Peter and the Wolf

February Music Department Field Trip Information

Symphony in C ~ Peter and the Wolf

http://symphonyinc.org/performance/peter-and-the-wolf-1

Our field trip to see Peter and the Wolf was wonderful! The children arrived early in the morning and the energy and excitement was felt as soon as the children entered the classroom. The excitement was felt throughout Lower School as all of the children prepared for the excursion to Camden ! This was our first Lower School field trip and this community based experience supported one of our most important goals we have set for ourselves this year; that of building community .

We boarded the school bus and were so happy to share the bus with our 2nd grade and kindergarten friends. The children enjoyed a snack on the bus and the ride was filled with conversations and pleasure. The children truly loved the bus ride experience ; both ways of the trip! The children were well prepared for the concert and performance and were engaged from the moment it started. This was a very 'big kid' thing to do and the children beamed with pride as they sat amongst the large group of AFS students in the audience.

Lori Saidi, our Middle School Music teacher who teaches strings to Middle and Upper school students as well as teaches violin as part of our enrichment program to Lower School students, was performing with Symphony in C ~Peter and the Wolf. Having the opportunity to celebrate the gifts of one of our own faculty members was very special.

The story of Peter and the Wolf was told in a delightful , comical and most creative way. The children were captured in every moment and seemed to love both the musical and the story telling parts of the performance. This was certainly an experience that will stay with us for a very long time...

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PreK Visits Fill-A-Bagel

Taking a Fall walk in our Jenkintown community is a wonderful opportunity for the children to experience community in a new way. We have been looking at our internal AFS community in a multitude of ways and felt that extending our perspective would best be understood by actually walking into the surrounding community and seeing first hand what a community may look like. The stores, restaurants, businesses , post office and fire house are places in our community that we are able to walk to and visit.

There were lots of places that we were interested in visiting, however we felt that connecting our community helper aspect of our study would best be explored if we tried to visit places where our children had selected a particular community helper to study. Two of our students are studying the role of Chefs as community helpers and interest in cooking, baking and food seems to be enjoyed by all of our students.

Prior to our visit , we engaged in a Language activity where we generated ideas about what they thought we we may see on our trip; and what questions they have and what are they may be wondering about regarding the work and role of the people who work in the bagel shop.

This is a process develops cognitive as well as language skills. Children practice language and vocabulary skills and they are learning to make projections. We use our lists after our trip in discussions which provides opportunities for children to practice recall and memory skills.

The walk was absolutely beautiful and the glorious weather added to our enjoyable fall morning. In addition to seeing the beauty of the season, we also saw several community helpers in the community working community places! We saw a n ambulance, trash truck and trash helpers, a doctor's office, construction workers fixing the roof of a building and the sidewalk, a bus and a bus driver, a bank, a church and a mail truck.

Walt, Jason and Donna welcomed us at Fill-a-Bagel and gave us a fantastic behind the scenes tour to see how bagels are made. Jason and Walt are the bagel bakers and Donna's takes care of the customers.

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We went inside a huge refrigerator where the bagels are kept before they are baked . The refrigerator was so big that our whole classs could all fit inside together at the same time!

The bagels are boiled before they are baked in a huge oven that has 5 revolving shelves.

The ingredients are mixed in a very large automatic mixer and then they are placed on a conveyor belt to be cut and made into the shape of a bagel. Before the are baked, Jason sprinkles different toppings onto the baking trays depending if he is making sesame, poppy or every thing bagels.

We had a great question/answer time with Jason and Walt and the children asked a few of the questions we had discussed prior to our visit. We snacked on delicious bagel bites before walking back to AFS.