Weekly Review 5/20-5/24

CONGRATULATIONS to our wonderful 3rd Graders for an outstanding performance at our annual Memorial Day Assembly! Our 3rd graders played two songs on the recorder, sang two patriotic songs, and taught us all what Memorial Day is all about. Here are some pictures from the assembly:

First grade students are studying about Camille Saint-Saens', "Carnival of the Animals." It is a humorous musical suite consisting of fourteen movements:

• Lion's Royal March
• Hens and Roosters
• Mules
• Tortoises
• Elephants
• Kangaroos
• Aquarium
• Donkey
• Cuckoo
• Aviary
• Pianists
• Fossils
• Swans
• Finale

We read the book and listened to the music of each movement.  After discussing the sounds of each movement, the students got into small groups and made up movements for each animal. Next week, we will continue to study this musical suite with sound maps.

In second grade, students are preparing for their "Famous American Tea Time" in June with two patriotic songs: "You're a Grand Old Flag" and "We Love the USA." The lyrics to both of these songs can be found here. Hand motions were added to both songs to facilitate memorization. We also played a fun "move and freeze" and a "erase and memorize" game to help us remember the words to both of these songs.

Our fourth and fifth graders finished watching the classical movie, "Singin' in the Rain." Two fourth grade classes reviewed the cup game and played various versions of this game. It was fun to see how many students remembered this fun activity that was taught back in September.

We can't believe that our fifth graders will be "moving up" to the middle school in less than one month! To prepare for their "Moving Up" ceremony which will happen on Thursday, June 13th, they learned a song called, "Today Is The Day." They will be performing this song during their ceremony. Lyrics to the song can be found here.

We hope you all have a fabulous three day weekend! A special THANKS to all the men and women who have died serving our country!