Process v. Product Art

Sometimes Preschool art looks much cuter than Kindergarten art, because the Kindergarten art program includes more projects that focus on the process than the product.  This week we did an art project focusing on one of the elements of art: line.  We used different lines drawn with permanent marker to divide our paper into sections and then we used pastels (the Kindergarten artists use real artists' tools) to color in the sections.  But even though the emphasis of the lesson was on the process and on lines, they still look quite nice!

Field Trip to the recycling center

 This picnic table is made from recycled plastic bags mixed with sawdust!

Here we can see a bunch of trash coming in.

 Inside the actual plant here.  It was very LOUD and dusty.

Video clip:

 

 Mr. Alvarez was explaining how the machines worked, shaking and sorting.

 Group picture at the end!

:)

After they matched up all the alphabet puzzles, this group decided to try to put them all in order.  :)
(Not sure why blogger flipped the picture)

Differentiating Instruction (with reading worksheets)

The 1st week (or more) of school we are working on figuring out how to do a worksheet.

The 2nd week I start making a few suggestions to push the kids a little.  Try to draw a picture that starts with our letter of the day.  Can you write the word? (Usually they say they can't, but we just work on trying anyway - You know what letter it starts with - write that!).

Then this week on letter J day they all had to try to write the word jet, and the next day kite (a little harder).

Here is their writing from today: can  you guess what they were trying to write?

LuA
LeN
LinY
Liyin
LioN

LPei
LAP
Loyypa
LOEPOP

Today I gave them a choice: they could take the Kindergarten challenge and try to write lion (the picture on the page) or take the 1st Grade challenge and try to write lollipop (the word in our alphabet chant).

Here is what we are learning:
*We have choices.
*We can do hard things.
*We can write.

Here is what I am learning:
*I see an impressive numbers of vowels, which are harder to hear.
*I have a student who has figured out that she can find a certain word (like lion) elsewhere in the room, so she can copy how to spell it :)
*Several children are willing to take on big challenges.

My Kindergarteners are awesome!

Kindness and Ugly pictures

I always try to use our letter of the day/week in the morning message, so today I wrote Have a kind day.  At the end of the day I asked if anyone had noticed anyone else being kind.  Sometimes it is easy to see kindness in ourselves, but I was impressed by how many children could think of something someone else had done: my buddy was kind to me at recess, someone held the door open for me, someone shared the playdoh with me, somebody played with me... 

 We have started our new theme, Taking Care of God's World, so we all drew beautiful Creation pictures.  Then we made them ugly with trash and 'pollution'.  This is the one time when we can call someone's picture ugly (and it makes them giggle).

Why does my child come home so dirty?

When you see your child today and ask yourself, Didn't I send a paint shirt to school with my child?  Why didn't they wear it?  The answer is, they did.  You should see the paint shirts.  And the plastic tablecloths.  And the tables (though those are now cleaned)

 

 Here we are painting (around) our initials.

We finished our sorting unit in math at the end of last week, but one of our math centers this week is reviewing the skill.  They had to make up a rule to sort buttons.  These three girls all worked together; their categories were "pretty," "sort of pretty", and "ugly". 

 New free choice centers today: puppets and...

...playdough!  Homemade by one student (and her dad).  I love how seriously they are concentrating on rolling, cutting, etc.

Hula hoops and working together

 Above (if they work) are video clips of the class playing the hula hoop 'game', also known as learning to work together.  We talked about how to help others and encourage them.

 

Our math and literacy centers are pretty easy right now, allowing us to practice the routines of how to take them out, work together, clean them up, and return them.  Above you can see a car puzzle track - it is great for problem solving!  Below children are feeding a dog bones with tweezers, which strengthens hand muscles, helping with writing.

At the end of the day Thursday we opened up the games and puzzles for free choice centers.  Everyone was playing so nicely together.  Yay!

Fun, fun, fun!

For some reason, practicing writing letters on a little whiteboard is way more fun than writing on paper.

We went on a field trip this morning to the office and I forgot my camera!  So use your imagination :)  We learned a little about Mrs. De Hoogh's job, peaked at Ms. VP's office (and everyone agreed that they would only go to her office for their birthday - never for misbehaving :), found my teacher mailbox - which contained stickers for us, used the photocopier to copy a picture to color, found lots of construction paper and chose a few pieces, which I cut with the big paper cutter, and then everyone chose a shape to cut out on the super-cool die-cut machine.

