Before and After

      As I looked over pictures from right before and right after the break I noticed that we didn't skip a beat!  By this I mean that this is the time of year when learning and friendships seem to deepen and grow stronger.  

First, you can have a look at us listening to "peer presenters" as we sample homemade pickles and look at a handmade painting at share time. Next, you can see the children enjoying music both in Music class and at our grade level sing along.  And lastly you can see us enjoying the Dreidel game with our big buddies and getting crafty with the help of some volunteers at our winter workshop.

    The new year brought us back together with a new sharing theme- games and puzzles, and a REnewed energy for learning!

In fact, "Kindergarten culture" is so strong amongst our crew right now that even our pretend area is set up to play...SCHOOL!  

    And, despite the lack of snow, we put our knowledge of animals in winter together with the Mrs. Bauman's second grader's knowledge of animal habitats and we teamed up to create some model animal homes at the edge of the woods on Friday.  Have a look-

   

Let's Catch Up

 I remember mentioning in a recent newsletter how December goes by in the blink of an eye- clearly some time has passed since my last post and we've been busy.  Last week we enjoyed some mood-lifting and immune-system-boosting tea with our farm to school teachers.  The children selected their own mix of herbs by listening to their properties and sampling their scents. Below you can see some friends steeping their custom blend.

While the tea had us feeling calm and cozy, we easily ramped back up for a 100 Apple Core Celebration!  Table top games was the intent but the marble run somehow made it's way in as well.

Back in the regular flow of the things, the children have been enjoying the grocery store set up in the pretend area.

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Dramatic play was a part of literacy learning last week too.  We've been having fun reading different versions of "old favorite" stories like The Gingerbread Man, The Little Red Hen, and The Three Billy Goats Gruff.  Below you can see friends teaming up to act out the story with popsicle stick puppets on bridges made of blocks.  All the puppeteers received a round of applause!

Constructing our Knowledge

On Tuesday the 8th, my Kindergarten colleagues and I participated in a professional development workshop about Literacy Learning Through Play. I thought I'd use this blog post to show you a bit of what that looked like in our classroom this week.  Below you can see some scenes that the children constructed using wooden blocks and natural materials.  They then labeled their scenes with the use of the snap words this, is, and a  and phonetic or inventive spelling.

On a larger scale, we've turned our pretend area into a mini-library modeled after the Orchard library complete with a check out desk, a table for activity pages, and a lego wall.  The children have been practicing keeping the book bins organized and making sure the books are stamped before checking out.

SO Much to Share!

 I mentioned in a recent newsletter that the three weeks in November go by like the blink of an eye!  I think this post will give you an glimpse at the varied activities that are keeping us busy.  

On the social studies front we are going back in time.  To better understand differences between long ago and today, we are learning about New England family farm life in the 19th century.  And to make this learning come alive we have a pretend area which allows for hands on engagement with old fashioned props. Have a look.

We're also learning to sew and weave!  Sewing samplers have become a relaxing choice at Quiet Time and our Learning Buddies helped the children get the hang of paper weaving.

On the Math front, Math Menu is going strong and will perhaps be featured in the next blog post.  For now you can feast your eyes on the pattern block mandalas that have captivated the designers in the crew.

Our literacy learning has been growing by leaps and bounds!

Below you can see Literacy Stations in full swing- either uppercase/lowercase matching on the pocket chart, identifying beginning sounds in words as a group or on individual mats, and showing what you know about beginning sounds in words on a worksheet.

The white board work below shows the children using their knowledge of snap words to craft some very empowering bits of writing!

You saw some beginning sound work and some snap word work, now you can have a look at some word family work.  This "bat" activity helped us to see how many words could be made with the "at" chunk.

Clearly we are working hard- if that isn't cause for a group hug, what is?