The last two weeks have been non-stop; busy and full of special activities! Last week, we went to Ioka Valley Farm with the PreSchool. While there, we walked through a corn maze, rode in a hay wagon pulled by a big tractor, picked pumpkins, had a picnic lunch, got to feed bunnies, ducks, chickens, and goats, and played on a wonderful playground. Pretty amazing when you consider we did all of that in two hours! The children had a great time. Thank you Jessica, Theresa, and Renee for being our chaperones.
The next day, Kindergarten participated in our first-ever Lower School Mountain Day, hiking in Kennedy Park with Grades 1-3. There were a few kindergarten children who were sure they couldn’t make it all the way, but Mrs. Romano put in plenty of rests along the way, pointing out different things for us to look at. At the top the children were divided into large groups and rotated through four different activities, ranging from nature scavenger hunts, making bookmarks, and sketching the landscape. We then had lunch together, and began our hike back. We took a different trail down, and I’m proud to report that even though this was a longer trail, there wasn’t a single complaint. All in all, we probably hiked over two miles – quite a lot, considering the length of those kindergarten legs! We had a great day.
This week, our focus was Halloween and all the spooky things that go along with it. On Tuesday, I read Where The Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. Afterwards, I asked the children to lie down and close their eyes, while I played “In the Hall of the Mountain King” by Edvard Grieg. While they listened to the music, each child imagined their own “Wild Thing”. They then got up and drew pictures of it and wrote about it too. These are hanging on our white board. Come and take a look!
We also found time to vote on what to carve our Jack O’Lanterns (a spider and a skull), and made lots of Halloween crafts. Our week concluded with our annual parade with Lower School, followed by a terrific class party. Thank you, Jenny and Cara, for organizing this event, and thank you to all parent/ grandparents/friends/cousins who either sent in food, decorations, or came in to help! We had a fabulous time!
In between all of this, we continued work in our math pattern books, creating voice patterns of witches, ghosts and pumpkins. We learned upper and lower case letters through L/l. We wrote another class book. We continue to learn to take better care of ourselves, each other, and our classroom. The class has really come together as one, and we’re having a wonderful year together.
