what is love?

This past week the Kindergarteners investigated the word love. On Monday I asked the question; What is love? We discussed the question during morning meeting and returned to it during our closing circle. Children thoughtfully responded with the sentence, Love is...

Love is pushing in chairs.
Love is my family.
Love is our community.
Love is wiping tables.
Love is peace.
Love is sorting books.
Love is snowboarding with my mom.
Love is helping my friends.
Love is snowshoeing with my dad.

I typed and printed their sentences. On Wednesday morning each child reread their sentence and counted the words in their sentence. We pointed to the first word and the last word, noticing the period as punctuation ending the sentence.

The children then cut out each word in their sentence and put the words back in order on their red canvas. Again, they reread their sentence, ensuring their words were in order. Using our special art pens, the children represented their sentence with an illustration. We discussed how illustrations are used to show your thinking, similar to our work during writing workshop.

Our love investigation was a celebration of the power in relationships and small acts of kindness, such as pushing in a chair. We discussed how the love for our community is part of every day - from offering to wipe the tables after snack to sorting and organizing our books. Our friends and families are important - a moment snowshoeing in the woods with dad is love and so is finding peace.

While our investigation was rich with reflection, there were important literacy components to our work - answering a question with a sentence orally, reading a sentence, cutting out each word to build a sentence, finding sight words, and noticing punctuation. We ended our work with a museum walk around our classroom admiring all of the colorful and detailed illustrations and organized sentences!

What is love to you and your family?

 

 

 

ski and ride 2.13.18

On Tuesday all of the children worked on their developing ski and ride skills under a blue sky. It was a joy to be outside all day and to watch as children and parents from different classrooms made connections. Thank you to our many chaperones for making ski and ride possible! It was an opportunity for children to experience new challenges and engage with their peers outside of our classroom walls.

As ML skied down the mountain, she put her arms out and yelled, "I'M FREE!" 
I'm thankful the children experienced feelings of freedom on a school day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the kindergarteners celebrate 100

I wish I had 100...

RC - I wish I had 100 peppermint candies.

EO - I wish I had 100 race cars to ride in.

OC - I wish I had 100 Ms. Cassidy's and 100 communities!

ZM - I wish I had 100 marshmallows.

On Friday the children celebrated the 100th day of school. We view this day as an opportunity to count to 100 using different materials and in a variety of ways. The young mathematicians made predictions about different amounts, discussed how many groups of ten in 100, and counted to 100 by 1s. Every day in Kindergarten is an opportunity to count and compare, notice and predict, build and decompose numbers.

We started the day with predicting how many letters in our morning message. We then counted the letters - making sure to not count numbers or punctuation! Even for the advanced letter detectives in our classroom, this was an exciting and challenging task.

Following our morning message work we engaged in 100 exercises. An important part of the experience was following directions. For lunges, we pulsed in place for 10 seconds - we counted together. The athletes practiced having controlled and careful movements. We ended with 10 slow seconds in a child's pose.

100th day dot art provided an opportunity to count out 10 using a different material. This was challenging, as children needed to continue the counting sequence while simultaneously placing a colorful dot on their circle canvas. Some of the math artists shared that they accidentally put 11 dots for one color, so now their work shows 101!

We don't often celebrate with food items, but in our planning for the 100th day of school, there was a shared excitement for making trail mix. Our ingredients were chosen as a community, and with only 10 of each item, it seemed fitting to have some treats mixed in with the sunflower seeds and cheerios. Again, following directions was an important part of the experience. Children were expected to count out 10 pieces from the 10 ingredients, even if they just wanted the chocolate chips. They could only have their snack once they had finished counting and checking their work.

Our afternoon snack was the longest, most engaged, and peaceful snack we have ever had. While the purpose was to count to 100 by 10s and enjoy a special ending to our day together, what I found most intriguing was the idea of working for your food. The success of our snack encourages me to reflect on our community snack time and other ways children can be more independent and engaged during snack. Small bags were available for children to bring leftover trail mix home, but most eagerly ate their favorite ingredients alongside their peers! It's amazing to think that we have grown as a learning community for 100 days and I look forward to all of our days together ahead.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The best part of our 100th day of school? 
This conversation;

JF -Well, I guess I won't see you again, since this is it.

CS - What do you mean?

JF - It's the 100th day of school, so we are done Kindergarten. Now we just have stay home days!

CS - We still have more school days together! I will see you on Monday - our last day of Kindergarten is in June. 

JF - Oh. I'll tell my mom. 

working together

We often celebrate working together - how can you be a helpful partner and how can you be a successful partnership? Working together isn't always easy, especially when you work together in a large group. Being part of a large class encourages children to explore and understand a variety of ways of learning, doing, and being. A large class offers children many opportunities to develop patience, empathy, and flexibility.

I value our whole group learning, even when it takes longer or feels challenging. I believe it's important to work through the feeling of discomfort as a community and follow through with tasks or plans. Here are some examples of different kinds of success, because a successful moment is often full of discomfort, mistakes, uncertainty, and growth.

On Monday, work partners shared their writing with one another. The children continue to prepare their writing for publication. Work partners help to make writing stronger by providing feedback. A partner should notice something powerful in your writing, such as detail, and something to work on. A partner may offer their feedback as a comment or a question; Can you tell me more about that? 

As I went around the room and listened, I thought, THIS is success. Children are sharing their work, reading their writing, talking about their writing, and they are excited! I took some photographs and later gathered the children together. I asked how it felt. What I heard from the children was very different than what I observed.

Children told me that some partners made the choice to be silly and not listen. As we always do, we took the time to discuss the problem. It was a mistake and we can learn from it. You should let your partner know that you are disappointed or frustrated. When a child shares this honest feeling with a peer, the message is more valuable than when an adult or teacher checks in.

Was the children's time sharing and working in a writing partnership still successful? I believe so. Part of the experience was learning how to be together - something we will continue to revisit all year long! I hope as these children move on to first grade, they can bring their knowledge about how to work together and their value of togetherness with them.

 

 

 

In the below photographs one partnership puts two literacy puzzles together during Academic Choice. These puzzles support children's understanding and knowledge of rhyming, rhyme production, letter sounds, and beginning sounds in words. During the share we made a plan to put the letters in alphabetical order. When you finish an alphabet puzzle you can create a learning challenge for yourself - put the letters in order!

First, we counted by two's - 52 pieces. Then, despite some interruptions - from children and adults - we persevered. We had made a plan to put the puzzle in alphabetical order as a community. It did mean that we only had a few minutes outside at the end of the day, but it felt important to finish the task - because the idea to do it all together came from one of the children and everyone had agreed.

 

 


The Morning Message continues to be the greatest opportunity to work together and solve problems as a community of engaged learners! When filling in missing numbers, the children follow along, thinking about the next number in the sequence to fill in. In the below photograph, we talked about patterns and how the pattern starts over or continues after 100. Our whole group learning during morning meeting is rich and supportive of all children.