Kinder Class

It has been a very busy month in Kindergarten dominated by circus rehearsals and performances. This group of children is a resilient, grounded, happy bunch and it certainly made a difference. They seamlessly moved from the classroom to half day rehearsals to being schlepped across town with all of their routines totally disrupted and they kept their cool through it all. Impressive. And the show was fantastic! I'm sure you all have a plethora of your own photos but here are a few more that I took during rehearsals.

In other news, we spent a good deal of time exploring rocks in science. With the rocks they brought from home, and my collection, we set up a museum in class. They made signs and we identified the different types of rocks based on how they were formed. They made up individual "rock reports" and examined the shape, size and texture of their own rocks and documented this information. This activity involved some measuring with rulers and a discussion of centimeters versus inches. Sometimes we get into upper grade work in kindergarten depending on where their interests lie (and my interests too, of course).

They drew rock cycle posters showing how rocks are endlessly being recycled, being cooked inside the Earth, coming up through cracks and forming mountains, eroding or being shot out in volcanoes, settling in streams and eventually slipping back into the magma at the Earth's core. 

The kids were fascinated with the concept that metal is rock, that sand is rock, asphalt, bricks and so on. I read a number of stories centering on rock collecting. And then, the grande finale was creating volcanoes in the sandbox using baking soda, vinegar, colored paint and dish soap. They also watercolored beautiful wet on wet volcano paintings which are hanging in the classroom. All of their watercolors will come home at the end of the year in a giant folder the kids made on one of the first days of kindergarten.

Click on these photos below to scroll. There are several.

Language Arts

From Kathleen: "The children have been working on a poem book, from a verse that we have sung and recited, with movement, since the beginning of the school year. This poem now lives in their hearts, minds, and bodies. It is a picture of a little seed, growing, changing and awakening, much like the children themselves.This assignment has provided an opportunity to observe each child's abilities and progress, as they explore a familiar subject, bringing it through their eye and hand coordination, while learning to construct and organize their skills at writing, reading, and understanding.

Each week I would write a new line on the board, and they would copy it to the best of their abilities. Some were struggling and asked for help, so I lightly wrote the line for them to trace. Once they felt at ease with the format, most went on to finish on their own. They colored beautiful images of the poem on the book covers, and also bound their books with yarn. 

Please have your child read their books to you, so as to deepen their learning even more. This was an insightful exploration for me."

Kathleen also felted dolls to share a New Year's puppet show with the children, called "Straw Hats for Jizos". It's a Japanese tale about a destitute old man and his wife on New Year's Eve. The old man performs a kind deed that is repaid ten-fold by the sacred Jizo statues who come to life.

We celebrated the Chinese New Year in multiple ways including a boisterous and festive parade through all the classrooms to scare away the spirits and bring good luck for the year. Some kids walked under the silk dragons with others alongside them banging percussion instruments. The kinders made almond cakes for every child in the school -- quite a baking feat. They made paper lanterns and worked on Chinese calligraphy -- an activity that totally captivated them and which they revisted for many days afterwards. And they painted beautiful cherry blossom trees, blowing the paint with straws for the tree trunks. 

It's been quite a celebratory month all in all. Along with Chinese New Year, Shana came in and provided some background (with help from Bear and Fox) about Passover. They talked about the seder, hid the afikomen (matzoh) and brought matzohs to share. As conversations in kinder so often do, it became quite deep and we ended up talking about slavery...

Shana also shared some of her sign language expertise. The kids were pretty into this. Some words really stuck like "toilet" and "pasta". I'll bet they can sign these for you if you ask them! Anyway, here is Shana teaching the kids to "sing" Row, Row, Row Your Boat in sign language. This is my first attempt at posting a video. Hopefully it works. Thank you, Shana, for being guest teacher twice this month! 

And here are the kids in various states of repose while Shana led them through a guided mediation.

They also celebrated St. Patrick's Day with Kathleen, tapping lightly into Leprechaun lore by reading a few Irish tales at rest, crafting four leaf clovers out of paper, and constructing Leprechaun dwellings outside.

For Easter, the children planted wheat berry seeds in clear trays so they could water and watch the grass grow. They are now in individual baskets with the grasses growing tall. They wet felted wool eggs to put in their baskets and will be preparing natural dyes (from onion skins, turmeric, hibiscus leaves, red cabbage and beets) to dye hard-boiled eggs, also for their baskets. Pictures of this will follow in the next blog. As a tribute to spring, they also crafted beautiful paper flowers to decorate our tree wall, and they'll be baking hot cross buns tomorrow.

I started a new chapter book, one of my all-time favorites: The Night Fairy by Laura Amy Schlitz. It's such a beautifully written adventure story about a fairy who must use her wits to survive when her wings are bitten off mistakenly by a bat. In the process of learning to care of herself, she learns to care for others.

As for letters, we reviewed the letters C and K.

In math, we explored the last of the "golden numbers": The number 9. We looked at this number in tally marks, written with letters, as well as the Arabic number and the Roman numeral. We also talked about the concept that any number in the world can be written with the golden numbers (1 through 9) and 0. Quite a fascinating concept, actually. The children had fun throwing big numbers at me to write on the chalk board and then seeing how they all comprised of these numbers.

We continue to practice counting by twos, fives and tens. Here are pictures of a counting activity we did with lemons.

After Spring Break, we'll be moving into some conceptual math and look at geometry, adding and subtracting and more.

And finally, here are some pictures of the kinders enjoying a romp around campus with the pygmy goat, Ziggy, who came to visit. He found a forever home at a family farm that does animal education outreach.

Happy Spring break to everyone!  Love Rosy and Kathleen.