To Make a Quilt

Since January every Friday afternoon a loyal group of parents have volunteered their time to help each kindergarten student begin to construct their own personal quilt. This the 12th year that our kindergarten teachers have committed to this huge project for each of our students to sew (yes!) sew their own nine patch, 30 inch square quilt as a memento of their year in kindergarten. If it were not for our parent volunteers, we would be unable to undertake such an ambitious project. Many thanks to these wonderful parents for their efforts to jump right in and help us.

Each of the nine quilt blocks represents an important aspect of each kindergartner's life. This includes their name and age, their teachers and friends, their favorite animals and colors, their favorite thing to do to school, and of course, themselves. Their individual quilts are truly a celebration of their lives as five and six year old.

The children have already hand sewn the top three quilt blocks together. Today was the exciting adventure for them to paint three of their blocks in art class. Wow! Do they look cute! Next, they will be ready to hand sew the middle three blocks together, and then attach this row to the top row. There is only one block left to create...favorite color. After that block is completed, the quilt tops are almost done, ready for the quilt backs to be attached on the sewing machines on Quilting Day, Thursday, April 19.

These beautiful quilts will be cherished forever! Who knows, but they may even be hanging up in their own children's nursery someday.

Learning about Money

Learning the names of our coins and their values in quite a challenge for young children. They usually have little access to money or few opportunities to spend it themselves. Most purchases for them are completed by an adult and often are made using a credit or debit card.

Each student brought to school a collections of coins in a baggie. These include 10 pennies, 2 nickels, 2 dimes, and 2 quarters. Several times a week the baggies are passed out for the children to explore their coins. What a motivating experience for them to have real money to investigate. We are talking about the values and names of the coins, and ways to remember how to distinguish each of the coins. Today we read a story called "Benny's Pennies." Benny goes shopping and buys items for his family. The children are pretending that they are going shopping for something for one of their family members or friends. They are able to spend up to 10 pennies for their gift. They are recording their stories on the computer and typing their own stories.

Later in the week we will begin making "Fun With Coins" books. Using coin rubber stamps, the children will be using the coin stamps and crayons to create pictures for their individual books. A coin could be made into a sun, a flower, a head for a person or an animal, etc. More coins could be wheels on a car or the smoke coming out of a chimney. The class will be encouraged to use their imaginations to create colorful pictures using the coin stamps. This will help them be more familiar with the coins in a fun way. I predict that the most popular coin will be the half dollar because of it size and because we rarely see them.

We will also be talking about which coin is our favorite and why we like it. The children's ideas will be recorded and made into a class book for all to share. Guess which coin will be the most popular?

We have started to talk about combining a nickel with pennies to make change. We are practicing using "counting on" to combine the coins. We have used this same strategy with the concept of addition, so this idea is a review. The idea is to start with the nickel, saying, "Five," and then, counting on the pennies, "Six, seven, eight." We are also practicing counting nickels by fives and dimes by tens.

We will be setting up a mini toy store with prices for the toys. The children will pretend to buy the little toys using real money. We will reinforce how to count out the money using the "counting on" method. First we will count out the coins for amounts up to 9 cents. Then we will learn that there are four ways to make 10 cents. Next, some of the toys will cost 10 cents or even up to 15 cents.

We also have a large stack of paper money. The children have had fun exploring with these dollar bills and pretending they are rich. We can also use the folding money to reinforce counting out money over one dollar.

There is much to learn about math using the concept of money. The class is enjoying learning about money as this is a new concept for the children.

Eat a Rainbow in Kindergarten!

Yes, we did eat a rainbow! The idea was brought to our kindergartens by our parents for Science Week. The parents wanted to reinforce the classroom work with our plant unit while also introducing the concept of healthy eating.

Earlier the week before, the parents requested the each student bring in an assigned fruit. The children were very excited to go shopping with their families to purchase their fruit and proudly carried in their little bags of grapes, watermelon chunks, peaches, etc. This way the children felt ownership in the "Eat a Rainbow" activity.

Last Wednesday afternoon at our regular science time in the kindergarten common, the parents had prepared the fruit and arranged the bowls in the order of the colors in a rainbow. The children were encouraged to eat some of each color of fruit. Some of the students who are brave eaters, jumped right in tasting a variety of the fruits offers. Most of the children were enjoying many of the fruits. Children could be heard saying, "Mangoes are my new favorite fruit." "I never tried kiwis before, and I really like them."

The children compared various fruits and commented on how each one tasted. There was a lively discussion on who liked which fruits the best. There was also talk about which fruits were the most nutritious. It was the consensus of opinion that blueberries were number one and strawberries were second. Soon, most of the fruits were all gone, and the children were all smiling.

The parents pointed out to the children how tasty the fruits are, and that to be healthy and strong, we should eat foods with lots of different colors. Eat a rainbow not just one day, but everyday! Many thanks to our parents for this important message.