Hello parents,
I hope you had a blessed, healthy Christmas Season!
Thank you for being flexible in supporting our later start to school after the Christmas break.
Still no Kirkham Baby #3 yet, but if this one is anything like it’s siblings, fashionably late is what we are anticipating… I’ll be sure to keep you posted 🙂
Last Week
Black Excellence Day
This past Friday we engaged in Language Arts, Social Studies, Music and Visual Arts activities related to Black Excellence Day in which we explored how the “beat” of popular music finds its roots in tragic histories of enslaved peoples from Africa in the Americas. Our activity, Rhythm as Representation of People and Place, we explored a basic history of enslaved people brought to the Western Hemisphere against their will between 1650 and 1860 and then learned how West African cultural ideas, particularly music and dance, were retained and reimagined by these enslaved populations .
We compared the music of Beyoncé and Santana, breaking down some of their songs, to identify how the beats and percussion of these songs reflect the geographic and cultural regions where enslaved ancestors once lived . We even had a chance to then get over to the music room where we learned and played some basic West African rhythms and even tried our hand at the rhythm of Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” 🙂
We are nearly completed an art activity related to all of this in which we are painting used vinyl records (donated by Mr. Kelly) with images of musicians, symbols and concepts related to our learning to transform them to artworks, which communicate how these enslaved peoples and their ancestors have shaped the music created in the Americas. More images to come soon!
This Week:
Tuesday – Confession @ 9:30am
Thursday – Mass @ 9am
Friday – No School – Professional Development Day
Please note that PE strips must be worn now as PE is indoors again. Also, extra-curricular has started up again so please check Mr. Kelly’s PE blog.
Have a wonderful week!
-Mr. Kirkham