The Preschool For Music And Art

Pizza & St Valentines!

2012-02-15T06:21:00.000-08:00

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Our budding cooks had a great time making a pizza! It was delicious, the main ingredient being team effort!!

As well as being amazing cooks, our preschoolers are also fabulous dancers as you can see!
We are hard at work preparing Peter & the Wolf!

Tuesday was Valentine's day which of course was the perfect occasion to prepare heart shaped boxes full of chocolate for mommy and daddy!

Each preschooler designed his/her own box, which led to some very original pieces!

Our older classes are working on the blues at the moment, as well as on ... yes ... another (!) original song about the coooooooold weather!

Make sure you don't miss our Mardi Gras party this Friday the 17th at 11:30!

We talked about static electricity which lead to some very funny pictures as you can see..

We wish you all a fabulous holiday! We can't wait to see you all again on March 5th!!

A "nez" came for a visit!

2012-02-01T06:51:00.000-08:00

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We would like to wish a very happy birthday to Lavinia who turned 3! Lavinia shared her wonderful Hello Kitty birthday cake with everybody!

Clemence Besse, a professional "Nez" at l'Oréal came in to share her love of perfume with our preschoolers. We had such fun identifying many different smells. It was a true olfactory feast!!

Goodbye Alexandre, making vegetable soup ... and a funny looking egg!

2012-01-25T02:00:00.000-08:00

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We would like to say goodbye to our wonderful preschooler Alexandre who we will miss very much!

We hope Alexandre keeps up the great piano playing!

We had a lot of fun with Joan who showed us how to make some delicious vegetable soup!

Our preschoolers learnt all about mixing and seasoning. It was a lot of fun to use the blender and to see all these solid vegetables turn into soup!

Here is our very funny looking soft egg! The experiment was a success!!

Sushi and secret experiments!

2012-01-18T06:22:00.000-08:00

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Our young preschoolers have been conducting an experiment called the Soft Shelled Egg Experiment. You can read all about it on this web site! Click HERE!

We also had a lot of fun learning about solid and liquid materials with this magical liquid clay that solidifies when touched!

Our older preschoolers are now official Sushi Chefs and had a great time showing the younger children how to make them. They will probably be making them for their parents next!

We are also very happy to announce our February Vacation Stage. Our theme is ... Peter and the Wolf!

Galette des rois!

2012-01-11T06:29:00.000-08:00

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Happy New Year!

2012-01-04T02:12:00.000-08:00

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Happy New Year!! We hope 2012 will be full of beautiful music !

Our Holiday party was a very special moment as you can see. We are all very proud of our preschooler’s and their wonderful performances!

Our 3rd year students have composed the words and music to an original Christmas song. (With a little help from Aurélien)

Here are our youngest students performing a song with Ana Maria!

Emelia has done a very interesting drawing….if you look closely, these are the images corresponding the notes of a Christmas carol ! Sol - la sol fa mi fa- sol fa mi ré mi etc… Bravo !

Joan’s Friday morning special event was Sushi ! The children learned how to use chop-sticks and how to make maki (sushi rolls).

Tasting new foods is always very exciting!

We had the great pleasure of a visit from Zejanas father who is a professional dancer. The children were very very impressed !

A special goodbye to Hypatia who we will miss very much. We wish her very well in her new home in Australia !

IT'S CHRISTMAS TIME!

2011-12-07T07:08:00.000-08:00

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It is Christmas time! The children were very excited at the idea of having their Christmas tree in their classroom! The picked it out and brought it back to the school. However they decided it was not big enough so they put it on a table for it to be very high up!

Our little preschoolers have been hard at work making decorations for it and the classroom is now completely decorated with some beautiful arts & crafts!

Please note that our Christmas Party is on Friday December 16^th at 11:30am! You will get to see everything we have been working on and hear our little preschoolers perform.

As with bread and butter we are studying the way ingredients transform when we put them together, we go from yeast that makes bread rise, coagulation which makes cream turn to butter and now the mixing of oil and vinegar!

The kids had a blast mixing savory and sweet ingredients, which led to learning about what is bitter, sour, salty, and sweet! We hope everyone enjoyed his or her homemade vinaigrette!

We have also been doing a lot of theatre and are eager to show you what we have been working on!

And last but not least..congratulations to Paolo who has completed his "100 board" !!!

Bread and drums!

2011-11-30T07:44:00.000-08:00

This week was rich in events! We had so much fun making bread and butter! We learned all about bread rising, butter coming from cream and we had a feast on the food prepared by our preschoolers!

Christmas is in the air so we are all hard at work making decorations!

