Butterfly Extentions....

Alright so the other day I was here telling you all about our Discovery Center!

We still have caterpillars but all of our beautiful monarchs have been released into the great wide open.

Yesterday fantastic things happened in our world! The kids are really getting into this whole bug thing.

It started when one little girl found a classroom critter. We caught it very gently, in a bug container and put it on display in the discovery center.

Soon enough-kids were gravitating towards it. We had ourselves a cricket!

 

This child sat in a chair staring at the cricket for about 5 minutes before she picked up this blue "diamond" we had sitting near discovery in our hands on thinking center (math). The kids have been sorting the diamonds, and rocks and other materials. But she grabbed the diamond and was pointing it at the cricket. When I asked her what she was doing she said "seeing if he can see the blue one."

 

She then picked up a red diamond and pointed both diamonds at the cricket and exclaimed "Look! Now he's a shiny purple one!"

 

 

Cue the epic background music. She sat down at a center. Without being persuaded to do so, and made her own observations! The discovery center is right by a window so the light reflecting off the two diamonds and back onto the crickets home-made the cricket look kind of purple!

 

 

This cricket led to fantastic conversation.

 

 

After recess the cricket was placed on the production (art) table, and supplies were left at the table. Children sat down, and drew the cricket! Some of them drew a cricket and a dog. Some of them drew their dad. But still-some of them drew a cricket!!!

 



 

Above is the process, and then the product. Have I told you yet that I love my job?

 

 

While sitting with the small groups that came and went to the production center, they asked many questions. I started this conversation by saying "I wonder if the cricket likes it in there?" This was followed by amazing inquiry. Such as, but not limited to:

 

"I wonder if he drinks coffee?"

"I wonder if he eats animal food?"

"I wonder if he walks?" and then was followed by a shrieking "He does walk!!!!!" when he moved.

 

"I wonder how he gets away from predators?" (Yes, I'm serious. First week of school and some of our kinders are using the word predators!!) :)

 

"I wonder if he is sad?"

"I wonder if he likes cookies?"

 

And my favourite statement: "He's cricketing!!!!!!!!" upon hearing him make his cricket noises!

 

 

The kids are seriously interested in discovery.

We also had a guest speaker today. Our vice principal brought in part of his butterfly collection to show our class.

 



Beautiful. The kids learned some new vocabulary from our speaker. He taught them the words camouflage and metamorphosis, as they pertain to butterflies! :)

Whoa.

As stated up there ^ .......Whoa.

Overload today. Busy. Busy. Busy kinders. Our day today ran so smoothly in the morning, and by second recess it seemed to fall apart. We had kids melting down, we had kids laying on the floor during a dance lesson being taught by the Grade 8 kids. Today I must have said "This is not a choice." 30 417 times. We are all about giving choices, but some things, are just not optional. Like walking. to the library.

Phew! I feel better now. Thank you for allowing me to have my own mini meltdown. Tomorrow will be better.

So! I promised I would be here with a super duper addition to our classroom. Please keep in mind that our room is STILL not complete. We are waiting for tables, easles, smart board etc. Lots of things still to come. We are waiting patiently and making do with what we have for now.

Our book nook. Remember the little area we had dreamt would become an inviting little corner for our kids to settle in with a book? Well it is slowly becoming that vision!

 

 

Our reading tent, and a Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Tree!!!

 

We added the tent first. My lovely husband built it for us :) super grateful. The kids lived in it the first day. With books. Turning pages. Having conversations. It was the stuff kindergarten staff dreams are made of. No one had to be coerced to read a book. They went in on their own. Flipped pages. Exchanged the books for new ones.

 

 

The next day for our literacy circle in the morning we introduced the book Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. If you have ever read a children's book. It was probably this one. I asked the kids to look around when the story was done and see if they noticed anything from the book in our classroom. I got answers like "The alphabet!!" "Words!!" and then finally "A Coconut TREE!!!!!!!!!" I told the children we could decorate it, by making it its own set of letters.

 

 

The kids have been sitting under it reading. They have asked if we can make some coconuts for it-but so far none of them have made one.

