K-4 PE

For this week in PE our classes participated in a variety of tag called "Fire in the Forest."  During this game, each student selects to be one of three possible animals and then tries to run across the gym without being tagged once their animal name is called aloud.  I heard some pretty good huffing and puffing going on during the game, as we were getting a good workout running around.  Here you can see some of our students trying to across the gym without being tagged.

K Music- Ready, Set, Move!

 K-3 music students have been exploring movement this week with imitation moves via the "Blue-Moo Moovement" picture book, which features old-time rock and jazz hits from 'way back when.' Along with imitation moves, K-3 students have been working on pathways and awareness while being on the move, and movement with levels (low, middle, high). Here, a group of kindergartern students enjoy some creative, free-form movement with scarves, to instrumental television music.

Walk-a-thon Friday

Happy Walk-a-thon day!  It's a great day to be on the campus of CHA.  For PE this week, we had ourselves a few games of "Chaos Kickball," along with "Rob the Cookie Jar."  The reason we call it "Chaos Kickball" is because once a runner scores by touching home plate they can continue running the bases and score as many times as they can until they get out.  Hope to see everyone out at the Walk-a-thon today!

1st Grade Music

1st Graders were turned into dancing trees, pictured left, in the "Two Little Apples" chant. Students enjoyed learning moves to go with the chant, then taking the chant out and doing only the moves while chanting in their heads. We also practiced drawing stick notation on the board, to a steady beat. Great job this week, first grade!

Mouse Skills in the Tech Lab

The Kindergarten and First Grade students have been spending the past two weeks mastering "mouse" skills as well as learning how to log on and log off.  Students have had the opportunity to play games on mrsmorlidge.com that help them develop their small motor skills and use the mouse properly.  You can access these games from home, too. The first grade students have also learned about the parts of the computer.  We will start a unit on KidPix next.

El dormitorio - The bedroom

3rd grades were introduced to the bedroom vocabualry this week and began working on their vocabulary picture sheets.

Cascarones are finished!

This week, 3rd grade through Middle School students finished decorating their Cascarones and brought them home. Each student's cascarón turned out great! Watch out families! The tradition is for you to crack the cascarón in your hand over someone’s head, or to throw it close to their feet for it to break open and have confetti fly everywhere.




4th grade students also got together with their table country groups to discuss why it would be important to learn a second language.  They also watched a video talking about different reasons as to why it would be beneficial to learn a second language.

Hispanic Heritage Month in art

                                          This week in art we have been honoring Hispanic Heritage Month

 

Kindergarten and first grade read the book “A Color of His Own” by, Leo Lionni. The book is about a chameleon who wants to have a color of his own like all of the other animals; he then finds a friend chameleon and has someone else to look like. In class we drew chameleons to represent the one we saw in the book. The students worked with water color paint to make bright colors like we see in many Hispanic cultures.

 

Second, third and fourth grades watched a power point presentation about the Huichol People of western central Mexico. The students learned about nieli'ka “yarn paintings” and the significance of this type of art to the Huichol People. Students then decided on pictures that have significance to them and they began to make their own yarn paintings.

 

Middle school watched a power point presentation about the art of Papel Picado, a paper cutting technique using chisels to cut designs into tissue paper making flags for celebrations. The students then picked a design that they liked and began cutting the out negative spaces to leave only the desired design.

4th Grade Tech - What's inside the PC?

This week students studied the internal workings of the computer. They watched a video from the How Stuff Works site, which is a really useful site if you are interested in finding out how stuff works. There is a link to the site on the Computer Lab website http://www.mrsmorlidge.com/Technology.htm . Students also finished up their Walk-a-Thon posters which they have been making using Microsoft Publisher. If you aren't able to stop by the school and see them you can view them here https://www.box.com/s/jjual6fcfg40o3dqnjyz

4th Grade Technology: - Walk-a-Thon Flyers

Fourth Grade students have been busy putting to use the MS Publisher skills that they learned last year. The assignment was to create a flyer for the upcoming CHA Walk-a-Thon. The students did an excellent job and produced some very creative posters which we will put up in school on Monday. I have uploaded the posters that are finished to my skydrive and you can retrieve them here.