In music, we discovered drums and all of our budding musicians have proven to have a fantastic sense of rhythm! We worked on some arm/leg right/left independence exercises, which are quite difficult and challenging!

Some pictures from our fabulous theater teacher Cari’s class! The preschoolers have so much fun creating their own characters that live in their imaginary worlds! Theatre is an essential artistic discipline. It is quite close to music as it requires listening, memorizing, improvising and a whole lot of fun!

And of course, learning to read and write is always so much fun!!

Bye bye Natasha!

2011-11-23T03:32:00.000-08:00

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Hello everyone! First of all, we would like to give a warm thank you to Natasha as she flies back to the land of Kangaroos, we will miss her! There is a rumor among the children that Natasha will be sending us a Kangaroo in the mail…

We had a lovely going away party with some outstanding cakes made by the one and only Chancy! One of them actually looks like a suitcase!

This was also a happy birthday party for Zejanna and Rheya 3 years old!!

We would like to give a big welcome to Rachel Madeline who is joining our team! Rachel is an experienced Montessori teacher and is looking forward to bringing her experience to our structure!!

As we continue our work on different forms of transportation and city living, here are some pictures of our Preschoolers painting a mural of a city using different shapes and colors.

We are continuing our initiation to Yoga with a special class with Joan in which our students became familiar with the “Sun Salutation”! We were all very impressed when Joan showed us she could stand on her… head!

We are also keeping with our work on letters of the alphabet as you can see in these pictures.
Music classes are going wonderfully as we are working on a rather original version of “Jingle Bells”. The older class has once again proven their amazing songwriting skills with yet another original song, which will be premiered at our Christmas party!

Here are some pictures of yesterdays “transplantation”! We learned about roots, fertilizer, photo synthesis and how and when to re-pot a plant.

Halloween, transport & murals!

2011-11-09T01:24:00.000-08:00

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The month of October was marked by Halloween festivities of course!

Here are some pictures of the pumpkins that the children carved! They looked very scary!

Our Halloween party was a great success and the preschoolers had a wonderful time playing the violin, cello and piano!

Our older students played “Mary had a little lamb” by themselves on the piano while everybody sang along and performed their original composition “It’s Halloween!”

The younger class had a lot of fun roasting (and tasting!) pumpkin seeds and constructing very scary spiders and ghosts out of different materials.

As you can see the whole preschool staff was dressed up and we had a lot of fun trick or treating!

We are currently working on understanding about the different forms of transportation throughout the world. This leads to interesting thoughts about size, weight and speed! !

Our petite section class has designed a map of Paris on the preschool floor and is constructing skyscrapers and boats out of boxes

We are introducing yoga to our preschoolers. Joan will be doing a special yoga morning on Thursday. Here are some pictures of them watching a special “yoga for kids” video!

Our young little artists were commissioned work (!) by the school administration team and this beautiful mural is now in the secrétariat!

Apples, Halloween & Eyesight!

2011-10-20T09:00:00.000-07:00

Joan will be doing special presentations every Friday morning. Last Friday was a presentation about eyesight. The children saw (and touched) contact lenses.

The children then trie
d on some very funny reading glasses!

They made a special eye chart that Joan desperately tried to read without glasses or lenses but to no avail because she is blind as a .. bat! Leading us to our next subject..

HALLOWEEN!!

This week was so exciting! We made spiders, pumpkin trick or treat bags and carved our own pumpkin. Aurélien's music class wrote their own original Halloween song! The world premiere will be on Friday October 21st at PSMA at 11:30!!

We have had so many apples for snack time that last week we decided to make apple sauce! We chopped, stirred, cooked and blended the apples to make some delicious apple sauce!

Theater & African Queens!

2011-10-05T04:34:00.000-07:00

"Our 3rd week as gone fantastically well and all our little preschoolers are doing wonderfully, settling in, making new friends and learning a lot! Here are some fun pictures from our new theatre class led by Cari Derbise! Please meet Kaia as "Princess Tra-La-La", Griffin as "Flying Piggy", Lucie as "Princess Lucie", Constantin as "Monsieur Doree", Paolo as "The Magic Genie", Esther as "Princess Eloise", Emilia as "Dancing Fairy Princess", Clement as " Sneaky Tiger" and Cyrus as "Speedy Leopard"!

Our first theme with our preschoolers was apples! A warm thanks to all the families who brought apples for the children to share! We are also working on shapes and forms of all sizes and have a brand new "Shape Song!"
Leila Olivesi came in yesterday to play piano for the children and to talk to them about African Queens! She will be performing with her trio at the school on Sunday October 16th at 11am. Please RSVP if you wish to come as we cannot accept more than 50 people! The concert will last 30 minutes and will be followed by a delicious snack!
The children will be preparing for the concert via arts and crafts projects involving queens, crowns and hieroglyphs!
We hope to see you all there!

