Time Travelers

 In a previous post I shared photos of the children playing in our "old fashioned" pretend area. It was created to look like the home in Ox Cart Man - the book that set the stage for our look at family life in mid 1800's Vermont.  In addition to pretending, the children tried their hands at weaving, sewing, and designing quilt squares.  The inspiration for the Quilt Square Challenge was a book called Sam Johnson and the Blue Ribbon Quilt. It's a fun story about a rivalry between the men's and women's quilting clubs in a small town.  When the quilts fall partially in the mud on the way to the competition, the groups are forced to redesign a joint entry using parts from both quilts! 

Below you can see samples of our weaving, sewing in action, and our class [paper] quilt.  Below THAT, you can see us back to the learning materials of today- having our first session with chromebooks and checking our Dreambox, a math application.

Making Learning Visible

 I know it's been a bit since my last post and I'm afraid I'm skipping over some things that I've been meaning to share, but as looked through a recent batch of photos I saw a theme emerge.  Both in Math and in our Social Studies Unit of "Long Ago and Today" there are many ways that we've been learning to make our thinking visible- have a look.

Gail Gibbon's book, From Path to Highway: The Story of the Boston Post Road inspired us to apply our understanding of 2D shapes to make a mural.  In this scene the children are attempting to show how a foot path that was created by Indigenous people became the "Mass Pike" we know today.  Below you can see the the landscape that starts in the 1600's on the left and moves towards current times on the right.  First without shapes...

And now after...

This mural was a timeline of sorts and the children each made their own personal timelines that show important milestones in their lives.  Here are a few-

In the next series of pictures you can see how we used clay and some great guidance from Miss Smith to both feel the difference between a sphere and a circle and draw the differences between squares and cubes or triangles and pyramids.

Lastly I wanted to share a photo form Art Class (it happens right in our room with Ms. Susie).  The children are really enjoying new materials and visual challenges

What Does Kindergarten "Work" Look Like?

 As I looked through my photos from the week I was struck by the different modes of learning that the children are engaged with.  While we're always "working harder to get smarter", we know that everyone learns best in different ways AND that being challenged builds stamina.  Miss Smith has been leading the charge of explaining the importance of a Growth Mindset with the children.  Here is a look at their "Yes You Can" flowers- "blooming" with strategies for how to persevere in the face of a challenge.

In Math our learning is often very hands on.  Here you can see an addition based dice game that "adds up" to a decorated Haunted House and using 10 frame puzzles to show different ways to make 10.

In Literacy our work often involves communicating ideas with words and pictures as we become a classroom of readers and writers.  Here you can see the word books and the poetry journals we are building.

Even through exploration of materials, children are working on patterns and geometry.

Of course stories can come to life when play is encouraged and authentic materials are available. Exploring props from The Ox Cart Man helps learn language and history.

A Little Bit of This and A Little Bit of That

It can be hard to get detailed information about the school day out of a Kindergartener! In this post I'll try to show many types of learning that the children experience each day.  

Our week began with the children taking a good look at the new display of October self portraits that we created after listening to Let's Talk About Race by Julius Lester. We followed the book with an exercise of "mixing" our own unique skin tones with different colors of paint.  This book and activity was the first in a year long project that all Orchard classrooms are engaged with called Reading to Raise Anti-Racists.  You may have read about it in The Core.

We began a new Math Routine this week called "Math Menu".  This means that after learning a new concept and a game to reinforce it, the children work independently and at their own pace to both play the game and complete a set of activities that promote Kindergarten math skills.

Check it out...

That picture has us looking very studious but rest assured there is plenty of time in our afternoons for both indoor and, when the weather cooperates, outdoor play!  Whether we are building or playing "What Time Is It Mr. Fox?" (you can see both below), we are learning to be part of a group and treat others with kindness.

Into The Woods

As promised I will share some pictures from Thursday's trek into the woods BEHIND the Magical Woods.  You see, at Orchard, we are fortunate enough to have a cleared wooded area attached to our playground that provides a natural landscape at recess, AND we have additional land behind to use for teaching and learning activities. 

 Take a look at us making the trek to the deeper woods with baskets filled with clipboards and our tool boxes (aka pencil cases). Once we arrived in the stump circle we did some quiet noticing of the sites and sounds. We then took the opportunity to illustrate the verses of a song we've been learning about a tree throughout the four seasons.  Finally, it was time for some exploration and just plain play! 

Making Connections

 Now that we are together as one class, the Blue and Gray Packs are learning all about the personalities that match the names they've been seeing and hearing about from the adults. It's wonderful to watch the children put the social skills they have practiced to use as they greet new friends at Morning Meeting and find multiple ways that they are both the same and different from one another.  

As part of our school wide project- Reading to Raise Anti-Racists, we listened and watched Common, the rapper, do a a fabulous read of Let's Talk About Race by Julius Lester

Common Reads Let's Talk about Race

 The book was a perfect lead into a new approach to our October self portraits.  You can have a look at us mixing paint to match our own unique skin tones.

A new Math game called "Blastoff" was a great way to work with a partner on the shared goal of filling hexagons with many different combinations of triangles, trapezoids and rhombuses.

Even some of our well established routines like Number Corner are more fun with more kids!  Have a look at us working on writing the missing number.  Can you tell it was 11?

And of course some activities are still solo, like Monday's Literacy Lesson about being Brave Spellers.  Brave Spellers know that even if they don't know the exact dictionary spelling of a word they can still show and tell what they want to say with pictures and "best guess" spelling.

Diving Deeper Into Literacy and Math

 As I looked over pictures from the week I noticed how focused the children were and how even a snapshot can show concentrated attention. Whether we were spilling our two-colored beans to show ways to make five, learning to write sentences with the snap words "I" "am" and "a", or entering a poem into our poetry journals, the children were giving their best!  I've also included pictures of us setting up to read The Seasons of Arnold's Apple Tree outside, under an apple tree. Lucky to be at Orchard School!

Visual Phonics- Every letter makes a sound AND has a hand signal!

A few years back, my K colleagues and I were trained in Visual Phonics.  It's a VISUAL system for isolating and learning letter SOUNDS.  I have found that it's a helpful tool for children on their journey to becoming readers and writers.  Below you can take a look at me saying and SHOWING the alphabet.  Kids can try it along with me!

Feeling Fall

 It's officially fall and  much of our learning this week was tied to the changing of the seasons.  On Monday and Thursday the packs went on a scavenger hunt looking for signs of fall.  Both groups were lucky enough to see and hear geese flying south! 

 On Tuesday and Friday the packs had their first Farm to School lesson during which they pressed and tasted apple cider!  

We thought about saying "goodbye" to some favorite summer time activities and "hello" to new fall ones. To help us remember the beautiful sunflowers that are drying, we did some careful observations and made some collaged sunflowers of our own. 

In addition to all this, we continued learning about the attributes of shapes AND Mr. T came to read on Thursday afternoon. 

Have a look...