Kinder Class
November has been a busy month. We’ve spent a good deal of time getting back in the routine of having a full class. We’ve re-established rules and procedures and rituals. The children are working hard to remember some basics like how to form a line and seem ready for class, how to take turns to talk by raising quiet hands and then showing whoever is speaking that you are respectfully listening (facing the speaker, making eye contact, not being distracting with your body etc.) and then perhaps the hardest of all, being patient during an activity so that if you are waiting for help but the one adult in the room is focused on another child, you can keep yourself quietly busy until she gets to you! These are all valuable lessons and they come more easily to some than to others. Luckily, being at Orchard gives you wiggle room, low student to teacher ratios, and endless kind and patient reminders. This keeps everyone invested in working towards a harmonious classroom environment and it also lets children be children. Okay, enough tooting my own horn — down to business:
Math:
We are still working our way through a close and careful look at the numbers from 1 to 9. We’ve practiced writing number 5, very tricky for many kinders, and I taught them to draw 5-pointed stars, not easy with all of the left to right movement and diagonal lines but they got it! Today they are making 6-pointed stars with popsicle sticks with Kathleen as part of a special Hannukah traditions lesson she is leading with Jessica, Arias’ mom. Tomorrow, I will reinforce by teaching them to draw 6-pointed stars in their Golden Number books.
I had them make all of the Golden Numbers out of clay recently. This really helped with their number writing skills, to actually shape the 3D numbers. At home, have your child continue to practice single digit numbers, in writing, but also in 3 Dimensions. They can use shaving cream, trace in the sand with a stick, make numbers in glitter, find twigs to craft the numbers and so on.
Language Arts:
We have reviewed the mechanics and phonics for the letters R,r and C,c. C is referred to in the Handwriting without Tears program as “Magic c” because it can transform into the letters a, d, g, o, q and s. I reviewed this concept with the children.
We have spent a lot of time bringing story worlds to life for the children this month. Kathleen has performed a number of puppet shows that correlate specifically to our curriculum. I have told them a story called “The Pancake Mill” several times and they have begun working on an envelope of “story starters", little pictures and other artifacts to help them retell the story to you at home. These should come home on Friday after we practice the story together by laying out the props in the correct sequence. This is homework! Let me know how they do. It is an amazing sequencing exercise, as well as a memory activity, and a task that should strengthen their own story-telling prowess. It takes a special kind of confidence to tell a story, not to mention a rich imagination, as it is always the storytellers prerogative to stretch and bend a story to suit a number of purposes (whether this is too spice up a story or even because the teller has forgotten how it goes).
Nature Studies and Hand Crafts:
Kathleen told the story of Mother Earth’s Blanket and began weaving projects with the children. With me, the children had their first sewing lesson and sewed popcorn and cranberries into a necklace. This was simply an exercise to get them used to using a needle and thread (also it reinforced the concept of patterns introduced at the beginning of the year). Later this month, they sewed fabric for the first time, and made little felt gnomes using a whipstitch. These are ready to be stuffed with wool and then come home. The benefits of such projects are deeply academic and include:
aiding visual tracking.
building eye/hand coordination.
strengthening the muscles used in pincer grip.
physical experience of spatial concepts of up, over, and under.
helps in using both the dominant and non-dominant hands at the same time.
Other crafty work included a visit from David (Ruby’s dad) who worked with the kids two at a time to help them drill holes in slices of tree rounds in preparation for a special holiday gift for families. He taught them some about friction and after initial drilling attempts with an old fashioned hand drill, he whipped out the battery powered modern drill so they could finish up with this.
Our preparations for the Thanksgiving Feast/Stone Soup celebration were extensive and meant the kids got ample cooking time as well as learning the traditional Stone Soup story, with it’s message about finding happiness through sharing food. They got to participate in an all school reader’s theatre reenactment. For the feast, kinders chopped a mountain of romaine lettuce (BEFORE the e coli scare!) that Rock harvested from the garden and made my yummy Caesar Salad, as well as deviled eggs. They also baked and braided this beautiful harvest bread with Kathleen. Many thanks to parent helpers Nicki and Estella!
Also, we took the next step in our lengthy preparation of acorns for baking. The kids ground the acorn meats in the mortar and pestles. I took the “acorn mush” home and have just finished leaching out the tannins by soaking it in multiple changes of water for 2 weeks. Then I strained it and dried it in the oven and before the holiday break, we’ll be using the flour to make acorn cake!
Lastly, here are a few photos from the Dinosaur’s Rock program that the whole school participated in this month, learning from a very animated speaker about fossils and dinosaurs. And some shots from our first field trip — taking the bus to the Aptos library was a real adventure.