Welcome back!!

2011-09-28T01:55:00.000-07:00

Hello everybody!

Welcome back!
First of all, our Blog has slightly changed so in order to view all the pictures in an article, click on the title and a window will open up!

As we start our third week at the Preschool, we would like to congratulate everybody as all our little preschoolers have adapted so well and have settled into a wonderful learning routine!

This year, we are adding a theatre class for our older students. All have proven to be real budding actors!

Our music classes are also going really well! The children are singing, dancing and discovering new instruments every day!

This blog will be updated every Wednesday so make sure to check out all our pictures!

Updates!

2011-06-14T06:06:00.000-07:00

Our Preschoolers have been practicing lining up for our upcoming end-of-year concert!

Every friday is painting day, so we had a lot of messy fun finger painting!

Brian, Kaia's dad came in to talk to us about parachutes and the children even go to touch a real one!

We went to see the hot airballoon at the Parc André Citroën but it was too windy to ride it so we had a wonderful pic-nick on the grass!

The older class has been working very hard on letters and on writing their names as well as practicing the alphabet!

Mother's day!

2011-06-07T06:02:00.000-07:00

MOTHER'S DAY!

Here are some pictures from all the hard work the Preschoolers have put in to prepare for Mother's Day!

We hope that all the mommies enjoyed their gifts!

MIRO EXHIBIT!

2011-05-26T06:06:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, our older Preschoolers went on a trip to the Musée Maillol to visit the Juan Miro exhibition.

The Preschoolers have been working hard on Miro's work and have also created their version of some of his most famous pieces!

The children were very interested and had a lot to say! They are all budding art critics!

Eggplant people & flute!

2011-04-04T05:58:00.000-07:00

Hello everybody!

Here are some fun pictures of our Preschoolers as they begin this month of April!

Today they made some beautiful "eggplant" people!

Last week, they got to discover the flute which was very fun!

Turtle day!

2011-03-18T06:38:00.001-07:00

The children loved being turtles! They were also very excited to have a real turtle shell!

Paul turned 4!! Happy Birthday Paul!!

We can't wait to show you everything we have filmed!

P.S: Turtles love playing the piano!

Kangaroos & face paint!

2011-03-15T07:09:00.000-07:00

Today we had a lot of fun with face paint and our kangaroo costumes! We are still working on our Carnaval of the Animals movie!

The older class ..

Our little kangaroos!

Lions & Swans !

2011-03-08T06:09:00.000-08:00

Hello everybody!

Here are some great pictures of todays activities!

The children have been making some beautiful swan & lion costumes. We are working hard on our "Carnaval of the Animals" movie!

The children have also started life size "bonhommes" of themselves!

Here are our lovely swans & lions!

Hopscotch, swans and cello !

2011-03-04T04:46:00.000-08:00

All the children have been hard at work preparing costumes and rehearsing for the "Carnaval of the Animals" ! Check out these pictures of our little swans!

Marie-Thérèse, our fantastic cello teacher came into the classroom to play cello for the kids! They got to play their favorite tunes on this fantastic instrument!

We drew a hopscotch outside the school which the children love!

Beethoven & Saint-Saëns!

2011-01-25T05:21:00.000-08:00

The children have started working on the Carnaval des Animaux, written by Camille Saint-Saëns!

We have been practicing piano and learning about Beethoven!

The children will all be acting in a little movie for the parents: The Preschool's Carnaval of the Animals! We are very excited to show you!

Frroooogs!

2011-01-14T04:20:00.000-08:00

Today the children got to watch a great documentary on frogs and on how these animals are suffering from pollution.

The whole morning was dedicated to frogs. The Preschoolers made different art projects around frogs: frog drawings, frog collages etc..

Ribbit!

Djembé, flute & galette!

2011-01-11T05:15:00.000-08:00

The Preschoolers discovered the Djembé and got to play on it! We talked about African music and especially music from West Africa where the Djembé was born!

The kids also played the flute and worked on their notes on the xylophone!

We also celebrated Paolo's birthday! HAPPY BIRTHDAY PAOLO!

The class was full of Kings and Queens after we ate our Galette des Rois!

Piano & Cello

2011-01-07T05:28:00.000-08:00

Today, our Preschoolers were able to play the cello again which they very much enjoyed!

Each child got to perform a mini-concert with piano accompaniment for their friends !

