A Busy Week Indeed!

The kindergartners had an exciting end to a very busy week with our Day in the Dark celebration. Here's a re-cap of some of the highlights. Monday: We put the finishing touch (icing)on the gingerbread cookies we made as gifts for the staff at school. This was the culminating activity to last week's literacy lessons on characters, problem, and solution in which we compared different versions of the classic gingerbread story. Tuesday: Anya's dad, Brian, came to our classroom to teach a Four Winds lesson. We watched a puppet show and played several games around the topic of predators and prey. Wednesday: We had a lovely day for our ECO Celebration. All five kindergarten classes met at Harrison Field and forest for fun activities including building with snow, making tea in the woods, snowball throwing and games, and a winter scavenger hunt. Thank you to all the volunteers who made this day a success! Thursday: We completed our Kinder Art paintings modeled after Vincent van Gogh's The Starry Night. We also took part in the forth "Kindergarten Sing" with our latest song, Mole in the Ground, which complimented one of our December themes of animals in winter. Friday: Our week ended with the Day in the Dark. Through story, writing, games, and art, we celebrated the winter solstice by spending the entire day in a darkened room with lot's of fun light up toys and flashlights to see by. What a special way to end 2012 with the children! I hope everyone has a restful, joyful break and returns healthy and happy. Take Care, Linda

Word Bird

Has your child mentioned anything to you about word bird? Word bird is a robin in our class who flies in each Monday with a new word for us to learn. These words become our "heart words", or words we know how to read and write by heart and we do various activities throughout the week to support memorizing them. Help your child look for these heart words in the books, magazines, or other other print you are reading. Happy hunting!

Music Update from Ms. Sales

Kindergartners have been doing a great deal of singing and moving. Our focus for most of the is how to use our singing voices, alone and with others. We have used our voices to sing shapes, sing a cowboy call and make a yummy sound while hearing a story about ice cream! Kindergarten kids have also learned echo songs and have been singing all together in unison as well as solo. The Kindergarten teachers have invited me to be a part of the Kindergarten Sing which happens once a month. So far we've learned a Tree Song, a song about the life cycle of a butterfly, a song of thanks and a song about what animals do in winter. We have also been learning to move to music, both classical and folk. Right now we are working on circle dances. We're having lots of fun in Kindergarten music!

Kindergarten Sing

You may have heard your child singing our latest "Kindergarten Sing" song, Thanks Alot by Raffi. Here is a short video of the day all 5 kindergarten classes got together to sing our songs. Enjoy!

Personalize a digital slideshow

Giving Thanks

After a week long study of the Pilgrims and Wampanoag, we had a fun baking day today and came together as a class to share our treats. We worked in two groups to make pumpkin muffins and butter with each child taking turns adding ingredients for the muffins and shaking a jar of cream until it turned to butter. To make the process more fun, we recited a traditional chant: Come butter come. Come butter come. Arianna's at the garden gate, waiting for a butter cake. Come butter come. After many rounds of the poem, we were rewarded with butter and spread it on crackers to taste. We also used our butter on the muffins we made. You will find a copy of the recipe in your child's folder. Happy Thanksgiving!

Glimmer Lantern Glimmer

To celebrate the changing season and winter darkness, we made special lanterns and sang several lantern songs. I hope you can find a special place in your home for your child's lantern.

Here is a lantern song I shared with the children: Glimmer, lantern, glimmer Little stars a-shimmer Over meadow, moor and dale Flitter, flutter, elfin veil Pee-wit, pee-wit, tikka-tikka-tik Rucoo, rucoo.

Recipe for a Forest

As an extension to last weeks ECO lesson when students learned about the things that make up a forest, we wrote our own "Recipe for a Forest". We brainstormed what you might find in the forest, then I collected the items for students to record. In addition to learning about forests, students were working on listening to all the sounds in words and recording what we hear.

