Steve E & Breanne's Pre-Kindergarten Class
Welcome to Steve E & Breanne's Pre-Kindergarten Class!
Teacher:
Steve Ellis The Immense Topic of Whales
It is fascinating to observe how learning happens in a group and how a variety of interests can lead to a sudden focusing on a particular topic. That has happened in our class around the topic of whales. It began as many topics do by placing a couple of books on ocean life in the classroom. Some mild interest was shown by a few students and so more books were added to the library and pretty soon there were several groups of children around the books, studying pictures, asking questions and acting out the role of different aquatic creatures with the shark and the angler fish being the favorites…something about big teeth I think.
Outside The Classroom
A lot of wonderful learning and experiences happen outside the classroom during the children’s time with our specialists and I want to make sure to recognize all that they contribute to the class, to our students’ growth, and to our whole school. Here is a quick and important check in!
In music, Julia has been leading the children in a variety of songs (ask your child to do the chop chop chop song) as well as teaching musical concepts such as pitch, tempo, and sustain. The children are learning by moving their bodies, imitating a variety of sounds, and playing on different instruments.
Mr. Bear's Vacation and the Giddens School Postal Service
Mr. Bear
As you may have heard, Mr. Bear has been on vacation for several weeks. He disappeared without notice after every child had had their second turn taking him home. He likes to go on vacation when he feels he needs a break from the daily visits. His whereabouts were unknown until recently when he sent a letter to the class which included a photograph of him hanging out in the Bahamas. He also mentioned he would be returning soon so expect Mr. Bear to return to making his daily visits with your child.
Autumn Colors
We continue to explore the school wide theme of colors in a variety of ways. As we settle into autumn, our attention has naturally turned toward colors that are commonly associated with the season. Oranges and reds have been featured on the easel, we decorated some colorful leaves for the tree in the loft, and we spent an afternoon looking at several leaves and talking about the color changes that we noticed. I presented the class with six leaves that showed a progression from all green to yellow to brown and asked the class to identify which leaf came first and the reason behind their answer. There were many reasons given for choosing the order including the size of the leaf, the length of the stem or the texture of the leaf.
A Quiet Time Game
In the afternoon the classroom settles down for what is called quiet time. It is a time where the children are situated in their own space that is delineated by a mat and where the children get to focus on their own projects without the effects of relating socially to other children. This is a very productive time for the children and it is actually pretty quiet and certainly very peaceful. The aspect we struggle with the most is the social piece. The children are so socially focused at this age and they are continually searching for ideas, validation and friendship from each other. It makes it hard to have any extended period of independence and sometimes the teachers observe an interaction happening that we purposefully choose to ignore.
Emerging Theme of Flight
Paper airplane fever has broken out in the classroom. The two story loft is the perfect launching spot for airplanes and the children are tossing planes on a daily basis. With this interest in mind, we will be exploring the concept of flight and all of its ramifications. I am not sure where we will go with this theme. Some ideas are looking at different types of planes and seeing how they fly; learning how planes fly in the first place; studying other things that fly such as birds and rocket ships; looking at other paper folding activities such as origami; and perhaps a trip to the Museum of Flight might be in order. I have placed several books on airplanes and flight in the classroom and I will be asking the children what questions they may have about planes and flight.
Small Group Handwriting and Announcements
This week we began implementing the Handwriting without Tears curriculum in our small group work. The focus of the curriculum is to teach the children a standardized way of writing their letters as well as developing a standard pencil grip. The goal is to develop a set of skills the children can use as they are called on to do more and more of their own writing in this class and in kindergarten and beyond, where we use a writer’s workshop approach. Being able to write letters without much hesitation is very beneficial because the mechanics of writing don’t get in the way of the thought process and more energy can be put into communicating what the child wants to say.
Play and the Art of Compromise
The other day a group of children began their class time playing with blocks on the carpet, as this group has frequently done for the past few weeks. Their block play has grown increasingly complex. Children have moved from making simple towers, to creating ramps for the cars to roll on, to creating towers and ramps so that the cars roll down the ramps and crash into the towers, thus creating a loud collapse of wood on metal. Besides being an experiment in entropy (a favorite area of study for 4 and 5 year olds), the play evolved into a game where points were being given for knocking down the blocks, and because these points were being arbitrarily claimed, conflict quickly ensued.
Thinking About Colors
We are continuing to explore the theme of colors this week and have begun a project of creating self-portraits that has many aspects to it. The first step has been working with a set of skin tone paints to create a sheet of paper that closely matches each child’s individual skin color. I started the process by reading a book titled The Colors of Us and then having a discussion about skin color. I began with the question “What color is my skin?” Often I get the response “white” but this time I noticed many of the children answered with more sophisticated responses such as peach, tan, I don’t know and a few others. The next step was done individually with each student.
Welcome!
Dear Families,
I would like to welcome all of you to the new school year and to our class in particular. The school year has just begun and already Bre and I have witnessed a lot of learning and growth emanating from the children in the classroom. We have been busy learning the routines and the schedule and learning about each other and what the expectations are in Pre-Kindergarten. This week we began participating in the enrichment classes and the children have done a great job so far making the various transitions from one activity to the next. The enrichment classes run from 10 am to 11 am, Monday through Thursday with two different classes on each of those days.
The schedule of classes is as follows:
