Kindergarten Celebrates the Arts!

What an exciting last two weeks we have had with special music, art, storytelling, theater, and dance activities!

We enjoyed experiencing first hand a bluegrass band, complete with a banjo, bass fiddle, harmonica, guitar, and a singer. The music was fun, and we clapped along to the music.

We liked listening to the two storytellers who told us such amazing stories and kept us thoroughly entertained.

Next came Quilting Day when each student's nine quilt squares were sewn into beautiful quilts celebrating each student's life. What fun it was to wrap up ourselves in our own special quilts that we had made. It was neat to see all our quilts hanging on the clothes line for our kindergarten quilt walk.

Friday was the official Celebrate the Arts Day. We loved working with clay artist, Valerie Scott Knaust, who helped us model with clay.  Together our class created members of a band complete with a conductor.  In the Children's Studio, Ms. Marion O'Mullane introduced us to The Sydney Dance Company and invited all to take part in creative movement.  The day continued on with songs from all grade levels and the teachers, and a picnic under the trees.

Yesterday we enjoyed our tour of the American Stage Theater.  We especially liked the costume shop and the size 13 pink bunny slipper. We were very curious about the trap door located on the stage floor.

This annual celebration is a wonderful opportunity to showcase the talents of our students and community.  We are already looking forward to next year!

Lots of Reading!

Now that we are have been practicing our new reading skills all these months, the children's reading abilities and interests have grown by leaps and bounds. They eagerly try out new books and have confidence to read books with more words on each page. Reading has become a vital part of their daily lives both at school and at home.

The children have many tools to help them to read new words that are tricky. First, they are encouraged to look at the picture for clues as to the words in this story. Next, to try to sound out the words by looking at all the letters, not just the first letter. Then they are to think about what word would make sense in this story. The children are brave readers and eagerly tackle more challenging stories.

Often the whole class reads stories of high interest together, first in big book form, and then with partners using copies in smaller books. The children are very motivated to learn to read these great stories and eagerly help each other read these stories.

Several times a week the teachers meet with children in small groups who are on similar levels. These could be to read new books together or to practice skills that group will find helpful as their reading abilities grow. The focus can also be related to learning new sight words or reviewing letter sounds.

Each Monday the class continues to shop for new books to read from book baskets of "just right" books. These are books that are not too hard or too easy but just right for them to grow as readers. Sometimes they have private reading times and sometimes they read with partners. On Tuesdays we also have Buddy Reading with Ms Deegan's second grade students. The "big kids" are great role models for the kindergartners and help they to learn to read more challenging books. Soon, it will be our turn to be the "big kids" as we read books to the junior kindergarten children.

The class is especially drawn to non-fiction books. They really enjoy the information books that have been written by Gail Gibbons. Recently I was able to buy additional titles, so we now have a collection of 24 of her books in our classroom library. While these books are written on fairly advanced level, the children are able to pick out many words that they can read from these texts. Soon these books will be displayed on our book rack and offered for book check out.

By continuing to build strong reading skills and maintaining a high interest level in reading, our children will be ready to march ahead with confidence to new reading levels. Class, keep up the great work!

Our Field Trip to the Canine Compound

Last week our kindergarten classes went to see the police dogs in action at the Canine Compound in south St. Petersburg. Three police officers, Officer Joe, Officer Dave, and Officer Chris, greeted us and conducted our tour. Officer Chris's dog, Rocco, was used to demonstrate the training and work that is expected of the police dogs. The children were very attentive and impressed with Rocco's skills. Our trip was informative as well as enjoyable. Mrs. Kiernan took many photos of the demonstration. Here are some of the comments the children wrote in response to these photos.

Alex said, "When Rocco did a good job, he got to play with his toy."

Kate D. said, "Rocco is amazing and he is big. I have never seen a dog like that before."

Daven said, "Rocco was sniffing to find the robber."

Davis said, "Rocco jumped over the wall. We clapped. We liked it."

Ben Said, "Rocco did a good job and he wanted the officer to be happy with him."

Sofia said, "Rocco jumped on the train track. He was doing police work. Rocco did a great job."

Natalie said, "Rocco jumped over a tall wall. He was trained very well. He didn't run away. He was looking for the bad guys."

Exploring the World of Birds

Our class has begun learning about birds. We are conducting an in depth research about the exciting world of birds. Before we started our conversations about birds, the children had very little awareness of which animals were considered to be in the bird family and what made them birds. We will explore the characteristics of birds and learn the names of many different kinds of birds.

We launched our bird project with each child writing what they thought a bird was and naming as many birds as they could. The list of birds ranged from two to nine, with most of the children naming only three or four birds. Our goal is to increase their knowledge and appreciation for the wide diversity of birds. While on the field trip to the zoo, the students were assigned to a team parent, who led the students in a hunt for birds that could be found at the zoo. These teams generated long lists of the many birds that the children encountered on their zoo trip.

Our project based learning lessons about birds began with several general activities to familiarize the children with a wide variety of birds. This included investigating reference books about birds, exploring bird models, and making a drawing book of birds. By Wednesday we will narrow our study to include nine different focus birds for the children to consider researching. From this list the children will form research teams of two or more and begin their study. The teams will brainstorm what they already know about their chosen bird. To find out more information, on Thursday for homework they will talk with their family about the bird they are studying. Next the teams will study bird reference books specifically related to their topic and look for additional information on the internet. All the information the teams have found will be compiled into student-made reference books. Finally, each student will write an "All About" book specific to their chosen specie. This book will contain a table of contents, a diagram of the bird that each child drew, and information pages about the bird. We will include such things as:

Why is this animal a bird?
What does it eat?
Where does it live?
How does it move?
What is special about this bird?
How does it protect itself?

This study follows the basic format which was introduced first with our study of pets, and then with our study of farm animals, and woodland animals. With each study the students have added new presentation options. Our study of birds will include transforming our room into a imaginary aviary.

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.