Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf, Orange Leaf
9/30/2017
Leaves This week we did a mini study on leaves to get us thinking about autumn and as a lead into our Pumpkin Study. We counted leaves, sorted leaves by color and by size. We practiced being botanists and picked a favorite leaf to study and write about. We went on a nature walk to collect leaves for all our projects We used leaves in art and in our discovery center. Emerging botanists studying leaves Nature Walk Monday we went on a nature walk/hike into the "big" woods behind our school. We walked around picking up leaves, finding yellow ones, and tiny ones, and red ones. We then used these leaves all week for our study projects.
Autumn Tree Mural We learned about why leaves change color and about the parts of a leaf. Thursday and Friday we worked together to make a three panel mural of fall trees. I explained what a mural was and showed them a photo of an autumn tree with blue sky and green grass. They then worked in groups of four to paint the background, mixing colors and sharing paint and space. The next day they worked in the same groups to glue on real leaves to their trees. We had one tree with red leaves, one with yellow, and one with orange. This project allowed the students to see a photo and then work collaboratively in stages to create a project that imitated what they saw. Next Week
~We start our study of pumpkins on Monday. We will be sharing what we know about pumpkins, and what we want to know. On Friday we will be taking a walking field trip to Fred Myers to purchase different types of pumpkins for us to study in the classroom. Let me know if you are interested in coming with us. Using rubber number stamps to make clocks. We had a busy week in Early Kindergarten! We did two cooking projects, had a class visitor, chased after a gingerbread man, and had a school assembly! This week was all about cementing the beginning of the year concepts we have been learning these past 5 weeks. We started out the week talking about time. We discussed clocks and connected the concept of time to our own school schedule and the students routines at home. The purpose of these lessons was to give the students beginning skills in time management, as well as providing them ownership over a resource (our visual class schedule) to help them process our daily transitions, and feel comfortable in the classroom. For the second part of the week we talked more in depth about the "whos" of school. We had a visit from Mrs. Hoefer, Head of School. The students asked her questions about her job at school and about herself. Mrs. Hoefer also came back to have lunch with the students, allowing them to get to know someone they see often at school but don't visit often. In an effort to continue getting to know the other teachers and students in our school, we baked a gingerbread boy and girl on Thursday, who then ran away from us on Friday during the school assembly. We had to search the school looking for them. The purpose of this activity was to continue to familiarize the students with the rest of PNA. We asked around the front offices, and in the upstairs classrooms, getting to connect with the older students and their teachers. We eventually found out runaways in Mr. Yancik's 4th grade classroom. I want our EK students to feel like they are apart of the whole school community and that the school is a safe environment where they belong. Sometimes it can be hard to move outside of our classroom bubble. Hopefully we will continue to do activities like this that allow us to visit and partner with other classes at PNA. Lastly, at the end of the day Friday we made friendship applesauce. At circle we talked about how each student's apple was different, different colors, different sizes, and different tastes, but that together all these unique apple can make some really wonderful applesauce. Then we made a graph of our apples' colors and counted the apples. The students then washed and cut their apples and put them in the pot. After cooking, we used my grandmother's food mill to press the soft apples to applesauce. The students loved it and kept coming back for seconds! (Thank you to the parents who waited while we finished the project. I really appreciate your flexibility!) We will definitely be making Friendship Applesauce again!
Friendship Week
9/15/2017
Our Friendship week This week we explored what it means to be a good friend. We answered questions such as "How do friends share?" and "How do we treat each other at school?" During Morning Meeting, Read Alouds, Center Play, Small Groups, and our Closing Circle, we looked at the ways we interact and practiced being good friends. We talked about sharing and fair ways to play, using our words to be kind, listening when our friends are telling us something, and how to fix problems we may have with our friends. We made friendship cards, took turns playing follow the leader, and learned a new song which helped us practice asking friends "come play with me!" Friendship dough We used all of this discussion and learning to generate a list of the things (or ingredients) that make us good friend. On Friday we used this list to make friendship dough. Each item on our list corresponded to an actual ingredient for playdough. We started with old friends and new friends, added kindness, caring, and helpfulness. Next came the special ingredients of fun and love (Kool Aid!). Finally the last ingredient was using our words (water), which changed the friendship dough into a wonderful brilliant color! We talked about how when we use our words with our friends it helps us have more fun. Next WeekThis upcoming week we will be talking about when things happen at school (time) and who works at our school. We will be talking more in depth about our schedule and getting to know some of the other staff in our school that we see everyday, but don't get to visit as much.
Early Kindergarten News with Ms. Amy
9/11/2017
Hopes and Dreams & |
Last week we spent our group times discussing what the students hope to learn at school this year, and what rules we need to have at school so that everyone feels safe. In talking about what we hope to learn, we read the book "Look Out Kindergarten, Here I Come!" by Nancy Carlson. In this book Henry questions his mother about what he will learn at school. This helped us launch into our own shared writing about what we could learn this year. On Friday we made a collaborative art project that will be the backdrop for displaying these hopes. The process of talking about what we can learn in school helped the students become excited for their learning, gave them a goal, and also opened up new possibilities for what may happen at school. | We spent the second half of the week talking about rules and working as a group to generate what our rules will be for our classroom this year. We spent time talking about the need to be safe in the classroom, as well as being kind to each other. I took the rules the children suggested for the classroom, and together we divided them up into 3 categories, or Big Rules. Those Big Rules are: Be Safe, Be Kind to Others, and Take Care of the Classroom. Being able to pair a Big Rule with a small rule (Remember, Be Safe; have walking feet in the classroom) helps children understand the reason behind the small rule as well as beginning to create self awareness that will build self regulation. |
This Week
We will be discussing and answering the questions: How do we make and keep friends? How can we be part of a group?
Anna Ramsey
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