Kindergarten

It was great to meet with all of you last week for Parent-Teacher conferences.  Your children have made so much progress this year and I enjoyed sharing examples of their work with you.  Thank you all for taking the time to come and meet.  As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to come talk with me.

The Kindergarten-First Grade Play will take place on Thursday, May 1 at 2:00 pm.  It is a dance/drama version of The Lorax by Dr. Seuss.  Everyone picked two different characters that they hoped they could be and it worked out that each student was able to get one of their choices.  A few parts have a lot of words, most parts have a few words, and some are non-speaking, but everyone is involved and every part is important.  On Wednesday we had our first reading of the play and the children were quite excited by it.  I think this will be a great experience for the children.

While you are marking your calendar for the play, please don’t forget our Kindergarten Poetry  Assembly on Friday, May  16 at 11:00.  This will be followed by a Class Potluck Lunch.  It, too, will be a very special day!

We’ve been doing some pretty great math this month, culminating in the Venn diagrams that I hope all of you saw during conferences.  The class has really enjoyed this unit and sorting was one of the most popular choices at rest time.  While we’re on the subject of math, tomorrow’s date, March 14 or 3-14, is alternatively known as Pi Day!  Mr. Perkins has put together a morning full of math activities designed for the youngest students to the oldest.  This is a new event for BCD and we are looking forward to participating in it tomorrow.

This week, all enjoyed a beloved tradition – Pajama Day!  Our day was filled with cozy fun, games with flashlights, activities with glow-in-the-dark stars, a “bedtime snack” of hot chocolate and popcorn, and some wonderful bedtime stories.  It was a fun day, to be sure!

I hope you all have a wonderful March break.  I look forward to hearing everyone’s stories when we return for school on Tuesday, April 1 (Monday March 31 is a professional development day for faculty).   As for myself, I’ll be heading to San Francisco to meet my twin granddaughters.  (I will have a lot of photos to share when I return, so beware!)

Enjoy the break – hope it’s filled with many fun and relaxing times!

Andrea

In Fitzpatrick Hall, until Friday, February 28th…

see art work from all the grades, Beginner Threes through Upper School.

Well, it has been snowy!  But in between the snowfalls, we’ve been having a great time in Kindergarten.  Valentine’s Day and the 100th Day of School had to be postponed until we were all together this week.  Each of these events is a special day in Kindergarten, and the class had a great time making special cards for their families, exchanging Valentines at school, and enjoying the many delicious treats that showed up.  Thank you to all parents who sent things in to make it such a delicious day!  And the 100th Day of School has its own fun traditions.  We do special math activities, thematic writing assignments, art projects, and play lots of fun counting games (another way to get some cool math into our day).  We also try to stay completely quiet for 100 seconds – definitely not easy with this giggly group!

Earlier in the month we celebrated Sadie’s sixth birthday.  Samantha, Jon, and little brothers Ollie and Benjy were all able to come.  Sam read a great story, and brought yummy cookies and balloons for all Sadie’s classmates.  It was a fun celebration.  Thank you, Suters family!

The chapter book I’ve been reading at rest time is Mr. Popper’s Penguins by Richard and Florence Atwater.   It is rapidly becoming a class favorite.  Speaking of penguins, the class was mesmerized when Sally Eagle came to our class and shared her amazing Antarctica photos of penguins, elephant seals, skua birds, and icebergs with us.  The children had many thoughtful questions for her.  We’re hoping she will return in the spring, this time with her photos of Africa.  I am very grateful to Sally for her generosity and willingness to share her expertise with every kindergarten class.

Sally with the gang!

We had a blast playing outside today!  Here are a few shots from this winter.  Enjoy!

Andrea

Winter fun!

 

While the bitterly cold weather has stopped us  from going outside very much over the last two weeks, we’ve had a lot of fun inside.  Here are a few highlights.

Our study of Antarctica continues.  We have begun to create a large mural in the classroom and every day, more and more things are added to it.  This week we’ll have a special visitor when Sally Eagle comes to the classroom.  Sally and her husband Dan Mead are both well-known photographers and several years a go, they had the opportunity to travel to Antarctica.  On Tuesday,  Sally will be coming to the classroom to share her photos with us.

Yesterday we made one of my favorite graphs.  I call it the S/S/S graph, and it combines math and language arts skills in one “tasty” lesson. The S’s stand for salty, sweet and sour, and each student, after tasting all three, got to choose one as their favorite.  As they munched on pretzels, red grapes and pickles, I asked them  to focus on what each one tasted like, felt like, and sounded like in their mouths.  They then came up with a list of descriptive words and phrases.  These words, as well as the graph of their choices, are posted on the wall. Come and see the results.  Yum!

Next Thursday we will have a much-loved LS tradition – Alaska Day.  And if the weather prediction holds, we may even have lots of fresh snow for it!  Alaska Day is an afternoon of indoor and outdoor activities with our PS and LS friends.  You will need to make sure your child has  snow pants, warm jacket, hat, waterproof mittens or gloves, winter boots, and extra socks.   I will also be sending a reminder home in everyone’s lunch boxes next week with additional information about the day.  It should be a lot of fun!

We had a wonderful Lunch Bunch earler in the week, thanks to Neal and his family.  We enjoyed eating homemade mac & cheese (so perfect on a cold day), cheese quesadillas, fresh berries with whipped cream, and brownies (what could be better?!)   Thank you to Krithi and also to Krithi’s sister who was visiting from India.  It was much appreciated by all!

Have a good weekend,

Andrea