 

 

We also have Chicka Chicka 1, 2, 3-on the agenda for the week. Our literacy focus this week has been the alphabet. Each day we have been reading alphabet books in the morning , and number books in the afternoon. The kids have been counting various things around the room and today during nutrition break we overheard them singing the A,B,C's to their lunch monitors! SUCCESS!

 

 

Our discovery center is seriously blossoming. I will be back tomorrow to tell you more about the extentions on the butterfly life cycle we have happening!

 



Discovery Center Excitement!

I know today was officially the first day with a full class but we already have uber exciting things happening in our room! :)

Some of those exciting things are happening in our Discovery Center! This is what is normally known as Science! :)

We put out a little butterfly tent on Friday in our Discovery Centre with some caterpillars, a plant, and some pupa in it. We came to school this morning to see 2 beautiful Monarch Butterflies hatched! We want some photo documentation of this to display in our classroom, and for the children to reflect on, since it all happened so quickly.

Here are some photos I took!

 

This was so amazing! The chrysalis right before the monarch broke out!

 

 

One of the little caterpillars that are crawling around in our tent!

 

 

A monarch right after we tagged him. Wondering about the importance of tagging a monarch. Check this out!

 

 

The pupa leftovers.

 

 

 

Both of our monarchs ready to be released!

 

You can see what an exciting day this must have been. Now I will say-my teaching partner and I were excited to see the butterflies this morning but we really wanted to test the observational abilities of our kinders. Soooooo-as hard as it was, we didn`t say anything and sure enough-as soon as we went to our centers to learn-a little girl noticed! We had a table available this morning for children to document what they were seeing in the discovery center-and they took full advantage of the center. We left out paper, crayons and pencil crayons, and many of them sat down and tried their hardest at creating an observation.

 

 



 

This was one of the observations that was documented by an SK student. Caterpillar and Butterfly-both positioned at the top of the paper, as this is exactly where she observed them to be in the tent.

 

 

We really wanted their observations to be their own. We said very little unless we were asked questions. We will put out some butterfly life cycle books, books about caterpillars etc. to expand on their inquiry.

 

 

All of these exciting things that are happening really have me anxious to see what this year will bring! :)

 

 

If you have any suggestions on how we could expand on this in our room. Please, please leave me a comment! I LOVE suggestions!! :)

 

 

I`ll be back tomorrow to show you what my awesome husby has helped me with for the classroom! :)

 



 

Introducing Routines and Welcoming Kinders....

Hello Readers! I am a couple of days late in posting-and please excuse me. I have been seriously exhausted.

I am not sure if it's because I had gotten into my summer routine-and my tiredness is due to a change in that routine-or if it is because kinders are just really exhausting little people.

I have a feeling my body will adjust to this change and I wont be so dead tired every night.

So Thursday/Friday we met our class! Half of them came each day. Monday we will have all 23 together! The first two days were mirror images of one another. We wanted to introduce our expectations, welcome them to the room and give them a tour of the school, as well as try to make them feel comfortable being away from their parents and at a big new school!

We started the days with a book that is used frequently in the first days of school in many kinder classes around the world. The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn. If you aren't a teacher but have kids of your own, and don't already own this. BUY IT! It's an adorable story-with the power to change the course of their transition into school (or daycare!).

Meet Chester:

 

The book sitting beside Chester is The Kissing Hand! I can't take credit for this fabulous guy! He's a raccoon puppet bought by the teacher I work with! Super, Super Idea! The children loved him! We used Chester for several things.

 

We introduced him, and then went on a scavenger hunt of sorts around our classroom. Chester had left little notes in each of our play centers explaining what could be done in each center and what the expectations were in those centers. Each letter directed the kids to the next center. They were excited about Chester leaving them notes.

 

The next help we received from our classroom helper was his leading us around the school! Our school is a big confusing area of winding halls and rooms-to me. So I can only imagine how overwhelming it might be for the kinders. Chester had left handprints (kissing hand) on important places in the school. Each hand contained a clue about where to go next. Our important places were the office, the computer lab, the gym, the library, the janitors room, the water fountain, the resource room and the vice principals office.

 

The children got to meet many important people in the school and get a feel for where everything was-even though this is something that will take a while for them.

 

Lastly-the children were told of how Chester LOVE LOVES listening to stories. We told them that anytime they wanted to-they could read or picture walk with Chester by their side. I can't wait to see this happen.

