Shapes are Everywhere!

 It's the second post of the year and I'm hoping to give you a feel for the balance between self directed and teacher lead learning times that make up our day.  As the children build up interest and stamina for academics, I am busy learning about them!  

To help us recognize all the personalities, preferences, languages, and cultures that make up our classroom community, we read two wonderful books: Karen Katz' The Colors of Us and We Are All Alike, We Are All Different by Cheltenham Elementary Kindergarteners.  Our "paper selves" are now on display in the  hallway outside our room. 

With shapes as prominent focus in Math this month, we went on a shape search around the school.  So many signs and features of the building are made of shapes!

Back in the classroom we constructed shapes on geoboards with rubber bands.

Later in the week we took out "the math tubs" for some student initiated sorting and designing.

To end this post, I'll leave you with a look at our Peace Corner.  We've been building it together with tools for comfort and calming as we learn about The Zones of Regulation, positive self talk, and taking breaks to reset.

Welcome to a New Year

Hello and happy back to school! I maintain this blog mostly for parents because it's one way I can offer a glimpse into the goings-on of the classroom. Throughout the week we spent time getting to know names, routines, how we use certain materials, and how much fun it is to learn and play together. The children have been to all their Integrated Arts classes and already decided that they LOVE recess, but these pics will show a bit about what on in our room. I did my best to capture a variety of our activities.

Making apple name tags...

Structured use of materials like sequence and opposite cards as well as patterns with pattern blocks...

Snack time...

Open ended play in with playdough, sand, and in the pretend area...

Forming connections- literally with puzzle and building pieces, and also with classmates!

Moving with Miss Smith, our Health teacher...

Staying in touch with nature- inside the classroom and out.

I hope you check back weekly to see how our learning deepens- we're off to a great start.

Stepping out, Moving On, and Looking Back

 On Tuesday of the last week we took a walking field trip to Szymanski Park!  I don't think I stopped smiling the whole time.  It was a ton of fun to be out in the world with the Kindergarten crew and to meet up with so many family members.

Back at school on the last day we headed out to the track to send off the Fifth Graders.

The kids insisted I take "a silly one"!

Our final activity as a class was something I like to call "Unroll the Scroll".  We've been working towards it a little bit each day- literally.  A component of our End Meeting (or closing circle) each day is to choose one thig from the day that we want to record with a few words and a picture on our scrolling calendar.  On Friday, I took the spool of paper off and we let the year roll back before our eyes.  Actually, we started from the beginning and took a long walk forward and back down "Memory Lane".  I hope it's a memory that will stick with the children for years to come!  

Happy Summer!

Seriously Capable

 In the last few weeks of school even our pretend area had a pretty "serious" theme.  Transformed from a pretend Vet's Office to a pretend Science Lab, the children used tweezers, magnifying glasses, balance scales, tracing paper and more to delve into discovery.

Our final Social Studies unit on mapping had us thinking about "zooming in and zooming out".  We made pages in our Kindergarten Memory Books that showed a map of the classroom, a map of the school, and a map of the playground.

In this last picture, the children are looking at the playground and trying to capture it with the idea of a "bird's eye view".  Not an easy task!  Thank goodness we have become really comfortable with the idea that practice makes progress not perfect.

Another sign that the children have become incredibly capable was a writing activity we did in which each classmate wrote note home about major learning from the week.

Just out of the frame to the right is a white board with a list we  brainstormed of activities that the friends could choose to write and draw about in their letters.

Tangrams were a great way to wrap up the year in Math.  Sort of full circle with the Shape Unit in the fall.

And Fairy Houses have been constants throughout the whole year!

 

Ending Strong

 I set out to try to compose a final blog post and I realized that in the hectic haze of the last few weeks I actually hadn't posted since early May!  There is SO much to share that one post just won't do. Therefore, this will be the first of three posts to try to share about the fun and learning over the last few weeks.

One of the best parts of the end of the year was spending time with our fifth grade buddies.  Here you can see them playing math games with us under the trees out front and helping us with Frog and Toad Puppets.

Frog and Toad were such a big part of our final weeks that they showed up on a duplo train at Explore thanks to some creative builders in our class!

Stretching our friendships, our creativity and our bodies too! Have a look at our class doing Taekwondo with Master Yordin, our Martial Artist in Residence.