With the younger class, we continued our discovery of the piano and even welcomed a surprise guest named "Nounours" who played for us !

We would also like to welcome our new Preschoolers! We look forward to many beautiful moments with everybody!

2011-01-04T03:56:00.000-08:00

THE WHOLE PRESCHOOL TEAM WOULD LIKE TO WISH EVERYBODY A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR. MAY 2011 BRING YOU JOY, HAPPINESS AND A LOT OF MUSIC!

WE ARE LOOKING FORWARD TO THIS NEW YEAR WITH OUR PRESCHOOLERS!

HERE ARE SOME PICTURES FROM OUR HOLIDAY PARTY!

THE CHILDREN WERE VERY PROUD TO SHOW THEIR WORK TO THEIR PARENTS! THEY ALSO DID A GREAT JOB SINGING AND DANCING!

WE REMIND YOU THAT WE ARE CONTINUING THE

“The Four Seasons” Vacation Camps

DURING THE FEBRUARY HOLIDAYS FROM FEBRUARY THE 14th TO THE 18th!

Monday is drum day!

2010-12-13T05:57:00.000-08:00

Monday is our drum day so all the children got to play the drums! They also had a lot of fun with Ana-Maria this morning!

Orchestra

2010-12-10T05:59:00.000-08:00

In class today, we learnt about how an orchestra worked and the children were able identify so many of the instruments! We encourage parents to watch the video with their children and talk about the different instruments, if the parents don't know what is what, the kids sure will!

You can watch the video by clicking HERE!

We have started learning Beethoven's Ode To Joy!

Holiday show and past few days!

2010-12-09T05:59:00.000-08:00

First of all, we would like to congratulate our Preschoolers for their wonderful performance at our holiday party! They were all so concentrated and sang very very well! BRAVO!!!

Here are some pictures from our different classes!

2010-12-03T05:41:00.000-08:00

Today, the children played the violin and rehearsed for their show on Sunday!

We also continued making our decorations as you can see in the pictures below!

2010-12-02T06:55:00.000-08:00

Today, the children got to hear Aude de Larouzière play the violin! She also talked about this wonderful instrument and the preschoolers were given an in depth introduction to this marvelous instrument!

To watch the video, click HERE!

To complete our work on seasons and in preparation for festive events we have been working on larger group art projects and linking individual tasks such as wrapping cotton, stringing pasta to physical movement and pre-writing exercises!

We have worked with crayons, markers, glue, different textures of paper, paint, cotton, cords, wood, leaves, pine cones and scissors these last weeks.

In music class, we discovered the congas and played different rhythms on them, it was a lot of fun!

The Nightmare Before Christmas

2010-11-30T07:04:00.000-08:00

Here is some of the beautiful artwork the children have been creating over the past few weeks! They are working hard on creating the set for the play "The Nightmare Before Christmas"!

They have also been working on different feelings, and drawing circles as part of their work on "shapes".

The younger group designed and cooked "pâte à sel" figurines!

In music class, we played the cello and worked on our songs for the show!!

Drums and decorations

2010-11-29T05:31:00.000-08:00

Today the class prepared the holiday decorations ...

Discovered the drums in music class..

and played musical games !

Flute, rhythms and scales!

2010-11-26T05:31:00.000-08:00

In music class today, with the older group, we worked on the C major scale with the help of the xylophone. We also practiced our new song the "Animal Song"!

With the younger group, we discovered the flute and worked on different rhythms!

Today's class

2010-11-25T06:05:00.000-08:00

Today, the kids all played the xylophone! Here are some group pictures and portraits we took of the kids during the lessons!

Today is also Thanksgiving and the children were asked what they were thankful for, here are some of their answers: "I am thankful for food, my mommy, toys, books, dolls, caroussels, to see people, for going in bistro, hoola hoops, tableau".

PLaying piano, starting our tree and saying goodbye to Juliet!

2010-11-23T06:50:00.000-08:00

Today was Juliet's last day before she goes on her maternity leave!

She and the kids shared a delicious cake made by the wonderful Chancy!

The younger Preschoolers played a lot of piano in music class!

The tree making has begun!

Thank you for everything Juliet, see you next year!

La contrebasse !

2010-11-22T05:37:00.000-08:00

This morning, Ana-Maria brought many different instruments which the kids loved and this afternoon they discovered (re-discovered for a few of them!) the double-bass!

Today was mainly spent on preparing decorations for the Dec 5th show "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and starting our tree!

A bit of what we did today..

2010-11-19T05:44:00.000-08:00

Today was our "Friday cooking class"!

Older class!

