SHOW AND TELL
Bring a picture of a healthy food you like eat
Topic: Our Amazing Bodies
Our bodies are the most amazing
machines we know.
The value is honor. When we do the right thing, we have honor.
For science, we’ll practice tasting and smelling. We’ll also learn how our food helps us grow.
Outside we’ll play human know and touch blue.
The songs we’ll be singing are Them Bones, Brush Your Teeth, Lean on Me, de Colores, and Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes.
Our art activities are X-ray craft, fingerprint art, face mosaic, and body painting.
Creative dramatics will be imagining how to move like one of our organs.
For body development, we’ll work on strength with gorilla walk and frog jump. For motor development we’ll do motor planning exercises with finding body parts, moving body parts, and understanding what we do with all our body parts.
SMART MOVES
How our body works has a huge impact on how our brain processes. Therapists who specialize in the learning process can watch how a child moves and quickly begin isolating a problem. When children move in graceful and organized ways, the brain activates properly and learning happens naturally. However, when our infants are locked down in car seats, bouncy chairs, and strollers, the learning process is inhibited. When preschoolers are plopped in front of a TV/monitor or they’re limited to a sterile indoors, their brains don’t integrate as fully as they’re designed to do. Movement is life for all of us.
There are three dimensions to movement that integrate brain processing. Bilaterality (sideways from left to right) develops the ability to hear clearly and accurately, enables the ability to read and write fluently, and connects both the analytical and creative sides of the brain. Athletic activities of swimming, running, and throwing balls improve bilaterality. The centering dimension is the relationship between the abstract/mental functions in the top of the brain and the feeling/emotional function in the midbrain. This “centering” enables a person to be organized, concentrate well, balance emotion and logic, and have a general sense of wellbeing. Problems in this area are sometimes flagged when a child doesn’t sit up comfortably at a work desk. The third dimension is the balance between front and back. Children who are well integrated in this area participate freely, they multi-task easily, they can focus equally well at details or on the big picture, and they have a clear sense of themselves.
Every week in our enrichment curriculum, we do exercises specifically designed to develop each of these dimensions. Over a period of four weeks, we cycle through exercises to develop vestibular function, proprioception, motor planning, and bilaterality. We also work on developing strength, stamina, coordination, and flexibility. Next week, for example, we’ll be working on strength and motor planning. These are big words that mean gorilla walk and frog jump. (Always feel free to ask for more details about our curriculum.) When our culture was more active, these things happened quite naturally as children spent large portions of their days out of doors in unstructured activities. Today we have to be more purposeful to see that this physical development happens, not just for our children, but for ourselves as well. The good news is that it’s mainly called “fun” and our students take to it quite easily.
Coming Up
Independence Day Holiday – The school will just be closed on Wednesday, July 4, for the holiday that honors our patriot fathers for pledging their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to fight for their principles of liberty.
Imagine This – Like our sex ed topic a couple of weeks ago, we don’t shy away from hard concepts. In our Amazing Bodies theme, we’ll be asking the children to think about thinking. How does our brain receive messages? How does our brain remember? How do we get smart? What can cause our brain to get hurt? Thinking about thinking is a hallmark of intelligence. You might want to play with this in your family.
Drop Off Time – During morning drop off the parking lot can become congested and cause time delays. As a courtesy please be aware of other parents who are looking for a place to park and exit the parking lot as quickly as possible.
CLASSROOM NEWS
We would like to thank Piper and Palmer’s grandmother who came by the school to read stories to the students in the primary class. One of the books was about yoga inspiring us to move our bodies and another book was about a dragon. Ms Momo also gave each student a cutout of a dragon for them to color. We love it when family members volunteer their time to interact with our students in ways that promote learning. Let us know if you have some time to share.
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