We’ve had a wonderful two weeks! Here are a few photos, showing the class in action:
Fun at the easel
Master puzzlers!
And some other highlights:
In math, we created out first bar graph, tasting red, yellow and green apples to see which was the class favorite (rather surprising to me, the tart green Granny Smiths won!) The children enjoyed tasting and voting, and then learning how to read a graph. The lesson was enhanced by the vocabulary words that the children added to describe how the different apples tasted, felt, smelled and sounded. The completed graph is hanging on the bulletin board – come and take a look!
And when we returned from our long weekend, we discovered that all four of our butterflies had hatched! As part of our observational study of their life cycle, the children used the butterflies themselves as live models, painting what they saw. We kept the butterflies overnight, feeding them a sugar syrup, and releasing them the next day. Have they made it to Mexico yet? Too bad they can’t send us a postcard!
We’ve been working hard at creating out classroom rooms. Our final rules arise out of many discussions about how to create a class where all of our hopes and dreams come true this year. The children came up with 18 excellent rules which slowly get crystallized into a three, broader rules that cover an individual’s behavior, our relationship to each other, and our relationship to our world. This year, the specific rules are:
1. Make good choices.
2. Be gentle with each other.
3. Take good care of our stuff.
The process of creating rules is a lengthy one, but truly gives the children a feeling of ownership in their kindergarten community, as well as their responsibilities to help maintain it. Next week I will write the rules on a poster, everyone will sign them, and they then get posted in the classroom.
Along with the entire school, we all had fun at at yesterday’s assembly, which brought three musicians from Albany to teach different folk dances. The class did well at following instructions and copying different dance steps, and it was great fun to be part of 200 dancers!
We enjoyed our first Lunch Bunch last week, sharing homemade Mac’n’Cheese (the Barefoot Contessa version, no less – yum!), chicken and apple sausages, and sliced apples and honey. Special thanks to the McDonnell and Boyd families for such a wonderful meal. The class really enjoyed it.
We ended this week with a birthday celebration for Elias! Elias was joined in the classroom by his mom, his dad, little brother Jasper, and sixth-grade sister Aidan. Elias had chosen a book from home for his parents to read, and we all had fun listening to Chipmunk in Hollow Tree Lane. The class then read a book of birthday wishes to Elias that they had written earlier in the week. After lunch, we all shared delicious chocolate cupcakes. A big thank you to Elias’ family for making his school birthday such a special one!
It was great to see so many of you at Back-to-School Night last Thursday, and to go over the program in a little more depth. As always, I’m available to answer your questions and concerns, so please don’t hesitate to ask.
Andrea