What's going on?

It's certainly been a busy spring! And here we are, going into our last week of school. Sometimes time flies, and other times, time FLIES! Speaking of flying ... 

We spent much of April reading about, researching and writing about birds. What amazing skills we covered through this process. We discussed as a group what we knew about birds, then what we wanted to know about birds. 

We each chose a bird that we wanted to learn more and write about. We looked through books and found the facts we needed to write about where our bird lived, what it looked like, what it ate, and other interesting facts. We illustrated our pages and created a book, which we shared with our classmates and families.

We spent time investigating bird nests and bird parts, drawing and labeling the parts of a bird, gathering materials and making a nest, observational drawing and bird painting.

We made bird feeders and hung them outside our window. We really enjoy watching the various types of birds come around to our feeding area!

For three weeks, we eagerly awaited the hatching of our chicken eggs in the incubator. It was wonderful to hold them and feel their soft feathers. 

We really enjoyed our bird investigation! It even triggered a week or so of more interest in flight and the making of MANY paper airplanes, which carried over to our outdoor learning where we tested their flight capabilities!

Since we end our day in the outdoors, we rarely share what's happening out there and how much learning (and expending of energy) is occurring outside. 

So much teamwork, sharing, imagining and discovery is going on all of the time.

 We are busy building and/or trying to break through dams in Colin's creek, creating elaborate games of freeze tag, meals of mud cakes and grass and leaf soup. 

 We are soothing friends who have fallen down, we are planting a garden and caring for it each day. 

We challenge our abilities constantly through climbing, running, lifting and moving. 

We are treasure finders and sometimes, treasure sharers. We practice carpentry by sawing and hammering wood. 

We collect flowers, write with "chalk made from wood", and discover, and discover, and discover. 

Playing outdoors presents such amazing opportunity to learn more about our friends, share our ideas, work together, and explore our natural world. 

 Our days are so rich with learning, from start to finish. 

Learning about Geometry

During the month of March our math focus was on learning about Geometry.  We had the opportunity to learn a lot of new vocabulary, not only the names of shapes; rhombus, trapezoid, sphere and cylinder to name a few, but also words that help us describe shapes like vertices, edges and faces. 

We started our shape investigation with a simple question about circles and squares.  Can you fill a large circle with small square tiles?  

Most of us were pretty sure there must be some strategy to make this work.  After manipulating the squares and trying various ways, such as building up and overlapping squares, some came very close.  In the end we all came to the same conclusion: you can’t make an actual circle with squares because a square has straight lines and a circle is a curved line.  This began our discussion on the attributes of two dimensional shapes.

 The next day our question was about how many ways there are to make a hexagon using the pattern blocks.  Again, with some manipulation of shapes, flexibility in thinking and a little bit of collaboration we were each able to come up with at least six different ways to make a hexagon.  

This naturally led us to try to see what else we could create with the pattern blocks.

 We spent time looking around our environment trying to find shapes. It was amazing to see how many two dimensional and three dimensional shapes we could find in our classroom, outside and around the church.  

 We created shapes using toothpicks and clay, read books about shapes and categorized shapes using their properties. 

 It was exciting to watch each student expand and build on their current knowledge of shapes!

Literacy and Beyond

From time to time, you may be wondering what's happening on a daily basis to further learning in one specific academic area or another. In this post, we would like to address some of the ways we are diving into literacy. 

In January, we began utilizing book boxes at one of our learning centers. Every Monday, each student chooses 4 new books at their reading level to add to their book box. As they rotate through centers, they have a chance to read independently or with a buddy, exploring the books they have chosen, or revisiting their poetry folder. 

 

We each know that there are many ways to read, one of which is to look at the pictures and retell a familiar story. We may also look for letter sounds we know, or sight words we have learned.

We spend time each day during 1st circle learning about the connection between letters and their sounds and how the sounds in words work. It's especially fun to change the first letter of each our names to one particular letter we are focusing on and see how they sound in this new form. We also notice right away when it doesn't change the name at all! (For instance some of our names that start with "C" still sound the same when they start with "K"!)

Another new addition to our week is Writer's Workshop. After a group lesson in which the teacher introduces the lesson and models writing, students are encouraged to think of an idea for their writing and share that idea verbally with a friend. Afterwards, we choose where we would like to write, sometimes finding a quiet place alone, sometimes with friends.

During the writing exercise, we work on drawing a picture, labeling, and adding an idea in the form of a sentence. 

When the exercise is finished, we have the opportunity to share our writing with the class.

 We especially enjoyed writing about and with our stuffed animals during our Puppy Picnic Day! 

 As with much of our learning, it spills over into other class time as well. We may find students writing invitations to all of their friends...

... they write and share about Buddy's adventures at home...

... and create and tell stories as they are immersed in dramatic play. 

We are thinkers, readers, writers and speakers, with amazing imaginations and such willingness to take chances and try our best. We have come a long way in the first 1/2 of our Kindergarten year.