ECO and Thanksgiving Lunch

We had a busy, fun day Wednesday with our ECO morning and Thanksgiving lunch. We joined Mrs. Koch's class for lessons around forests and the kinds of things you might find in a forest. We arrived at Harrison field and enjoyed a quick tag game in which first the dad's then the mom's and teachers were "it". Many laughs were heard as the adults chased the children and turned them into "trees" when they were tagged. We then had our snack and entered the forest where we played a version of hide and seek. I pretended to be an eagle and counted to 25 while all of the children ran to find a good hiding place within eyesight of the eagle. The children were encouraged to camouflage themselves so that the eagle couldn't find the "prey" hiding in the woods. When I opened my eyes, I had to stay in my "nest" and use my eagle eyes to spot the prey. After the first round, many children quickly caught on to what would make a good hiding place and found good ways to blend into the woods. After our game, Susan and I had fun engaging the kids in a story about making a forest out of things such as flour, cereal, bananas, and tomatoes. We called it our "recipe for a forest". The children had a good laugh as we pretended to cook up the forest in a big pot. In the end, the kids were asked what things would really make up a forest and sent them on a scavenger hunt to find them. Tomorrow, we will extend our lesson into the classroom and do an activity around writing a true "recipe for a forest". I was thrilled to see so many families gather with us in our classroom to share a meal together and talk during the Thanksgiving lunch. Thank you for all who joined us!

KinderArt

We began our KinderArt program last week with a look at Paul Cezanne's piece, Apples and Oranges. We began by looking very closely at what we noticed in the painting, then learned a little about the artist himself. We also began making our artwork modeled after Apples and Oranges by making orange and red "community paper"; a process where children paint entire sheets of paper to then use to cut out shapes. We used this paper to cut circles for our apples and oranges. We are currently working on tracing and cutting shapes of bowls and pitchers and will use these to create a final picture. Ask your child to tell you more!

The painting is recreated in the classroom for children to look more closely at.

Pumpkin Day!

For the last two weeks we have been learning about the life cycle of a pumpkin, and doing all things pumpkin related. Reading books about pumpkins, singing songs, and creating pumpkin art. For Pumpkin Day the kindergartners used pumpkins for a series of activities that included, weighing and measuring, drawing, balancing, testing if a pumpkin will sink or float, counting, and even pumpkin bowling. We had a blast!

Work on Writing

We started a new element of our Daily 5 literacy block today called Work on Writing. The children "write" a story using mostly pictures, but contains story elements such as characters, a setting, and words. For many, words are labels for the details they have drawn in their picture. Some are writing a sentence for their story by writing the initial letter of each word to represent a word in their sentence. Much like Read to Self, we began by writing for only 5 minutes and will work our way up to a longer time. To my excitement, when I stopped the group after 5 minutes more then half were disappointed to have to stop, and were eager to continue writing! It looks like we're going to have a class of wonderful, eager writers!

ECO

We had an amazing first day of ECO! We joined with Mrs. Koch's class, and spent a lovely morning at Harrison Field. Our focus today was on establishing routines and learning about the Three Cares: caring for ourselves, our friends, and the earth. We practiced "fox walking", "deer ears", "owl eyes", and "raccoon touch", and learned how to identify deciduous and coniferous trees. Be sure to ask your child to share more about our day with you!

Fire Prevention Week

We had some special guest visitors today in honor of Fire Prevention Week. Three firefighters visited from our Montpelier fire station including Deputy Fire Chief and kindergarten parent, James Quinn. We played a game called "What's Hot or Not", and learned about the importance of getting out of a building quickly when there is a fire and staying out. We also learned about a firefighter's gear and clothing and watched a firefighter put on their "turn out gear". You will find a few gifts in your child's folder tonight including a pencil, sticker, and coloring book. Thank you firefighters!

FUNdations

The kindergartners are learning how to identify, write, and learn the sounds of letters. In addition to learning the letters in our names, students have been introduced to the lowercase letters, t, b, and f. We use a program called Fundations which uses visual cues and hand motions (similar to sign language) to teach the alphabet, phonics, and spelling. Today we got a little messy and used shaving cream and our sense of touch to practice our letters and the sight word, "see". Lot's of fun!!