Summer Fun

          It's hard to believe only 3 more weeks until school starts again. It's been a very busy and very hot summer here in Wisconsin. I have spent the past 3 months with a wonderful group of 26 four, five, and six year olds in our summer program.
         It's been a blast! We spent the entire summer learning about art and artists. We began the journey with the bright colors and simple lines of pop artists.  We learned about the color wheel and experimented with color theory. We took the fun outdoors and made a huge Jackson Pollock style mural. We played with shapes making our own version of Kandinsky's circles, and shape collages in the style of Matisse. We painted our own version of Mondrian squares using primary colors and black tape. We will wrap up an exciting summer adventure by focusing on flowers big a small.
        It's been a joy for me to create with kids all summer long as well as watch them grow more and more each day. I have a large group of children from my 4K classroom and they are flourishing. Lately, we been reading a lot of Mo Willem's Elephant and Piggy books. I say we because we have a few new readers using their sight words and phonemic knowledge to read those books to our class. I'm beaming with pride each and every time I see one of them crack open those books. Wow! And our writing has shown growth as well. We are writing sentences with support and very little frustration.
         We were lucky to be able to enjoy watching some Olympic events on my laptop over the past two weeks. We are amazed by the things our athletes can do. What an inspiring experience to share with my kiddos.
       As we head into the home stretch there will be many tearful goodbyes to little ones that have been in my care for years. Still, I can't help but smile knowing they are set to be successful in their kindergarten year and beyond. I am looking to the future as well, planning for the new group of kiddos that walk into my room in three short weeks.
        I am making it a personal goal to blog more often this school year and I look forward to sharing the journey with all of you.