Category Archives: Specialist Classes

4th & 5th Grade Chorus Concert

By Meridian 4th & 5th Graders

We had a lot of emotions about the chorus performance! We felt nervous, scared, dizzy, excited, relieved, and more during and after the performance. It was a lot of work! Even though we got nervous (which is totally normal!), we still had a lot of fun. We performed two other times before the concert, but it still felt like the final time was the most pressure. We made mistakes each time, so having 3 performances made us more confident as time went on. Some of us hadn’t performed in a concert before so it was new and a little scary. It’s important to improve as a group because working together is a skill that will help us when we move on to middle school.

Ms. Kister really wants us to do well and succeed. She has high expectations and a lot of structure because she knows we can handle it, and we know we can too! It’s a good kind of pressure to make us want to work harder. Ms. Kister is really nice and cares a lot about us. She’s a little bit of a perfectionist, in the best possible way. It motivates us, and it makes a big difference in how much we want to succeed and achieve ourselves.

The music was a little bit different than what we were used to listening to. Some of us were not sure if we would like chorus at the beginning, but at the end we felt really good about it. It felt great to work hard and notice everyone else trying and improving. Now we feel like we can perform more complex music, so hopefully in the future we can reac
h more challenging points!

Learning Through Art

Creative juices are flowing in Meridian’s new Art classroom! Guided by our wonderful Art Specialist, Ms. Marika, students are engaged in a variety of projects, exploring different mediums and making connections between Art, Science, Spanish, Global Studies and more. See a list of current projects below, and learn why our 1st graders think the Art room is such a special and important place at Meridian.

Kindergarteners just finished designing matchbook houses, modeled off of their own homes. These projects will be used to create a large display, integrating Kindergarten’s Family Studies Unit, Global Studies, and Art.

First graders have been working on chameleons this week. Their project incorporates an important 1st Grade visual art standard, as they are using primary colors to create secondary colors. They first read the book A Color of His Own by Leo Lionni, and drew chameleons together. Next, students painted 3 sections of their chameleons with their 3 primary colors. The following class they used their own plate for mixing primary colors to create different shades of green, purple and orange. Simultaneously, 1st graders have been learning primary and secondary colors in Spanish class.

Second graders are working on oil pastel and watercolor hearts based on the artist Jim Dine, and third graders are constructing islands using plastercraft! This interdisciplinary project is being led by our Art Specialist & Science Program
Coordinator. Students are studying Oceania as a part of their Global Studies curriculum, and are learning
about the resources needed to sustain life on an island.

Fourth graders just completed a contour line hand
project, and fifth graders are finishing a Gustav Klimt inspired tree project. Next, they will create papier mâché pie and cake slices, based on the artist Claus Oldenburg and his oversized sculptures of everyday objects.

By Meridian 1st Graders

The art room is a really fun place! It’s different this year because we have Ms. Marika, and our Art classroom is right next door instead of in a different building. Last year Art felt different than other specialists because it was in the other building. Now it feels more like home.

When we get to the Art room we sit on the rug, and the first thing we do is read a book about the activity we are doing that day. This week we made chameleons and dinosaurs using all different colors! In Art we get to use pencils, pens, sharpies, water paints, oil pastels, and more. We are looking forward to making planets out of paper mache.

Our favorite thing about Ms. Marika is the things she helps us create. Art makes us feel happy, and when we walk into the art room we are excited! Art is important because you don’t know if you’re an artist if you don’t try, and it would be sad if you never learned that.

Our favorite part about art is painting because it is so fun…we’re not quite sure why! Actually, our favorite part is all of it, because the Art Room is a great place to learn!