Kinder Class

I’d like to start by thanking all of you for being patient with me during this past month, with all of my absences and the chops and changes this has brought. Your kids have helped me through what has been one of the hardest times in my life. They are sweet and caring and so EASY!!! The fact that you all seem content and satisfied with kindergarten has allowed me to guiltlessly put Orchard on the back burner. There have been some health improvements with my mom and I am again feeling like I can focus more fully on life at school. Thank you. And thank you to Kathleen especially for holding down the fort, but also to Rock, Valerie and Kenza for stepping in when it was necessary.

Gratitude has been one of our themes this month. The children worked with Kathleen to write thank you cards for Brenda, Mickey’s grandma, who handmade all of the kindergarten water cups and also to Kerry and Erik who planted the butterfly garden and have kept it well stocked with monarch caterpillars so that we might watch metamorphosis in action. The rain has perhaps interfered here but keep an eye out – a chrysalis may be hanging somewhere. Here they got writing practice. They also worked in their Autumn books for more writing practice.

The children also participated in the schoolwide Stone Soup reenactment and Thanksgiving meal, both of which revolve around giving thanks. The kinders expertly chopped celery and zucchini for the soup and then made over 90 corn muffins for the feast. 

Crafts:

They completed their embroidered leaf pillows.

They brought the 5 Little Pumpkins Halloween verse to life with a multimedia collage, using twigs and clay.

They made pine cone turkeys

The first step was to partner up and dekernel a head of corn

They took on the super challenging task of making Indian corn necklaces, poking each soaked piece of corn with a needle in order to thread it onto the colored embroidery thread.

They wove paper – a very difficult task requiring mental organization, patience and advanced fine motor skills

Cooking:

They made bread and apple muffins on Kathleen days and acorn cake with me. About two pounds of acorns and all of that hard work, pounding and grinding and washing and drying, produced a scant cup of acorn flour and one delicious, nutritious acorn cake. This is a great multi-step project to do at home during the fall, especially if you tie it in to some history of our local Native Americans, the Ohlone Indians. Please see me if you’d like more information on the acorn processing steps and the recipe for the cake. 

Stories, Puppet Shows and Songs: 

Generally, Kathleen and I have put an emphasis here on more complex stories with many elements and intricate sequencing that requires ultimate attention to get the order and the details right in the retelling. The children have been bringing these stories to life during rest/play time with dramatic reenactments and recreations of puppet shows using classroom dolls and props. The development

of this ability to creatively retell stories and create imaginative story worlds is one of our goals for the kinder program.

The Naughty Hobgoblin (the puppet show Kathleen performed on Halloween)

Hetunka and the Bean Mouse (I mistakenly listed this in last month’s blog – Kathleen actually introduced this story about sharing and giving thanks this month)

The yarn, representing the spindle and the pricking of the finger. The bread to remind about the oven full of bread that speaks to the girl. A clay apple to symbolize the apple tree dripping with ripe apples. The feather to remind the kids about Mother Holle and the task of fluffing up her feather quilt and making it snow on the Earth, the golden wool to represent the gold that covers the golden daughter, the rooster who sings the song of return "Cock-a-doodle-doo, your golden daughter has come back to you", the ashy wool to remind about the ash or tar that falls on the lazy daughter and covers her from head to toe.

Mother Holle, a Grimm tale that looks at value of hard work and the attendant rewards, as well as the rewards of being good and virtuous versus evil and selfish.

Hopefully, the children were able to retell this story at home to you using the bag of story starters as jumping off points. This exercise worked on sequencing, story telling techniques, beginning, middle and end, confidence, memory and symbolism. 

Stone Soup. Many children knew this story already from preschool. We use a version that is set in China and has three travelers who are monks, rather than soldiers. 

I introduced a new circle song that has to do with gnomes and lanterns and the coming of winter. 

Gardening

The kids cleaned our garden bed up in the big garden and planted and labeled calendula, coriander, indian corn and holly hocks. We discussed seeds at length and why plants produce so many seeds. We also harvested seeds from dried up flowers. 

Here the children are gathering morning glory seeds.

The children also spent time rotating through letter stations where they worked on letter and sound identification using manipulatives and working individually and at their own pace.

We went on a very successful field trip to the Natural History Museum. The kids were as good as gold, attentive, remembered to raise their hands, and followed directions. The presentation was about native animals – and included education about habitats and adaptations.

 In Science we explored what sinks and what floats, graphed results and then made walnut boats.

Curriculum through the Christmas break:

We will move through numbers 4, 5, and 6 and in the process talk about squares, the compass rose with the 4 directions, 5-pointed stars and 6-pointed stars.

We’ll look closely at the letters T and F and work more on language centers in the classroom so that children can work at their pace – we have a big range when it comes to pre-reading skills.

They will be working a lot with wool – making Mother Earth’s winter blanket and some woolly acorn babies (seeds) that will keep warm under the earth and wait til spring.

We’ll make Christmas gifts for families and play dreidel for Hannukah – a great math exercise as the game requires addition, subtraction and counting. Also, we’ll continue with wet on wet watercolor painting and will sew handpainted fabric into sachets to work more with needlework.

Play rehearsals will be in full swing. There will be all-school rehearsals on Wednesday-Friday mornings (12/13-12/15). Please try to have your children to school on time for these mornings and don’t schedule dentist/doctor appointments during these times.

During Spanish class — playing with el paracaidas and learning number, color, and weather vocabulary. 

A kindergarten highlight: Rest time. Here’s what it looks like. One child is “the sandman’s assistant” and brings a snack to other children who are quietly chatting or reading books on their resting rugs before the teacher reads or tells a story.