November/December in the Kindergarten Classroom
Hello Everyone,
I hope this winter holiday is treating you well. I must get this blog to you as the longer I wait, the more insurmountable it feels to condense two whole months into some words and photos. But, here goes:
The class is very much settling into a comfortable zone, with some of the initial friction dissipating and the kids enjoying each other more and more, playing happily more often than not. Often, we’ve been letting recess stretch on because they are so engaged in playing together, all 7 of them, that it feels wrong to stop them and bring them in for a teacher-led activity. It’s a good thing we all recognize the value of play and thus do not feel the need to stop a good game.
maker’s table:
Once a month, I plan to set out a variety of materials for the children to explore freely and try their hands at inventing. They absolutely loved the first opportunity with this activity and were very inspired. If you have any really cool supplies (springs, colored masking and/or duct tape, interesting cardboard cutouts etc.) please bring in to share. We set up a maker’s museum. Unfortunately, some of my photos got lost, including Nica’s “finger balancer for a scientist.” Here are the rest:
Sewing:
The children had their first sewing lesson — needle safety, keeping organized and focused, in and out with the needle — and sewed cranberry/popcorn necklaces, in a pattern of course.
Sewing lesson two was sewing the little drawstring pouches that came home. They painted cloths and I put them in a sewing hoop with Xs and Os as a guide for their needle work. They did well! Next they will learn a new stitch and sew gnomes. Then we will start work on pillows that they can use at rest time. Sewing, along with all of the fiber arts we work with (weaving, felting, finger and fork knitting), is important at this stage in development as it exercises fine motor muscles and requires mental and physical organization similar to some of the required skills necessary for reading and writing.
Science:
The kids dissected barn owl pellets after watching a short educational video about these owls. I get the pellets from a woman who has a live cam on in her owl box in Corralitos. Let me know if you’d like the link to watch the activity in an owl box. We have two boxes on campus but sadly no owls have moved in. The pellets are smelly but the kids were quite fasciated with picking out all the little bones and trying to figure out which creature they once belonged to using the bone key.
We went on our first field trip to the natural history museum. Here the children learned about animal adaptations and habitats, and climbed on the whale of course.
Liam’s birthday circle. Every child will have one but with several summer birthdays (mine included), we may do a group circle at the end of the year. This would be for Nica, Fiona, and Avalyn. Lily’s is next in May.
Celebrations:
November and December saw several celebrations including Liam’s birthday, the Stone Soup preparations and re-enactment, the all-school Thanksgiving feast, gingerbread decorating with buddies, and the winter performance. Each child has a first grade buddy, some have two. They wrote cards to each other and will have several opportunities throughout the year to connect in class. We will go with the firsts on our next field trip (in January) to the Seymour Center. They will mail pen pal letters to their buddies through our school post office. It’s a sweet tradition. They’ll also be reading buddies at some point later in the year.
Sorting nuts and chocolates for the thanksgiving feast.
Language arts:
We continue with phonics and have added the sounds “d”, “g”, and “s”. We are going slowly. The children have been practicing reading the words that can be made with the sounds introduced. These are cat, sat, at, gas, dad, sad, tag. When a word is discussed that is not phonetic, we use the names of letters instead of the sounds. If anyone is interested in volunteering in class, I would love the children to have individualized help with their phonics packets so let me know your availability.
Kathleen has performed the puppet shows Mother Earth’s Blanket, The Little Red Hen, Star Money and also Little Boy Knight. The kids drew pictures inspired by these stories and created their own puppet shows, taking turns presenting to each other. Storytelling is a vital skill to make effective readers and writers. Visualizing a story and bringing it to life, making sure to have a beginning, middle and end, dialogue, interesting characters — this is all fundamental language arts work.
Math:
We continued working with patterns but also explored sorting and categorizing using the acorns. Each child took a basket of acorns and decided how to organize them into groups. Then we put the similar groups together, made labels, and made an acorn musuem.
We later took the plump fuzzy acorns, cracked them open, ground them with a mortar and pestle and sent them home with Elliana for two weeks of leaching out the tannins by changing the water twice a day. All this in the context of the Native Americans who lived in our area and leached acorns in baskets suspended in rivers before cooking the mush into pancakes. With our modern day mush, I baked it to dry it out and then the kids used my hand crank grinder to turn it into a fine flour that we baked into acorn cake with the tasty addition of baking agents, honey, oil and a little white flour. Here is a photo diary of this project from start to finish:
The kids learned two more of the golden numbers, 4 and 5. For 4 they drew pictures of a tree through the four seasons and for 5, I taught them how to draw a five-pointed star.
Other Handwork Projects:
The kids worked so hard on the gifts they brought home to you. They sanded and worked with beeswax for the candle center pieces and painted napkins and felted napkin rings as well. See pictures below. They also continued with a variety of weaving and felting work.
Music (From Cambria):
I've been enjoying making music with this wonderful group of creative and inspiring kinders. We are immersed in the pure joy of singing together! I'm introducing them to the major diatonic C scale through Do-Re-Mi, helping them find the vibration each note makes in their body, and playing with simple rhythmic patterns using parts of the body and percussion instruments. They love taking turns being "student conductors" as they are learning the range of sounds their voices can make. What a gift it is to play and sing with them each week! I hope they learn to love their own voices and continue to build confidence in expressing themselves through song, rhythm and movement.
Art (from Valerie):
Hello Kinder families! The kindergarteners had a great couple of months in the art room familiarizing with the materials and space as we enjoyed introductions to some elements of art: line, color and shapes. They have experimented with oil pastels, watercolor and tempera paints, markers, colored pencils as well as with scissors, glue and beading.
It usually takes a few classes to get comfortable getting to know the daily/weekly schedule as well as hiking up to the big gym. It’s been really sweet getting to know the little ones and to organically learn their individual expression with art. They have taken some art home but rest assure more art has been made and safely kept in their own folder in class. Lots of free drawing masterpieces and coloring sheets galore. Those will go home at the end of the school year. It’s nice to see their progression and their consistency.
gardening and Cooking (From Jane)
In the garden they harvested the tomatoes, cucumbers, and herbs weekly for use in the lunch hut (and a lot of snacking took place). They pulled spent plants and added compost, planted lettuces, garlic and other bulbs.
In cooking class we have made latkes, practiced using safe cutting techniques to make veggie soup, and some garden themed decorated focaccia. Even when they thought they wouldn't like something, they have done a great job of trying new things and enjoying the cooking process.
Pottery (From Linda)
Working with clay has been a great avenue for the kindergarteners to create and communicate ideas with each other. From the pinch pot to the coil and slab, the process is going well. The sharing and growth continues and I am excited to see what they come up with next. Thank you!
A visit with King Louie the snake who lives in the Tile Room.
We took our first hike to the redwood grove. Many more to come. They loved it up there. It’s quite a trek.
Okay, I think that’s enough for you all to get a nice taste of what our days together look like! I look forward to seeing you all the week after next. If you made it this far, well done!
Thank you for all of your kind holiday gifts! We felt honored and showered with your love.
Rosy