Week 15: December 4-8 - "The Land of Artists"

The Land of Artists

While the Seeds and Oaks students got to explore the beautiful terrain of Italy, and its rich history of Art, our Garden students enjoyed creative drama with their costumes and truly made some art of their own. Read below for more…

Make way for the chief!

A trunk of costumes is always a fun way to end the day at The Garden.

READINGS FOR THE WEEK - Family Book Package

The readings listed below are optional, but are great ways to reinforce the lessons taught at the center and for the entire family to explore together the topics we cover from week to week.

Our Memory verse can be found at the end of this page.

The Bible - the Book of Matthew

Matthew 10:21-42; 11:1-30

Window on the World

pp. 110-111 (North Caucasus)

Children’s Atlas to God’s World

pp. 38-41

Additional Read-Alouds:

HERO TALES
- pp. 69-79 - Martin Luther
The Usborne Living World Encyclopedia
- pp. 86-89

The Garden

This week we started preparing for Advent. We studied that God used both prophets and angels to talk about the coming Messiah, Jesus. We spoke about the angels letting Mary and Joseph know where to go so the child could be born. The Almighty, chose to humble himself down to our level and became a human for our salvation. After Jesus was born, the angels were beautifully singing, “Glooooooooooooria, in excelsis deo”. Ask the children to sing the song for you. The emotion with which they sing it is very moving.

This week in park time, the children invented a robot game with the crates by putting them on their heads. They are so creative!

Highlighting this week's new activity was collage. The children had the opportunity to tear different color construction paper and glue it however they liked. This is a great activity to keep practicing fine motor skills at home! Finally, a fun extra kick this week to our rice and bean sensory table was adding colored pom poms. They had a wonderful time!

SEEDS

Seeds Science

God designed nature to generally balance itself when given enough time. Significantly decreasing the population of even one species, even when they seem dangerous, can dramatically impact everything else within the ecosystem. People need to be very cautious about changing any population of plants or animals. Each one is an integral part of a food web.

An example of an ecosystem in which balance is very important is a cave ecosystem. A cave is a cavern underground or inside a mountain. True caves have no light except at the entrance and thus no plants can grow once you move beyond the algae growing within the last traces of light.

There are three major types of animals in a cave ecosystem.

Trogloxenes are cave guests that spend some time there but don’t actually live there.
Troglophiles like caves and spend most of their time there but leave regularly to get food.
Troglobites are the animals that live their entire lives in caves. They are often creepy looking, sometimes with no eyes and very little to no pigment.

People are often afraid of bats but they are very important troglophiles that provide nutrition to many other cave animals through their droppings, called guano. They also eat many, many pesky mosquitoes!

Our primary focus on the cave lesson was about the animals but I could not help introducing information on two fascinating cave structures and a way to remember the difference:

Stalactites hang tight to the ceiling while
Stalagmites might reach the top.

Seeds Geography

While Italy wasn’t originally on our list of places to visit this year, we decided to take a stop there and boy was it worth it. Crossing the Alps from France to Italy, we discovered a country rich with culture and fascinating facts. Italy is home to many volcanoes and is composed not only of the famous “boot-shaped” peninsula, but also the islands of Sicily and Sardinia. We learned about a fun game from Italy called Bocce and even got to play it in the park. Finally the week was complete as we learned about the Leaning Tower of Pisa and tried to construct a tower with dominoes that had a 4 degree angle, just like the one in Pisa. Believe us, it didn’t turn out so good. Finally, we got to eat pizza! Made from scratch in our kitchen, everyone enjoyed this Italian favorite.

Seeds Studio

How can we study Italy without admiring one of the most famous artists of all time? Leonardo da Vinci is considered as a typical Renaissance man as he was not only a painter, but a scientist, inventor, musician, sculptor and much more! After reading a book about his life by Mike Venezia and looking at some of his most famous pieces like the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper, we tried our hand at one of his greatest quirks-writing things backwards in his journals so that nobody would be able to decipher what he wrote! The kids worked on their names and quickly realized how hard it was. This week they will do portraits of each other.

THE OAKS PROGRAM

Oaks Geography

The Oaks students began their study of Italy, examining a map of the country and recognizing that it is a nation with tremendous natural protections. From the waters of the Mediterranean Sea to the rocky Alps, Italy has historically been a place difficult to invade due to its natural barriers. While Italy wasn’t originally on our list of places to visit this year, we decided to study it as well and discovered a country rich with culture and fascinating facts. In addition to the Alps, Italy is home to many volcanoes, most famously that of Mt. Vesuvius that destroyed the city of Pompeii. In fact, the many volcanoes are due to the fact that tectonic plates from Europe and Africa meet in this region. Like the Seeds group, the Oaks learned about the game Bocce and also got to play it in the park. After we learned about the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the class was divided into two teams as they tried to construct a tower with dominoes that had a 4 degree angle, just like the one in Pisa. We learned that a stable flat foundation is always best. As a treat for the end of the week, the Oak students got to make their own pizzas and it was a hit! Ciao!

Oaks Science

Puerto Rico is such an amazing place to live as we study all these different ecosystems! As we turned our attention to caves this week, we recounted our experiences visiting the caves in Puerto Rico and discussed the possibility of going there on our spring field trip. We talked about the different animals that live in and around caves and how the low amount of food inside caves make them low energy ecosystems. The students were surprised to learn that the main source of nutrients inside a cave is guano or bat droppings.

Bats are vital to cave ecosystems, therefore it is very interesting to study the different kinds of bats. We enjoyed a National Geographic video that shows a fish-eating bat hunting inside the cave and almost falling prey to a catfish itself!

Oaks Studio

French and Italian are very similar languages. In fact, learning the grammar in one can help with the other. This week we learned to say our name and how old we are in Italian following the same pattern of French. Then we began to discuss the life of Leonardo da Vinci. We learned that “Da Vinci” is not his last name but that “da” is the preposition “from” and “Vinci” was the city he was born in. We had fun introducing ourselves in the same way. “Buongiorno! Mi chiamo Viviana da Guaynabo.” The students wrote their names backwards, as Leonardo was in the habit of doing, and then did portraits of each other in partners posing like the Mona Lisa.