Dia de la independencia de Mexico

This week we talked about Mexico's Independence Day in Spanish class happening on Sunday, September 16^th.  Students were able to compare and make connections to the United States’ Independence Day (4^th of July). We specifically discussed the fun "Cascarones" or confetti-filled eggs that are usually made during special holidays.  Kindergarten through 3^rd grade students were read the book Cascarones which is a story all about the confetti filled eggs used during fiestas.  Kindergarten through 2^nd grade students were able to design their own confetti filled eggs on paper and 3^rd grade through Middle School made their own cascarones in class.



Self portraits part 2

This week in art we worked on part two of our self portraits.The students learned about some of the properties of soft pastels and blending techniques. They each colored in their self portraits to suit their indivividual personalities. It was a fun and messy week.

Up, Up, and Away!

This week in K-4 PE was packed with fun from start to finish, as our days revolved around using the parachute.  Always a crowd favorite, our students played a few games of "Sharks and Lifeguards" along with some other cooperative parachute activities.  One of these activities involved our whole class lifting the parachute into the air and then having half of the students run underneath to the opposite side, grabbing onto the edge to maintain the parachute's flotation.  Our goal was to show that through teamwork, we can achieve great things!

Music- Charlie can't catch these 2nd graders!

Busy and fun times in 2nd grade music! Students continued rhythmic and melodic training with solfege work (Sol, mi) and reading/clapping rhythmic notation. On the xylos they went from playing unison exercises to a 2 part arrangement of "Charlie Over the Ocean." We also learned the routine for switching instruments and added a circle game to the tune. In the game, students sit in a circle while Charlie walks around and gently taps heads to the pulse. Whoever is tapped on the word "me" is it, and chases Charlie around the circle 1 time and becomes the new Charlie. The old Charlie has a seat at the bass metallophone and starts the instrument rotation. The students did fantastic!

This was our first week of checking out books in the library.  Most students were able to find a book that interested them.  Please note that the policy is that students may check out one book a week. If your child needs more than a week to check out the book, they can return it for renewal or just let me know. At this point, Kindergarteners are only choosing picture books.  I will have them start selecting non-fiction later in the year. 

Below are the check-out days for your child’s homeroom class:

Mondays:  Mrs. Kim’s class

Tuesdays:  Mrs. Brown’s class

Wednesdays:  Mr. McCullough’s class, Mrs. Taylor’s class,  Ms. Conrad’s class, Mrs. Douglas’s class, Mrs. Setting’s class

Thursdays:  Mrs. Anderson’s class, Mrs. Box’s class, Ms. Lundberg’s class, Mrs. Newell’s class

Fridays:  Mrs. Daffara’s class, Mrs. Lodwick’s class, Middle School, Mrs. Johansen’s class, Mrs. Prichard’s class

If students want to turn in their library books early, there is a slot to the right of my computer in the library. 

Color favorito

Students this week added their color favorito to the Spanish bulletin board. They needed to choose their favorite color, trace their hand, write their favorite color in Spanish inside their hand, and draw something that is that color. Students had fun adding to the bulletin board.

This week Middle School PE classes caught "Football Fever"!  Students learned (or reviewed) proper throwing technique.  They then split into groups of three and ran "plays" they planned in their huddle.  Football is the ultimate team sport.  Every person on the field has a job to do.  As long as all players do their part, the plays unfold beautifully.  Football also offers a great opportunity for resilience and flexibility.  Often plays do not go as planned, depending on the defense--students learn to adjust and move on--a great life lesson.

Technology - Decorating the Desktop

In Technology this week, 2nd and 3rd Grade students have been designing their own desktop wallpaper. It's a little trickier at school than at home because for each grade level there is one username and two or three students who use the same computer. The solution to this was to design a template which divided the desktop in thirds and allowed each student their own decorating space. The program we used was Paint and next week we will be uploading our designs. If you want to do it at home, just save the artwork to the pictures folder, right click the desktop, click Personalize, Click ‘Desktop Background’, browse to your Pictures library, select your drawing and save changes.

