Kindergarten

Seven – 7! – butterflies hatched today!!!

Late this afternoon, we set two on the table, and while they slowly opened and closed their wings, the children painted what they saw, completing their first-hand documentation of the monarch butterfly’s life cycle. Now, with each component realized, the children will each make their own poster.  These will be hanging in our classroom next week. Come and see!

Our classroom has been so busy. The children have developed their classroom rules, based on each child’s school hopes and dreams. These rules were developed over a period of many days. First they made a list of everything they felt would be necessary to ensure that everyone’s would come true. These included things like “No throwing stuff,” “No rough hands,” “Don’t push and don’t hit.”  We called them our “16 Good Rules.”  After a few days, I pointed out that there was a lot of “grumpy” language, as almost every rule started with the word NO or DON’T. We then rephrased all of them in the positive, and these became our “16 Better Rules.”  The final part of our process occurred when we categorized them  into three groups and came up with one big rule to cover several.  Everyone helped with the final language.  Our “3 Awesome Rules!” are:

1. Stay safe.
2. Be nice to all people.
3. Take good care of our stuff.

All this was hard work, and the children did a great job with it!

Our last weeks have seen us begin several year-long collections – Portfolio Art, Four-Square, Weekend News. If some of these sound mysterious to you, don’t worry, as you’ll get to see first hand what these are at our parent-teacher conferences coming up in November.

We had a great trip to Magic Wings last week. The day was sunny and the butterflies were very active.  The conservatory houses 3000-4000 butterflies.  In addition, we saw lizards, parrots, tortoises, walking sticks, and many other insects.  A big “Thank you” goes out to Diana Sadighi and Vanessa Dawson, who were our drivers and chaperones.  It was a wonderful first trip!

A great trip!

Our butterfly unit will end soon – we will release most of the butterflies on Friday so they can begin their trip to Mexico.  October will hold its own special themes. More in the next blog.

I’m having so much fun with this class!

Andrea

What a wonderful first week we’ve had together! Your lovely children are quickly making friends with one another and classroom routines are being established. This week included French, PE, Art, and Music, and the class has had a great time in all of them.

Our caterpillars are growing daily. Each child has begun a life cycle poster. Today we documented the caterpillar stage by putting the caterpillars on our table to crawl around, while each child drew what they saw. We’ll do the same direct observation with the chrysalis and butterfly stages once they occur. This is a unit that the children love. Ask them to tell you all the parts of an butterfly (3 body parts, 2 antennae, 4 wings, 6 legs)!

Book orders will be coming home in the blue folders this week. Participation is optional, but every time you do purchase books, we earn bonus points for the classroom, which then translates into books for the class. The first order will be due in two weeks, Sept. 25,. Information on ordering is in the blue folder, but if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.

A classroom request: whenever you finish a roll of paper towels and/or toilet paper, please send us those cardboard inserts. They spark a lot of imagination at the art table! I’m also always in need of plastic bags from the supermarket (these are not for projects, they get used to send things like book orders and wet clothes home.) Thanks!

A few highlights of this week:

Two children learned how to pump on the swings!

We visited Mrs. Kruse in the office and met our nurse (“Mrs. D”). We learned that although she has needles in her office, she will not be giving any of us shots – what a relief to several among us!

On Wednesday our 9^th grade peer mentors came to the classroom. These four delightful students (two of whom were kindergarteners with me!) will come weekly for one period to read books to us, do special projects, and have lunch. This program was begun last year and was a great way to connect our youngest students with our oldest ones.

We met our fifth grade “Bigs” and had fun sitting with them at our first assembly today! The “Bigs and Littles” program is another way that we create connections between younger and older students.

The “favorite book from home” was lots of fun. The Book With No Pictures by B. J. Novak and Hooray for Wodney Wat by Helen Lester were the class favorites – I had to read them two and three times!

For those that are celebrating Rosh Hashanah, I wish you L’Shana Tova, and I wish everyone a sweet and healthy new school year!

Andrea

PS  I will post some photos on the blog soon.  They are currently on my phone; will get them uploaded soon.