It's finally time for our bear hunt! We've been preparing for the past month, practicing our bear hunt song to the book "We're Going on a Bear Hunt" by Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury. This week, all of the different environments in the book have been brought to life in the studio! We have long wavy grass, a deep cold river...

... thick oozy mud (actually it's "oobleck", made of cornstarch and water) ...

...a big, dark forest... (with lots of wooden items to discover)

... a swirling whirling snowstorm ... (corn starch packing peanuts on the light table, and paper snowflakes hanging from the ceiling)

... and a "narrow gloomy" cave ... (well, not really that narrow, or gloomy, ... rather nice really... but with a few bears!)

"AAAAAHHH! Quick, let's go back!"

"Whew! We're safe!" 

Then, the children explored the room freely from station to station. In music class, they made swishy swashy sounds with instruments in the grasslands, played wooden Orff instruments in the forest and metal metallophones and glockenspiels in the snowstorm, and drums in the cave.

Some activities were more sensory in nature, learning about materials by manipulating them. The students discovered that the cornstarch "snow" would dissolve when put into the water! And when regular cornstarch is mixed with water, it makes MORE OOBLECK!! Playing with the strange substance was very calming and meditative for some students.

Little engineers really enjoyed building things out of wood items in our forest!

With our youngest adventurers, we had some other provocations that were more age-appropriate. Tummy time was a lot of fun with this large squishy mirror toy! Reading with mommy and daddy is always fun, too!

We can't believe how fast this session flew by! Our bear hunt adventure has almost arrived, so we continued to practice our singing skills by singing the simple pentatonic bear hunt song we created. I think our little hunters are ready for next week!

In our provocations this week, we emphasized sounds that different materials make. Instruments made out of metal vs. those made out of wood, for example. We worked on our fine motor skills by pinching the string on the finger cymbals to make it ring. G learned that if you hold the cymbal it sounds different than if the string is held.

You can see in the background that our forest is starting to grow already! That didn't deter the students from singing along to Solfege scales, doing the Kodaly hand symbols with confidence! I was so impressed to see how fast they have picked this up, in just a few short weeks! During free play provocations, MM, L, and S decided to form a band!

Our Little Artists focused on Georges Seurat, whom we like to call "Seurat the dot" - little mnemonic device to help the kids remember the name of the artist, and it's so fun to say! Famous for his painting, "Sunday on the Island of La Grand Jatte", Seurat worked heavily in pointillism, the art of using very small dots (LOTS of very small dots) to create a larger work of art. To emphasize this point in our provocation, we used some dyed rice.

As the children eagerly set to work, this nicely divided rice was quickly mixed into a very beautiful blend of all of the colors of the rainbow! Our youngest artists got to paint on a baby-sized light table, helping to squirt the paint on the lit surface and then manipulating it with their hands, or with a little help, dancing on the paint. Then, we made a mono print of their creations!

To continue our lesson on pointillism, Little Artists were invited to paint with dots, using cotton swabs. First, an outline is helpful for guiding where the dots will go. We talked about what an outline is, and the children brought some great ideas to the discussion, such as the "edge" or the "outside" of an object. Then, the dotting commenced! Students made up a little song while working, "Dot, dot, dot, dot, dot..."

This week we also read the book "The Dot" by Peter H. Reynolds, which encourages little artists not to be afraid to just try something, to make a little dot, and see where it takes you! 
​Dots of color blended, diffused, and mixed on diffusing paper! Pipettes and liquid watercolors were used to transfer the paint onto the filter paper, always with very impressive effects. 

Children wanted to continue their work with the colored water, transferring from one container to another with pipettes or by pouring and mixing colors to create new colors of their own!  These organic investigations lead to pride and ownership and an eagerness to share their discoveries.  C exclaimed, "I put pink and orange together and made my own very cool color!  I'll let you keep it for the other kids in the classes to use!" What a beautiful extension of the provocation lead by the children.  C's statement also delicately illustrates the sense of community growing within the studio!

This week we had an extra special (and extra messy!) art class! We continued our explorations into color mixing with the primary colors, while learning about chemical reactions! We used some colored baking soda and colored vinegar to produce a very exciting and colorful reaction when mixed. Red baking soda and yellow vinegar combined to create orange foam, which bubbled up and out of the container! Students were then invited to paint with the new colors that were created. It was a great time! Especially because the mess was left at the studio rather than at home ;)

Science is awesome, and fun! When combining it with art in inviting provocations, the students learn things about the world just by observing and manipulating materials. Without being lectured to, they are learning by doing! Painting with baking soda paint using brushes, and then using pipettes to drip vinegar onto the paper, created some very interesting and explosive artwork!

