September in the Kindergarten Classroom

Hello Families,

How many kids fit in a teepee. Apparently, seven though I’m sure they would’ve made room for Sage if he hadn’t been absent.

Welcome to our blog. We hope to write here every month to two months so you get a clearer picture of how we are spending our time together. So far, so good!. What a lovely group of children — already they have bonded and are enjoying playing together in all different configurations, including all eight of them at once. Personalities are well-suited to each other and we’ve seen growth already in terms of sharing, collaborating, communicating, filtering, regulating, and noticing how others are feeling. It’s been only three weeks but already we are feeling like a family. Thank you for trusting us with your children and for valuing the same things we do in education. It is our little haven from a world that is in turmoil; each year we are fueled by getting to spend time with such vibrant, innocent, joyful, loved little humans. It fills us with hope and inspiration.

Our first couple of weeks have been about laying the groundwork for a class that runs smoothly. We like to be clear with our expectations and intentional with our procedures. Everyone has learned how to enter and exit the classroom space. They know to line up their shoes when they take them off, to wash hands before eating, to put all things away before moving on, to take clothing back to cubbies, to push chairs in after meals and so on. We like things to be organized and precise. Once everyone knows how the engine runs, then we can be flexible and present with each kid. When it’s chaotic, the kids feel it, and they don’t feel safe and held. That’s our theory anyway. It seems to work well.

Our curriculum has been unfolding slowly. We’ve shared stories and played class games, sang songs, and practiced working with different partners as we’ve gradually introduced all the class materials. The kids have practiced correctly using scissors, writing implements, and glue sticks.

Talisin and Ezra made some pretty complicated patterns with their snapblocks.

Math

In math, we began with a unit on patterns. We talked about shape and color patterns on clothing and around the classroom, we’ve made sound patterns (music!) and patterns with our bodies (sit, stand, sit, stand). The children have built patterns with snapblocks, from the simple (ABABAB) to the more complicated, depending on individual abilities, like ABCABC or AABCCAABCC and so on. They even made patterns with fruit skewered on kebabs

edible patterns. yum.

We’ve introduced the numbers 1 and 2 and the kids illustrated a page in their work books that reflects something special about each number. For 1, it was one Earth, one moon, one sun and one me. For two, they traced their hands and thought about something they do with their two hands.

language arts

We took our first tiny dive into our phonics program. We will be practicing phonemic awareness through rhyme, verse and song, daily, and we will go through the letter names and letter sounds slowly and deliberately. So far, we’ve explored the hard sound of “c” and the short vowel sound “a”. Everything is taught in lowercase as preschool seems to focus on the capitals, possibly because they are easier to replicate. But, lowercase letters represent most of what we see on the written page so it’s crucial for learning to read. To this end, we’ve also presented the kids with the chance to practice writing their names correctly, the "school way," ensuring the first letter is uppercase and the rest are written in lowercase. To make this fun, each child crafted their name using pinto beans, carefully arranging the beans to form each letter. These are displayed in the classroom as a handy reference as well as a lovely decoration. Later, they traced their names, as well as colored their names, before attempting to write it in this new way themselves.

It would be helpful if you can also write the children’s names this way as they get used to it. It’s a hard transition for some and it can meet with resistance. As with everything, we encourage, never force. People need to come to things on their own and without stress.

We’ve been taking a close look at the nature around us and at the changing season from late summer to fall. Apples have been a big focus, as well as trees and leaves. They reviewed the life cycle of an apple tree, cut apples in half to see the apple pips inside and made apple star prints, and did an apple taste test, then recorded results on a simple graph. Red Delicious was the clear favorite.

Kathleen wet felted apples with the children and they also had their first experience needle felting. The children got to watch her perform the puppet show, “The Apple Tree Elves” and another, “Little Boy Knight”. They’ve also had the chance to set up their own story worlds with puppets, really foundational play that helps them develop their ability to craft oral stories, to work on beginnings, middles, and ends, to incorporate dialogue, and realize the visions they imagine. This will serve them well as they get older and start to write stories. Before you can write a story, you have to be able to explore — to listen to lots of stories, including improvised oral stories, watch plays, puppet shows, movies, and also to perform your own stories, learning to bring your ideas to life.

Kathleen holds the kids attention with her magic

Wet felting apples

Needle felting in the rug room

In science class, they learned a little about worm anatomy before getting an up close and personal look at the red wrigglers in our compost bin. They worked together to separate worm castings from worms and then we fed the worms and gave them new bedding material.

Another day, they predicted which items would sink or float and then tested their predictions. Then the class discussed and speculated about the results. They also painted coffee filters and made parachutes with a lesson about gravity.

The kinders have enjoyed watching the older kids play Ga Ga Ga ball so they got to learn how to play themselves during PE. This also meant they could practice winning and losing games, persevering, and not freaking out when they were out.

Here are some cute photos of their trip to the pool. The water was very cold and the day wasn’t that hot so it was a brief visit.

Pottery class

You’ve probably heard your child mention getting to be the sandman or sandwoman. This is at rest time and refers to the person who gets to hand out some snacks before story time. Our sandman gives food instead of sleep. This is a quiet half an hour when children can whisper, munch snacks and listen to the teacher read a story. It’s a long day in kindergarten and these busy but young children really need this last period of rest and free play. It’s probably the part of the day the newly graduated kinders (the first graders) miss the most about their time with us. Who doesn’t need some down time around 2 or 3 o’clock!

Aliya wearing her cloak of sand and bringing treats to the rest of the kids.

Wet on wet watercolor painting began with an exploration of the color red. We’ll go through the primary colors and then start mixing color for the secondaries. The painting process is quite controlled so they learn to wash their brushes in between color changes and can practice gentle brush strokes, before moving on to multiple colors. They seemed to enjoy working with the abstract and watching the color move across the wet page with a life of its own.

Ok, time to wrap this up. Before we end, we wanted to mention that we’ve talked a lot together already about our main goal for kindergarten — to make a friend of everyone in the class and to practice kindness. To this end, we’ve been mixing the kids up, even at lunch and snack, to encourage them getting to know everyone in the class and not just stick to their favorite or most comfortable person. We’ve done some role plays about how to speak to each other nicely even when you are frustrated, how to make amends, how to give each other space, and of course, that everyone makes mistakes sometimes.

It’s been a great start to the year and we are thoroughly enjoying your children. We look forward to telling you more about our program and how things are going at the back to school afternoon event on October 15. Thanks for reading!

XX

Rosy and Tara