Ballet Day with Maryna
Ballet Day!
Good morning everyone! It was very chilly this morning, but a great start to wonderful day! On our art table we had the string art we started yesterday. We first dipped the yarn into the paint then used the yarn to paint on our black paper. BB was really good at drawing lines with the string and LH tried different styles of painting to make his very own painting. On our activity table we had plain white paper and we ripped it up into little tiny pieces. Not only was the ripping fun, it helps develop our fine motor skills! LO couldn’t get enough, he just kept ripping and ripping all morning! Out on the carpet area we had animal toys out because our topic for this week are the animals on the Chinese zodiac. Our friends had a great time with Kiki playing and learning the names of all the animals. OS and SO wanted to cook up some breakfast in the kitchen play area and AA as always was strumming away on the Ukulele.
We quickly cleaned up our classroom and started our circle time. We started our circle time with our usual morning songs. AB, SB, and YF led the class with the dancing. John then put on a silly doggy hat and started saying “woof woof!” We were wondering what John was up to, but we quickly remembered our topic for the week. John explained to us that the Dog is one of the twelve animals on the calendar and they change every year, and this year is the year of the dog! After our short circle time we sang some more songs as we waited for our special guest today.
We had our first Maryna’s ballet class this year. We’re all awestruck to see her beautiful face and tutu as she came inside our classroom. She looked so elegant that we kept looking at her for a long time. First, we did our warm-up exercises. We’re very familiar with “If you’re happy and you know it” but her version was a bit different. Here, we did clapping when we’re happy, stomping when we’re mad, eating when we’re hungry and stretching when we’re sleepy. The next activity was “What’s the weather like today?” This time we used our hands to do different actions for sunny and rainy. We also had the scarecrow dance. Maryna showed us a picture of a scarecrow and we made it sure that we could also spread our arms just like a real scarecrow. The first step was to pretend sleeping and then afterwards, we have to jump up and spread our arms. We were giggling all the time because it gave us a lot of excitement to do the activity with our friends. The third activity was the “Mosquito dance”. This dance was all clapping and pretending that we’re shooing the mosquitoes away. The fourth one was the “butterfly stretching”. We did this by wiggling our legs while they were crossed together. It was quite fun because the movement was really making our muscles to move and function. While we were on the floor in our butterfly position we hugged ourselves tight then we opened up our arms and our legs and stretched out, then we went back into butterfly position and repeated a few times. Our last activity was the “Good Toes, Naughty Toes” song. When our toes were stretched out straight they were good toes, and when they were pointing up to the ceiling those were naughty toes. We listened to the song as we followed along and move our toes. Needless to say we had a great time with Maryna!
After the Ballet class we recharged our energy with some snacks and we were ready to move out again! LH, AA, and HB joined their Flowers and Petals friends and played tag with Nimo. Some of us enjoyed our time with the slide. The sandbox was also very popular today, OD got so engaged she was covered in sand by the time it was time to go back to school.
We had a great active day today with Ballet and our time at the Park. We went out in a snap for nap time because we moved around so much! Wonder what wonderful things Friday will bring! For now we will go home and rest for another exciting day tomorrow!
Love,
The Ballerinas of Buds 2018