Thursday News

May 2nd, 2013

Like the flowers that have been popping open all at once outside our windows these days, the Cardinal classroom's academic spirit is in full bloom! The children have been showing off their true academic colors in many different areas from scientific examinations of different flowers, to letter  games brought to us from both our Cardinal Teachers and our Cardinal families.

Kate came to school with us a real sunflower and, since we all now have been seeing flowers through a scientific lens thanks to our friend Roseanne's lesson, we conducted a scientific examination of the parts of this Sunflower finding what is different looking or the same between this flower and the flowers we had been looking at before. With some extra help from Kristina, Stella's mom who is also a science teacher at AFS, we found the flower sections we were hoping to identify and learned a little more about the differences.

The morning began as the children came into the classroom and found materials set up for them to use. Large alphabet tiles shared the front rug space with small letter tiles. One set with uppercase letters, the other lower case letters.

The children began their letter explorations on their own, spelling their names or arranging the letters in alphabetic order, and once in a while a Cardinal Teacher would come with an idea or suggestion. The children began spelling out their families for each other, sounding out the names of their loved ones as well as words like "Mommy" and "Daddy".

The sounds of children carefully slowing down the sounds of words to identify the different letter components could be heard from the front rug to the back tables where the children were continuing the book making project that had been started this week.

A different group of Cardinals who had been inspired by their friends who had started this activity yesterday were hard at work thinking of imaginative stories and then finding ways to express their stories in written form, trying out making sound to letter associations!

Finding even more ways to expand our growing need for intellectual stimulation, our friend Violet shared with us a letter game her Mom and her play during bath time. This game show style activity goes by the name of "Guess My Letter!!" and involves one player picking up a letter (we used our handy letter tiles) and hiding it from view. Then the hider gives a few words that feature the hidden letter at the beginning, and the other player has to Guess That Letter!! It was a fun adventure finding several word examples for each letter to help the guesser, and I am sure "Guess My Letter!!" will become a favorite of the Cardinal classroom and led to an interest in other letter and number focused games!

We decided to finish our morning outside and immediately it became apparent that today was going to be a "jump right in" sort of outdoor playtime...

Confidence was not left behind in our classroom when we put down our letter writing pencils and changed into our water stomping boots and the water pond was a focal point for the majority of our class.

Other features of our outdoor time included different groups engaging in dramatic play especially family oriented games...

As well as interactions with some of the other classes of different ages, holding their own in conversations with groups of children from outside the Cardinal class.

Tuesday News

April 23, 2013

The children began their day with a few calm activities around the classroom. The atmosphere was quietly buzzing with busy Cardinals demonstrating their self assured knowledge of the different areas of the classroom and the comfortably confident children found great places to get to work building, reading, or exploring the art studio.

Soon it was time to take a short walk over to Gwen's Library where the children gathered in front of Gwen to listen to a story about friendship called "Help!". This story, includes the adventures of mouse who learns an important truth about his friendship with his animal friends. The book was well known to the Cardinals but, as always, the children were able to bring original perspectives to the story based on their own experiences. We left Gwen's Library after a fun, stimulating discussion carrying new books to fill our classroom with fresh ideas.

Back in the classroom, books came alive for the children. Exploring new stories and filling their thoughts with new illustrations seemed to engage each and every child both through small group readings with one of the Cardinal teachers, and individual book perusals.

We decided instead of a usual morning meeting we would take that time to surprise Paula with a special card the children had created for her. We had missed Paula who had been out from school and wanted to find a way to show our love and excitement for her return! Each Cardinal had written a personal message inside the card and decorated it with care, and the pride and joy the children took in making Paula smile was wonderful to see.

After a quick group hug, the children dispersed to different activities of interest, set up today around the classroom. There was a fun cutting and gluing art activity exercising our fine motor skills that drew on themes of recycling from yesterday's Earth Day discussions. We used materials that hadn't been used after finishing previous art endeavors to create new, beautiful pieces.

There were magnetic math games that explored shapes and numbers set up on the front rug that invited friends to work together or individually to try out different configurations of shapes and lines, or matching and ordering numbers.

The mathematical missions continued with geo-boards and child-driven shape experimentation which even led to creative applications from beautiful shape designs to self devised geo-board-games that included several different friends in interactive social math play.

We completed our terrific Tuesday with a little fresh air and outdoor play.

Memories of Monday

The children enjoyed returning to school after the weekend and greeted one another with smiles. Our morning routines of signing in and question of the day have taken on meaning for the Cardinals as they show increasing time and dedication to each task. The sign in table has become an area of morning conversation as the children share their thoughts and weekend activities with each other. "How are you?" and "I had a sleepover this weekend! Did you ever do that?" were some comments and thoughts overheard today. Our question, "Can you find 3 rectangles?" posed a challenge that the children took on with pride. This goal directed their focus and they began counting sides, asking themselves, "Does it have 4 sides?" and commenting, "I only found 2. I need to find one more!"  Familiar routines such as this provide the children with stability and an awareness of what to expect that is vital to their growing sense of self and independence. Through question of the day, we continue to provide the children with the opportunity to practice reading beginning sight words, practice one to one correspondence and experience other math concepts such as identifying shapes.

During Choice Time, the children have become more interested in playing board games. Today, Nature Lotto was set out as an invitation on the rug. In small groups, the children played this game taking on the role of matcher or card caller. Social skills such as taking turns and compromising were essential pieces to helping the game run smoothly. As the children participated, they were able to identify plants and animals, describe traits seen in the photos and match the same photo with its corresponding bingo card. In the Cardinal class, being helpful and caring for each other as just become a way of life and in this game in particular, it was clearly evident in how the children called one another's name to help them get a matching card if they had missed it at first glance! 

During our Choice Time, an impromptu concert appeared in our hallways with Kindergarten performing a special Earth Day Song.  The children excitedly gathered in the hallway and danced along as they listened to their older peers sing about our home. Our older peers in Kindergarten are role models and inspired conversations about helping the planet Earth that continued throughout the morning. During Morning Meeting, the children began to share ways in which we can help the planet. We played a game in which we classified things people do or acts we may see and put them into two categories: helpful or not helpful for Earth.

Before lunch, as an extension to our morning discussion, we read the story, Miss Rumphius, which tells the story of Alice Rumphius and how she set out to make the world look more beautiful. This sparked our conversation again and the children each shared ways in which we can help Earth, including "You could pick up the trash and make sure you don't put trash into the water or the fish will go somewhere else", "Putting the stuff in the trash and not leaving it on the ground or in the house", "By planting stuff. Daisies.", and "We can plant more flowers. I do that every fall." Discussions such as this build expressive language skills and help the children make personal connections to the stories we read.

Enjoy Other Photos from the Day: Connecting with Nature and Each Other!