Hello, my name is Michelle Altschul. I am so excited to help start out the year while Mrs. Choi is on maternity leave with her new baby boy.  It has been wonderful to meet all of our new students and catch up with our returning students. I am very excited to begin the school year as we always do here at CHA, with the drawing of our self portraits. I cannot wait until their pieces of art are displayed on their lockers for all to see.

CHA Music

Howdy and welcome to CHA Music! My name is Mike Franklin and I'm excited to start another year as the music specialist here at CHA. Students did a fantastic job learning the routine in music class this week. Grades K-4 have been working on rhythmic chants with pulse, creative movement, and playing instruments. We spent time learning about and playing the barred instruments, and it's great to see many students already being able to do multiple things at once (chant and move, sing and play instruments etc...) Our goal is to increase musical vocabulary and ability for each student this year. Pictured here are 3rd graders, working on a chant while playing the xylos. Already rockin' and looking forward to a great year!

Back to School!

Hi!  I'm Grayson Mays and it's a pleasure to be your student's K-4th grade physical education teacher.  Can you believe the first week of school is almost over? Time sure does fly here in the jewel of the Northwest! For the classes that I was only able to meet with once during this first week, we went over our class expectations and outlined some of the different activities we'll be taking on this year. And, for those classes that I was fortunate enough to see for two days this week, we tapped into the expressive part of our brains with a riveting game of "Animal House," where our students picked a few different animals to mimic while jogging around the soccer field. Some of our more creative ideas included a unicorn, electric eel, and cheetah, just to name a few. Because our time was limited this week, I was unable to snag any pictures, but they will definitely be a part of our future entries! Take care and have a great weekend!

Week 1 of Spanish

¡Hola! My name is Lisa Malewiski, also known as “Señora Malewiski”, and I teach Spanish here at CHA.  It has been a wonderful first week of classes and it has been nice to see returning students, as well as meet new students.  This first week of school Middle School students received their Spanish binders and prepared them for the year.  They also reviewed words they recalled from last year, and went on a word search around the Spanish classroom looking for and writing down the Spanish names for classroom objects.

The Kindergarten and First grade classes were introduced to the Spanish class routines and calendar.  They also began working on their Spanish folders to keep their work in during the school year and they played a fun name game to help learn each other’s names.

Library/Journalism/Newspaper

Hello.  I am Lisa Duffina, and I am the Library Media Specialist at Chestnut Hill Academy.  This is my tenth year at CHA, and I'm excited to start my new "post" as librarian.  This week in library, we went over procedures and expectations of the library.  I also shared how we will have "birthday books" this year.  If there is a book that our library doesn't have, and your child has a birthday, why not think about donating a book to us?  We will share it with the class and then have it available for checkout!  I read Double Trouble in Walla Walla by Andrew Clements to the second - MS students.  My son "donated" this book to the library -- and it's one I always enjoy reading at the beginning of the year.  We will start checking out books next week.  The students are allowed to check out one book a week.   More information on check out days will be posted in next week's blog.

Middle School PE Week 1



Hello! My name is Maren Aberle, also known as "Coach Aberle" and I am teaching Middle School PE and Health this year. This week Middle School, students learned the new "Power 5". They will be using the Power 5 to enter PE this year. Students will warm-up by doing the following activities: run, tuck jumps, burpees, crunches and push-ups. This warm-up will be followed by stretching. This allows all students to be fully warmed up for an hour of PE. The activity this week was called "The Human Square". The objective of the activity was to learn (re-learn) the key components of teamwork--communication, trust and maintaining an open mind. The activity involved being blindfolded and working with classmates to form the human square. Much fun was had and the Middle School students began their year with a fantastic teamwork mindset.

Technology - Week One

Hello, I am Sarah Morlidge and I am the technology teacher for 2nd, 3rd, 4th and Middle School. This week the students have been taking Star Reading and Math tests. Next week we shall get started on our proper technology lessons! Please feel free to email me if you have any questions - smorlidge@chestnuthillacademy.com