Pre-K (Ms. Mandy):

For this month’s projects, students engaged in food and weather related activities. For our first two weeks of the month, students worked on fun crafts such as puffy paint cupcakes, apple stamping, paper plate donuts, grape collages, and more! As for our weather theme activities, our pre-k kids learned about the changes in the weather and created rainy day umbrellas with dangling raindrops, bright paper plates suns, rainbow and sun paper plate craft, etc. The projects assigned for the kids allowed them to experiment with 3D elements, mixed media, and a variety of art making techniques to enhance their fine motor skills.

K-2nd grade (Ms. Lia, Ms. Cruz, Ms. Elizabeth & Ms. Brianna):

In Sparks Fitness club with Ms. Brianna we are doing lots of physical activity and stretching to keep our bodies active & healthy! At the beginning of the club we always start with stretches and warm ups like lunges, squats or jumping jacks. Most of the kids like doing push ups too and even a challenging exercise called burpees! Then each week we alternate playing gym games or various sport activities. Sometimes we play Fishy, Fishy or another version called Frogs & Gators which they all really enjoy. We have also played Captain Says and four corners. For sports so far we have learned the game of kickball, hockey, soccer and basketball. We have also learned the importance of teamwork and good sportsmanship through these games and activities. The kids have so much fun playing and cheering on their teammates!

As a whole group, the students in room 207 have also been working extensively on teamwork. Students have participated in a wide range of team building activities including the human knot, blind drawing, group picture designing and so many more. Students have begun to show incredible strides in their efforts to improve communication and collaborative thinking. We even began our newest reward challenge! As a class students are granted one hundred single dollars that they work to keep to spend on a prize at the end of the month. Each time the class is struggling they lose $1. Prizes are sectioned off in intervals and students are doing a great job of maintaining enough money to buy themselves a pizza party this month! Stay tuned to find out if they succeed in November and what our grand prize for December will be.

Miss Michelle:

In our Animal Appreciation Club, we just finished learning about and appreciating different zones in the ocean. We drew a mural of one ocean zone and made watercolor bubbles with sea life in them to show others what type of sea life lives in certain ocean zones.

In Recycled Arts and Crafts, we are doing our finishing touches to our tin can robots made using tin cans, colorful buttons, pipe cleaners, and other cool recyclable materials to make the parts of our robots.

In our Chemistry Club, we are monitoring our rock candy Crystals, so that we can learn more about how Crystals are made and form overtime.

Mr.T

The Joy of Painting: 

When students step into the classroom each Monday for “The Joy of Painting” Club, they know they are entering a calm, relaxing space where they will be able to do their best work. This session, we have been working on painting different landscapes, ranging from mountains to valleys. Additionally, we have explored how to incorporate the weather into our artwork, such as techniques on how to include snow on hills. It has been amazing to see how many students have grown as artists throughout the course of this club!

Now that we are well into autumn, some holidays already passed, more to come, all the classrooms at Capuano are involved with seasonally relevant activities. For example, classes have had all kinds of fun with pumpkins, spiders, and fall. Other subjects of interest include Harvest, Being Thankful, Kindness, Friendship, Astronauts, Space and Rocket ships. Of course, all the classes have made turkey projects of one kind or another.

It is a matter of course that we do plenty of reading. For example, we read “Pumpkinhead” by Eric Kimmel, which is about a town of creatures with pumpkins for heads who have a rather narrow view of the world and no matter how they try, cannot see outside of their own little world. Another example is Paulette Bourgeoise’s “Franklin’s Thanksgiving,” which is about family relationships, missing your family when family cannot get together, and how friends can help each other in challenging times when family cannot be present.

Now to get on with the real reason why you are reading this. It's time to introduce our starting lineup for our Afterschool program!

For our younger friends they have been enjoying the time of their lives, or I would hope so. Ms. Jane and Ms. Darly really have been doing tremendous work with our Pre-K friends. Ranging from building the tallest Eiffel tower the world has ever seen, enjoying their prizes that they have been earning, to our number selling event of Show & Tell. Our friends have been having a tremendous time and always enjoying their time with us. They even decided to create their own game of laser tag. Where there is a limited amount of string that is tangled up between the class, and our mission is to untangle it and not get stung by the laser. I think we might have created our very own super spies in afterschool. 

I would begin to sleep with one eye open at this point.