Young artists also explored light and painting by finger painting directly on the light table.  "oohs" and "awws" echoed throughout the studio as the toddlers delighted in watching the paint spread and smear...their fingers leaving marks for the light to shine through.  When they decided they were, "all done" we did a little printmaking by transferring their work onto a piece of paper...magic!

This week in music class, we built upon the children's knowledge of the alphabet by singing the ABC song, as well as a few other songs with the same melody - "Twinkle, twinkle, little star" and "Baa baa black sheep". The melody from all of these songs is based on an old french folk song called "Ah, vous dirai-je maman." We then listened to a recording of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's "Twelve Variations on Ah, vous dirai-je maman" while dancing around the room. Encouraging the students to feel the music and move as it moves: during a slow section moving in long, slow adagio, and then faster... allegro, and presto!

We also worked on our marching, with an instrument game around the rug to "Here we go round the mulberry bush." You never know where you may end up, and what instrument you might get to play when the music stops!

As always, we allow the children time to explore a wide range of musical instruments, to enable them exposure and free play. Our little musicians had some ideas of their own, combining Boomwhackers with drums to play along with the guitar accompaniment. Even babies learn valuable lessons by up-close exposure to an instrument. It is truly amazing to see how fast many of our students catch on to music. Just as with language, they are comprehending music much, much before they have the muscular capacity to play it. When they are able, their cognitive abilities will already have been developed and they'll be ready to start playing music easily!

This week was full of fun and interesting provocations that sought to engage the children's minds and fill them with wonder. Our youngest students painted on paper (on the floor), either sitting up by themselves, or with a little assistance. It is always exciting to see the creation of a young child's first painting! These works of art are frame-worthy and will make great keepsakes for years to come!

In addition to the painting, we did some sensory exploration, using "color trays" which were each filled with interesting items in the primary colors of red, yellow, and blue. Blue yarn spilled out of clear containers, yellow scarves flew into the air, and we looked through windows that turned everything red!

With the "big kids", we continued our experimentation in color mixing (or not mixing) by infusing our art lesson with a little science! Using colored oil, and colored water and pipettes, children worked on their fine motor skills, transferring the liquids among different containers. They spent time observing the scientific properties of the substances and quickly learned that oil and water do not mix, but the oil floats on top of the water, and the only color mixing that occurs is between water-soluble or oil-soluble combinations.

Students were invited to paint on easels, and encouraged to mix their colors and try out different combinations and techniques. The works of art that they produced were truly inspired! With increased learning about the properties of color, and how they behave when mixed, the students are able to make works of increasing complexity. And the more art they produce, the more open they are to trying new approaches.

The magna-tiles on the light table are always a hit! Our little engineers had a blast building rockets, castles and more out of the colorful tiles, working on not only their fine-motor skills, but also their understanding of three-dimensional space and geometry. All while having fun!

In our sensory bin this week, we had a special surprise for the kids... ICE!  The students thoroughly enjoyed transferring the cold ice cubes into buckets using tongs, helping to build finger strength. For an added treat, we supplied the students with squeeze bottles filled with watercolors, inviting them to spray the ice with color and watch what happens.

In a Little Artists class, the students were asked, "What could we do with a large block of ice? Any ideas??" They discussed some possibilities...

Then they got to work, spraying the block with colors and warm water. They knew that warm water would melt the ice, so they began to make the ordinary ice block into an ICE CAVE for our little penguin friend, who as we know lives in Antarctica.

Unfortunately for our little penguin friend, a fountain of hot "lava" (warm water with red paint) began to form in the corner, making his home quite uninhabitable.

In music class this week, we continued our exploration of the major scale, using the Boomwhackers again, but this time they were arranged from largest to smallest on a rope strung between two easels. Presenting the same objects in a different manner can spark new ideas and approaches! Students had a great time playing the colored tubes with mallets, making the notes of the C major scale.

The "colors" or notes of the major scale were reiterated through singing and signing the major scale, using the Solfege scale (Do, Re, Mi...) and Kodaly hand symbols that accompany the scale. Students were drawn to our colorful visual aid that helps to present these ideas. I was very impressed by how quickly they picked up the hand symbols, and by their beautiful singing voices!

We also practiced Dalcroze Eurhythmics to emphasize rhythmic aspects of music, by dancing to the beat. Sometimes we used colorful scarves, balloons, or feathers, pretending to be light and airy birds, or sometimes heavy plodding elephants, depending on the music playing.

This session, our ongoing theme is "We're Going on a Bear Hunt" set to music! To prepare for our bear hunt, we continued practicing our bear hunt song, on xylophones, a cappella, and on the gathering drum.

And, as always, we went for a boat ride in the upside-down gathering drum, singing "Row, row, row your boat"! This one is always a crowd pleaser!