Science in Kindergarten

The kindergarten children are very interested and enthusiastic with learning about science. Science is taught daily and includes activities in our classroom, outside in our gardens, and in the kindergarten common area.

A major focus for our study of science occures on Wednesday afternoons when each of our kindergarten classes come out one at a time to the K common area for an introductory lesson connected to the theme for that week. This may include the reading of a science related big book or a brief discussion on the current topic. The children are then broken into three groups where they each experience hands-on science activities that are planned by the K teachers but run by parent volunteers. Often these include science experiments, observations, and collecting data. During this 40 minute block, the children will rotate to all three stations. Many of our activities so far revolve around the theme of our Five Senses. Soon we will be exploring the huge world of animals.

In the classroom we frequently continue with related science activities often integrating these with reading, writing, math, and the computer. In addition,we have been talking about the weather and the seasons. We graph the daily weather in our calendar folders. Our discussions about fall have include changes in the weather which effect both plants and animals, sports and activities common to fall, and holidays in fall.

Our class has been working in our classroom garden every week. We have pruned over-grown plants, weeded, and watered the plants that survived from last spring. Soon we will be planted new flowers, some of which will attract butterflies. Last week we also began working in the lower division community garden where we have our class has our own raised garden bed where we planted herbs.

Yes, science is a vital part of life in the kindergarten. Everyone is learning so much and having fun, too!

We Help the Crayon Puppets

As part of our character education program, the twelve crayon puppets were introduced to the class one at a time. The crayon puppets each told the class about the problems they had in trying to be the "best that they could be." They asked the class if they would help them by being good role models for the crayons. The class has been working very hard to help the crayons improve their behavior. Nicky Nice, who represents all the colors, is helping, too. It creates a beautiful picture when all the colors work together.

Greedy Green is learning how to share with the other crayons and children.
Rudy Red is trying to remember to use better manners.
Yelling Yellow is practicing using a softer voice inside.
Pokey Pink is trying to finish her assignments on time.
Ornery Orange is working on being cooperative with the other crayons and the teachers.
Pouty Purple is learning to take turns and be better sport.
Betty Blue, Butt In Brown, Tan Tattle, Bossy Black, and Wiggly White are all trying hard to improve, too.

With so much to learn and practice, we all have to help each other to be the "best we can be." What a wonderful world when we all cooperate and work together.

Reading Workshop Is Conducted Daily!

A large block of our day is devoted to reading. These activities are integrated through-out our day and are included as part of our math work and even with our science and social studies lessons.

Our actual reading lessons usually occur in the morning. We talk about what Reading Workshop looks like and sounds like. This includes private reading as well as partner reading.

Reading Workshop looks like the readers quickly picking a book and doing a picture walk. It looks like children having their eyes on their books and their fingers pointing to the words looking to match words with the pictures. Reading Workshop looks like the readers sitting and turning pages carefully and focusing on their stories. It looks like lips moving as readers enjoy their books.

Reading Workshop sounds like students quietly turning books pages and using soft whisper voices to read or tell the stories. It sounds like children making the letter sounds as they work on figuring out new words. It sounds like a low hum with readers busy with their books.

Monday is Book Shopping day. Children select five books from a basket of "just right" books (those books that are on their reading level.) They place their five chosen books into a large zip lock baggie and go off the to a quiet reading spot to explore their new books privately. During the week the children continue to read their five books, sometimes privately, sometimes with a classmate or with a second-grade buddy reading student, and sometimes with a teacher. The books are read on many different levels from examining and talking about the pictures, to storytelling, to actual or memorized reading. We can think about what might happen next after the book ends and how the story could be extended. Towards the end of the week, the children enjoy teaching each other to read their books.

Most importantly we are fostering a love of reading; an opportunity to connect with characters, their actions, their locations, and the joy of their stories.

Writer's Workshop

Our daily writing includes a lesson that links us to the work we have done previously, teaches us a new skill, provides time to practice and apply the lesson, and to share our work with others.
The children begin by first sketching their story and labeling people and things using their kindergarten spelling. We have been practicing crafting sentences from the words labeled in our sketches. So many of the stories have included action that many children are writing words that end in -ing.
This week in Writer's Workshop we are introducing the setting of our stories. Setting clues can be seen in the children's sketches with examples of the sun in the sky or the tables in our classroom. These details demonstrate inside or outside locations and lend themselves to adding this information to their stories.
The sharing of work is very rewarding. We share in a number of ways. Some days we sit in a circle and retell our stories, other days we conference individually with the teacher, we read our stories to a partner, and use the document camera to point out our quality work.
For kindergarten, writing is a process that involves thinking about an experience and taking the time to draft words from the letter sounds the children hear as they sound out their words. This is a brave task and we encourage all to embrace writing by including it at home.