We have had a wonderful first day with the students! This group is especially eager to learn and share their experience and they have already gotten along well with each other. Every student brings a special strength to our class that I know we will get to explore more as the week continues.

We began the morning by introducing ourselves. We played a “focus” game that let us not only get to know the student’s names, but also allowed us to work on clear communication and remembering ideas. Students had to give their name to another student in the circle, clearly and with eye contact, and then later on remember who they gave it to. After, we went around the circle and talked about our favorite books and movies. Some included: “Harry Potter”, “Warriors”, and “A Series of Unfortunate Events”. It was great to see the wide variety of literature the children have already been exposed to!

After, we watched different snippets of all kinds of shows and movies, including “The Fraggles”, “Muppets”, and “The Last Unicorn”. We used these videos to talk about characters and how we can make anything a character with our imagination. The students did a great job and had awesome discussion with each other about how to interpret lyrics into a story, about how a character’s dress and costume can tell us about their personality, and how music can really set the mood for a story. Within these videos we were also able to talk about plot and setting and use specific examples from the videos to bolster our explanations.

After a snack break where the students talked and interacted with each other and the teachers, we had so much fun creating our own characters! We had “Flipsy”, “Bob”, and “Monsterina”. We created these creature by having each person in the group create and draw a section of the body and combining them together. We then had the students answer questions such as “species” and “powers” about their creatures and we created a whole identity for our new characters. The students created a story with our characters by sitting in a circle and each person saying one word for the story. They were so imaginative!

Parents, ask the students about an adventure that our creatures could go on tomorrow. They will have great ideas and let them write down their ideas or draw it out to bring to class tomorrow.

Today was a great day and we are so looking forward to hearing about their ideas tomorrow!

Ms. Kraft

Miss Ashanti