This trimester students have strived to master locomotor movements, worked together in cooperative games, and practiced a multitude of motor skills. Students often have worked to improve their skills at different stations, which maximizes opportunities for skill practice and optimize activity time.

In our most recent unit, students have been learning about the three prominent skills used in Soccer; dribbling, passing, and shooting. Previous units of instruction include chasing, fleeing, and dodging, cooperative activities, soccer, traveling with scooters, catching and throwing, locomotor movements, and hula hoop activities.

Moving forward we will continue to build on social and personal responsibility skills, we have practiced and will incorporate them into group and team activities. The MSS P.E. program’s philosophy is to “Prepare students for any adventure they wish to embark upon during their lifetime.”

Please remember to have students wear appropriate gym clothing and sneakers on days that they have P.E.!

-Mr. Boss

Morse Street artists are improving their skills and growing more confident now that we are at the end of our first trimester in Art. Fall is a time of typically shorter lessons, giving children a chance to experience a variety of drawing materials, collage, and painting.

Kindergarten used oil pastels to make colorful and creative fish inspired by the book Hooray for Fish. This fun and silly fish story always makes a splash. We also read Mouse Paint about three mice who learn to mix primary colors to make secondary colors. Students made mouse drawings before color mixing with watercolor paint. The following week we took it a step further and introduced black and white to make tints and shades using tempera paint. Next we painted animal shapes inspired by The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse, by Eric Carle. Thinking less about the details and more about the parts that make the animal shape, artists were able to make a variety of animals including elephants, giraffes, crocodiles, and more. Recently students have been learning about patterns. Students first identified patterns in art, on their clothing and around the art room. After drawing patterns using crayon, we added watercolor and marveled at the way the crayon resisted the watercolor using this technique.

1st and 2nd grade artists enjoyed drawing realistic birds using oil pastel. Students looked closely at pictures and drew the shapes, colors, and patterns that they observed. Students also learned about collage artist and illustrator Lois Ehlert and practiced cutting and pasting techniques, beginning with larger shapes and overlapping details. Next we read Colors Blocked and students used different line types to design their own color factory. When complete they unblocked their primary colors to mix secondary colors. Continuing with line drawing, students drew a variety of fall leaves. These were finished using watercolor with the goal of mixing tertiary colors. 1st and 2nd graders also explored pattern in art. After discussing examples of pattern in art and in nature, students chose favorite lines, shapes, and colors to create in an original work using crayon resist. Student work will be going home shortly after the end of the trimester and I know they are excited to share it.

-Mr. Whiting

Morse Streets Musicians have had a great start to the year. We are enjoying making music. Classes have established Music class routines. These routines are practiced and help students develop work habits. Our routines include: entering the room and finding our seats, maintaining personal space and body control, demonstrating active listening with a voice level 0, initiating questions with a raised hand, and participating in all parts of our music time.

The fall has been full of favorite fall songs. “Pick A Pumpkin,” a fun DU DE DU rhythm song. “Autumn Leaves,” a great scale pattern song that we played both boomwhackers and xylophones.

Students are working on being Tuneful, Beatful, and Artful. In our curriculum we have been enjoying some great echo songs and simple songs. One game song we have been singing is “Button You Must Wander.” This is a passing/ guessing game. Leading up to Thanksgiving students learned a school favorite, “Grateful A Love Song to the World” by Nimo. This has a great singing section and a rap section. The students enjoy singing along and putting the beat in their body during the rap part. We conclude our classes with a story song which is a great way to cool down and be ready for our transition.

Trimester 1 was full of music making for our Morse Street Musicians. We are looking forward to a great trimester 2.

-Mrs. Domin

During the first trimester of the 2022-2023 school year students have demonstrated their creative minds in STEM! Creators have shown critical thinking, collaboration, and communication skills through weekly challenges. During the first weeks of school creators were challenged to design and create using only squares to make another picture as well as create structures using only the materials provided.

In addition, kindergarten designers learned why butterflies are so colorful and made their own butterflies to fly home and share with others. Builders in kindergarten demonstrated their sorting skills, collaboratively built the tallest towers possible, and balanced ‘apples’ on a created tower.

First and second grade students learned what is the biggest spider and what attributes a spider has. Using critical thinking skills, builders then created a 3D spider to represent a real one. Creativity didn’t stop there as they continued to design and create fall lego creations, leaf collages through leaf rubbings, engineered their own apple picker, and created lego brooms with seats for characters from the book ‘Room On a Broom.’ Demonstrating collaboration and communication, first and second grade students also created peaceful gardens with Keva Planks.

In the next few weeks we will be diving into more technology and computer science. Many students are feeling ready and excited!

-Ms. Hinton

We’ve had an exciting first trimester in our library! We’ve worked to create our community of readers through the power of stories. We began the year by reading This is a School by John Schu, then each student drew a drawing about school. Each individual drawing came together in our beautiful display, just as our students are coming together as a school community. In October, the first graders hiked Bradbury Mountain and enjoyed a reading of Lynn Plourde’s picture book, Bella’s Fall Coat, followed by a scavenger hunt. Most recently, we have participated in the Global Read Aloud, joining students from across the country and around the world, as we took part in a Christian Robinson picture book study. We enjoyed sharing our thinking as we discussed the characters, heard the stories “behind the stories,” and shared our observations on similarities and differences in the illustrator’s techniques from across all six books. What a great way to begin our year together! Happy reading!

-Mrs. Brann