Butterfly
There is no better way to learn about metamorphosis than to observe the process firsthand, and that is exactly what the Alpha students are doing. So far they have been able to watch the process from egg to larva to caterpillar. Now, as they patiently wait for the caterpillars to continue their journey, the children are reading related literature, acting out the process with props, and watching videos of the process. Their interest in the topic is evident as these experiences show up in their artwork, and in their excitement to complete puzzles of caterpillars and butterflies.
Studying the Sea
As they began their study of the sea, Mrs. Hahn’s class listened to the story "In One Tidepool" and decided to do some independent research on tidepools. After learning a bit more, the children used clay to create tidepools of their own that illustrated what they had learned.
Special Readers
From enjoying the story-reading talents of Mr. Murphy, who was the mystery reader for Mrs. Samuel’s class, to the buddy reading enjoyed by Mrs. Craver’s students when they visited Mrs. Kotsko’s kindergarten, literature continues to be part of the daily experience in The Experiential School!
Cooking Continues
From Koulourakia, a traditional Greek cookie, to the all-American apple pie, our Alpha bakers continue to create and enjoy each other’s favorite family recipes. This year-long adventure has been a wonderful introduction to the children; not only of new foods but also in many cases to each other’s cultures.
Reusing recycled materials
As they moved from their study of transportation to learning about recycling and taking care of our world, the girls and boys in Alpha have been busy combining those studies by using recycled materials to create vehicles. They were proud to show these to their families as part of their art display, but there is more to come! This week they’ve been busy dictating imaginative stories about these creative vehicles.
So much to do!
Even in a short week such as this, students in The Experiential School of Tampa Bay manage to keep exploring, discovering new things to do, and finding new ways to demonstrate their knowledge. Tactile experiences, manipulative literacy and math materials and puzzles are all vehicles of learning that are also pure fun - as are journal writing and making representations of their knowledge.