2010-11-18T05:41:00.000-08:00

The older class has been hard at work since the beginning of the year. Here's just a brief overview of what we've been looking at up till now!

The themes looked at have been weather, changing seasons, farm animals, numbers, sharingand halloween.

We are currently working on primary and secondary colours. Each theme has allowed the class to work around corresponding letters within our alphabet program.

Letters studied to date have been. c, a, o, e, u, e, l, t, f. As you will notice we not working not in alphabetical order, but rather with script similarities and pre-reading development. Also our various themes have allowed the class to progress in observations and self expression.

This year's art program has been designated to Great Artists. Each month the children will look closely at a different artist and his work.

The objective of this program to not only to expose the children to classic works of art, but again to encourage observation and self expression. To date the class has studied Monet and Picasso. Currently discovering the art of Joan Miró.

We also encourage families to use these themes as opportunities reinforces ideas outside of the classroom !

Guitare & Collages !

2010-11-16T05:51:00.000-08:00

In today's music class, the Preschoolers discovered the guitar and all got a chance to play it!

We practiced their new bilingual song "The Animal Song" where each animal is associated to a feeling. They were singing about happy monkeys, sad donkeys, scary snakes and many more!

In art class, the older Preschoolers made some wonderful collages, and they were all very proud of them!

The older group has done a lot of work on recognizing different chords! They can all hear the difference in between a major chord and a minor one! They also have "musical" names which they each recognize now!

The younger class discovered the guitar and had a lot of fun with it! They heard all the different sounds it makes and understood the relationship in between the right hand playing the strings and the left hand changing the notes by putting the fingers on the frets!

Cookies & letters!

2010-11-12T02:54:00.000-08:00

Here are some pictures of today's classes ! Paul, Constantin, Oscar, Paolo, Cyrus, Esther and Isabelle did a marvelous job writing the letters they have learnt!

Kaia, Slate, Filippo, Natalia baked cookies for everybody! They learnt about different colors by using brown and white sugar, and they had to follow the recipe to the tee so did a lot of counting! (the cookies were amazing!)

Music at PSMA

2010-11-09T05:39:00.000-08:00

Today, the older class learnt about Bach and each child got to be the teacher, asking their fellow preschoolers to recognize different musical notation. They all did brilliantly well!

This morning, Cyrus, Lucie and Clément started the Preschool Trio and spent a lot of time discovering the piano, violin and cello!

Here are some pictures of the Preschoolers playing the cello!

Texture "Collage" et project Pâte à Sel !

2010-11-08T06:03:00.000-08:00

Friday and Monday, the younger kids did a lot of cooking!

They baked their own little cakes and did salt dough modeling! Every child’s description of their sculpture evolved as they were making it.

Clément first decided his would be “une baleine!” and then it became “une crèpe comme maman!”, Natalia decided hers would be “a cake!”, Lucie said hers was “une baleine” then “a crocodile!”. Lucie then decided hers was “un bébé baleine” and Cyrus answered “moi c’est la maman baleine!”. Slate decided to make "a toy!" and Zola made "a big ball!". Kaia and Filippo also made "a ball!".

Toussaint Stage !

2010-11-05T05:02:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to all the children who took part in our 2010 Toussaint Halloween Preschool Stage !!

All the children were wonderful and always open to new experiences. They all discovered thedrums, played piano and did a lot of singing, dancing, and.. cooking!

Here are a few pictures!

HALLOWEEN !!

2010-10-22T05:44:00.000-07:00

Thank you to everybody who came to our PSMA Halloween Party today, and congratulations to all the children for their WONDERFUL costumes!!

We had a great time singing and dancing and.. trick-or-treating!

Bonnes vacances!

Les enfants découvrent le violoncelle avec Laura Sewell !

2010-10-21T03:22:00.000-07:00

The children were very lucky to hear Laura Sewell play the cello for them! Laura attended the Juilliard School of Music with Joan Koenig more than.. 30 years ago! She was also a student of Jacqueline Du Pré's and Leonard Rose.

To see the video click HERE !

They also sang "Head, Shoulders, Knees & Toes" for Laura! Click HERE to listen to them!

Joan and Laura also played an old Irish folk song, click HERE to listen to them!

Les Preschoolers découvrent le tuba et le saxophone!

2010-10-21T03:19:00.000-07:00

The PSMA students discovered the tuba and saxophone !

Click HERE to watch this mini-concert!

Une matinée à la Preschool/ A morning in the Preschool !

2010-10-21T03:10:00.000-07:00

The older class goes to the park! / La grande section va au parc !

2010-10-19T04:20:00.000-07:00