No, not Teacher Peter.  🙂  Today’s parent teacher was Liz, Isa’s mom, and she brought in her family copy of Peter and the Wolf.  This book has been in Liz’s family for 40 years!  As one of Isa’s favorite books from home, it was an obvious choice to share at snack time.  The children were riveted as Liz read the tale of young Peter and his quest through the forest to hunt down a wolf with the help of some animal friends.  After reading the story, we talked about the musical version of the story, in which each animal’s “voice” is played by a different instrument.  I expected the children to be interested in the idea, but not for very long.  Clearly, I underestimated them!  As they finished their snacks and listened to the entirely instrumental story, no one wanted to get up from the table, even after their food was finished!  They loved listening for the different sounds and guessing which animal each instrument represented.  The flute and the oboe were far and away the most popular.  Having seen the illustrations certainly helped, but they were clearly imagining the bits of the story as they listened tot he music.  Many of the children used their hands to represent the types of movement that they felt corresponded to the music.  It was incredible!

We also enjoyed listening to Peter and the Wolf as we used feathers to paint our letter F stencils today.  Some of the children loved the soft, light application of watercolors with the feathers, while others were frustrated and wanted a more concentrated application.  For those friends, we recommended using their fingers!  Using either tool, we got some very interesting additions to our stencil alphabet.