And in case you missed the fun/craziness of the Peter Piper Pizza fundraiser, here are a picture and video fo the ice cream eating contest - no hands...

"Miss Vis, I'm sorting my Chex mix!" and other connections

Our math corner is nice and bright!  Earlier this week we sorted by shape.  You can always really tell that a child understands a concept when they transfer their knowledge to another situation, like at snack time when someone told me "I'm sorting my Chex mix!"  Math - snack - art... they're connected.

It's important for children to see how things connect and that each lesson or subject is not an entity all on its own, apart from other things.  Today we learned about Day 4 of Creation, when God created the sun, moon, and stars.  Then we took our learning outside and melted some crayons using the sun's warmth.
Science - Bible - art... they're connected.

I don't know if I dare write this, but I wish it had been hotter today, or at least sunnier, because when I tried this out before school started it only took about 20 minutes for the crayons to liquify, but today was a little overcast and after an hour and a half some crayons were still semi-solid.  Oh well.  We had fun trying to squish them around anyway!

(And oops - the sidewalk is a little more colorful than it used to be :)
One of the new center choices today was the very popular easel (with paint pens and finger crayons)

Center time fun!

We are gradually being introduced to all the centers in our room.  We do a few each day, just so we can practice how to use each center, and how to clean them up.  Today was the letter Dd so we pulled out the dollhouse and the dress-up clothes.  Everyone was very excited!

Day 3 of school, Day 2 of Creation

 We got a brand new carpet!  Isn't it beautiful?  I love it!

In Bible we learned about day 2 of Creation, when God created the sea and the sky.  So during centers we played with the water table.

And during science we focused on the air God made.  We learned that air moves things.  We had lots of fun with experiments: trying to move a ball from one cup to another without touching the ball, and trying to keep a feather afloat.  Science is so much fun!  Here are two really short video clips so you can see what we did.

"School is the funnest thing EVER!"

"School is the funnest thing EVER!" one girl told me at the end of the day today.  We had a great second day.  It wasn't as messy as our first day (we only covered one hand in ink, rather than two feet in paint), but it was still lots of fun.  Here are a few pictures:

Today was our second day of literacy centers and I could already tell that they were catching on to the routine.  Here are some children reading magazines.

Putting (lowercase) letter beads on pipe cleaners.

 Matching letters.

Today we started sharing.  Over the next few weeks each child will be assigned a day that they can bring in their All About Me! poster (watch the calendar/newsletter for when it is your child's turn) and a few pictures and a book/toy to share.

 A big part of Kindergarten is teaching children that learning is fun and that they are capable of learning.  We don't just want to teach children to read, we want to have confident readers, so here is our I Can Read bulletin board.  Everything on it is something they can 'read'.  I only planned to put a few up today, but they kept asking for more and saying it was "easy" even though some are really long words.  They're just so smart!

Reading by memory is an important pre-reading skill as children hone their visual discrimination skills and grow in their confidence as readers.

First Day of School!

At the end of the day today we reinforced our school's theme, Follow in His Steps, based on 1 Peter 2:21 ("To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in His steps.") 

It was an ambitious idea - and actually an original idea - for the first day of school, but I was impressed with how well it went.  The water got pretty dirty pretty quickly.  Sometimes Kindergarten gets messy, but it is lots of fun!  No more painting though, until everyone has their paint shirt at school, because next time we will paint with our hands.  :)  If you want to see the final product, it is hanging outside the front office.

We did some initial writing samples today, so I have a baseline of how children write their names, draw pictures, and write.  This child's picture shows he went to Mount Rushmore this summer.

This child drew a turtle and wrote the letters TR - great Kindergarten writing.  I'm so excited to see how their writing grows over the year!

We also did a 3 minute number writing assessment.  We'll do this once a month.  At the end of the year you will get them all so you can see how much growth and progress has been made (the quantity of numbers, the quality of them, even things like learning to write across, instead of down...)

Side note: don't forget that next Wednesday is Peter Piper Pizza Night - show up and help the school raise money.  The money goes to the school Auxiliary and helps us buy wonderful new things for our classroom, like the above ink pads (yes, more messiness is coming up tomorrow!)

 We had a great first day and I'm sure we'll also have a great second day!

A Peak into the Classroom

Welcome to the Kindergarten blog!  You can see that we have lots of books to read and lots of places to play.  Come see the rest of the classroom at Meet the Teacher Night tonight.  School starts Wednesday.