Kinder Class

Every month, I feel inclined to start the blog with how busy we have been! When I upload all the photos and look through my planner, it really hits me how many colorful and enriching things we do each month. As my own time (10 years!) as an Orchard parent comes to a close, I am feeling quite emotional about the Orchard experience and how lucky we are to have been able to give this to our children. No matter what comes later, Orchard is filling these kids with tactile, tangible, beautiful stuff that is becoming part of their very fiber. It is shaping them in integral important ways but even more than that, what happens here allows them to be who they are, and that alone is invaluable for any child.

This month, Kindergarten curriculum involved mostly project-based learning activities. Projects, like Snuffles, the hedgehog, and the Kinder cafe, spanned several weeks and encompassed many different learning objectives across the different disciplines. This is the best way to learn, in many cases, because after all, the fundamentals feel so much more FUNDAMENTAL if they are applied to real situations that spark interest and seem useful and connected to the everyday.

Snuffles, the Hedgehog: This unit began with a simple story called "Snuffles' House" by Daphne Faunce Brown wherein a hedgehog's square house burns down and he decides to explore various architectural designs until he finds the one that works for his lifestyle. After the story, the children made their own hedgehog prototypes using clay and toothpicks. They were heavily invested in their little creatures and really wanted to take the time to build them attractive and functional dwelling places. So, that was the hook.

Next came a deep exploration into 2 dimensional versus 3 dimensional shapes. This provided good review for a few who were a bit shaky on shape identification and then moved into a far more complicated look at how to turn a 2D sheet of paper into a 3D object that their hedgehogs could actually enter.

They started with cubes made from milk cartons. They all had a little foray into standard measurement using rulers (discussions were had on inches versus centimeters, how to start measuring from zero, how to make marks and measure along to create a straight line etc.) and then they painted the cubes. 

Next, I set up a shop and they each had a budget of 10 pennies with which to "buy" materials to decorate their cubes with. This involved practice with one to one correspondence, reading price tags and signs (learning the concepts that one penny can buy you one feather or 5 heart stickers). In the process all kinds of creativity came in to play with kids crafting windows and door knobs and flags for their simple cubes. There was also much discussion about copying friends versus getting ideas and inspiration from those around you. 

Lastly, they created pyramids, rectangular cubes, cylinders and cones out of paper templates and then put it all together in a little compound for their hedgehogs. This was the finished product that came home. Perhaps it has since found its way to your recycle/trash or maybe it is still delighting your kids and sparking their imaginations. I recently got a photo of a first grader playing with his Snuffles in the house he made last year!

Here is a gallery of photos with documentation of the activities listed above from start to finish.

The other big project was kinder cafe. Every year, the kindergarteners host a cafe for the first graders, and serve the class that hosted the year before. This project began with discussions about the restaurant business and what it takes to make it work. After assigning roles (everyone got to be what they wanted to be), menu suggestions were made and the group voted on the menu (this year: smoothies, mint tea, rice and beans, pasta with red sauce, and banana chocolate chip muffins). Every year, the experience is unique because the menu is different and the energy of the restaurant crew is different. This year, Emma suggested coloring pages to keep diners happy while they waited. Last year, someone suggested we do the lavender wash for guests so we now we do that every year. I love to give the kids a real measure of autonomy so the finished project is really theirs and not just them fulfilling my ideas. I think this is a real strength among teachers at Orchard. Kids are so much more invested in their learning when their ideas are included.

Over the next few days, the children created the menus, shopped for the ingredients, examined real dollar bills and then made money, cooked all of the food and beverages, did a dry run of the event and ironed out snags. In the process, they practiced math (using tally marks for waiter tickets and voting, learning to write the symbols for dollars and cents, paying for the groceries at New Leaf, cooking and measuring and so on) and language arts (writing the menus and the cafe sign etc.). They also did all of the dishes and practiced what it means to be a host and how to use good manners in the process. It was a great activity, tiring for sure. Thank you so much to Michelle, Jessie and Kat for helping us with the food preparations.

Here are some pictures of the big day. Next year, your children will be the guests. And the cycle continues.

We went on two field trips as well. Here are pictures from the fire station followed by the Eat A Rainbow trip to New Leaf. There have been A LOT of field trips this year and I'm not quite sure why I set it up with so many coming down the pike. Let me know if you feel like it's been too many or just right. It's been fun and enriching, I think, but I really do want to know if you, or your kids, have found it to be too much.

Pillows

The children finished sewing their beautiful pillows. Here they are at my house where I stitched up the last bit after they stuffed them with alpaca wool and lavender.

Science: Jodi (Lyla Lou's mom) brought in owl pellets from the resident barn owls that live in her palm trees. She baked them to disinfect them and then the children got to pick through them with tweezers and lay out their findings on an identification chart. They were totally into this project and not at all disgusted (like the fifth grade kids I've done this with in the past) to be picking through an owl's regurgitated lunch and the bones and fur of various moles, birds, shrews, mice and rats. Thank you, Jodi for making this possible. It was memorable. 

Special projects with Kathleen: As always, Kathleen has shared several beautiful puppet shows with the children, including "Little Brown Bulb" and the "Goddess of Spring, Estaria". The children started "This is Me" books with pictures and autobiographical writing. This will come home at the end of the year. They made the tile mosaic pictures and springtime garden pictures that are adorning the classroom. They went on a "journey of Orchard" gathering herbs and plants and learning their names. They planted morning glory seeds and washed sheep wool and prepared Mother's Day gifts.

I didn't put photos up last month, and perhaps didn't even mention the spectacular Easter Egg dyes we made, using cabbage, turmeric, beets, onion skins and hibiscus flowers. Anyway, here are a few photos.

This is the last blog of the year. We'll be doing plenty between now and the end of school, of course, but it won't be documented. Just briefly: we'll make gifts for the 5th/6th graduates, I'll interview kinders to gather memories for the yearbook. We'll be doing a unit in science on observational drawing and will look at trees, fish and then ourselves, scientifically observing as much detail as possible and paying attention to the differences between drawing what you see and what you imagine. We'll also study maps, perhaps make a school map and some homemade compasses. And we'll cover some of the letters we haven't yet reviewed including E, R, N, B and D.

Wow! What a great year we have had!