 

Tours and changing from inside shoes to outside shoes and back again took up the bulk of our day. I did take some pictures of the other things we did. I will post with a brief explanation.

 

 

 

A student working on their Chester Raccoon headband. We coloured and decorated and wore them on our tour around the school!

 

 

Exploring our sand and water sensory tables! This was a big BIG hit!

 

 

Imaginations are already being used in Kinder room 15! :) Playdough center creativity-2 snakes! :)

 

So much more happened that wasn't caught on camera. We made kissing hand hand prints for moms and dads with a kissing hand poem attached, we explored our outdoor play space and we all got to share our favourite thing about the first day of school.

 

We are in for a super year. :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



First Freebie! Rules and Expectations!

Alright-I apologize in advance for whatever this blog may lack today. I have a kazillion things going tonight. One of which includes cutting out over 100 feet of laminated goodies for our kindergarten program! This is what I'm working on:

Yep-that's a pile of laminated goodness. Those letters? Our playdough place mats I made! My hope is that the kids will explore them by rolling playdough out to make the letters! :)


Tomorrow we have half of our kinders in class! The other half come Friday! (Gradual Entry). We have a whole bunch of good stuff planned for them! It's really important to us that we establish rules and routines right away. While deciding what would be important to us in the class-we were discussing use of materials and toys in the room-and we began laughing and chatting about how some of the materials may be new for some of our kids! Example: Glue and scissors. We want to teach them right away the safe way to hold scissors and the proper way to use glue to minimize the waste that happens. Alarms went off in my head about a song I learned wayyyyyy back in my college days of gathering resources to make a resource binder. I am glad to say that I put that resource binder to good use-by digging it out of storage and finding my little cue cards with songs on them.

I knew I had a catchy song to teach our expectations with the glue. I typed it up. Added some pretty clip art, printed it and then laminated it, and tomorrow morning we will hang it above our art cart-and teach it to the children.

So for my faithful readers: My very first freebie! It's  the poster I made! You can laminate it and hang it above your art centre, you can introduce it in your circle, or you can just get that little jingle stuck in your head and be singing it all day long (that will get the point across too!)

My clip art cred goes to Discovery School ! and I can't say whom gets credit for the cute little songs as I think it's just one of those cute little rhymes passed down for years! :)

Hope you enjoy it!

I'd love to share my place mat freebie with you too! Comment if you are interested in the place mat and if I get a few interested people-I would be happy to make that my next freebie!

Wish me luck cutting out 100 feet of laminated goodness.

Parent/Teacher Entry Conferences....

Well. A picture of me on my first day of kindergarten!

 

Everyone needs a picture on the first day of school right? ;)

We didn't have regular classes today in the Kindergarten room, as we have 2 days of Parent/Teacher Entry Conferences.

Basically this means-parents of our Junior Kinders come in with their child-meet both the teacher and I and go over some "stuff". This "stuff" consists of our policies on pick up, volunteer information (for any parents who are willing and able to volunteer with our class), pick up and drop off times, allergies, and basic information about their child.

These conferences also consisted of an assessment of where these JK's are at. Concepts of Print, whether speech should be addressed, and printing of their names.

The conference also allows us a quick peek into family dynamic, and their personalities!

We also opted to take a picture to document how tall they were when they started kindergarten! :) We kind of really have a frog theme going in our class this year! The frog's were a hit with the JK's who came in today. This is how we documented height:

 

 

This measured their height in a non standard form. Each child walked up to the frogs-stood beside them on the right hand side and we counted together "how many frogs tall" they were. At the end of the year we can have them stand back against our frogs and see how they have grown! Most exclaimed with "I'm 7 frogs tall mom!!" Completely adorable.

 

We also had them sign in. This was an easy way to get them to attempt to print their own names-without them feeling pressure or feeling like they were being tested.

 

We made a WELCOME TO KINDERGARTEN chart-where upon entering the room they were directed to "print their name" so we could see who is going to be in our class!

 

 

 

This gave us an idea of where they are at in terms of being able to print letters.

 

Every child who was in, was shown their cubby (I observed this to be one of the most exciting things for them. Each of them were excited to see they had their own cubby-with their name in it.)

 

We have more of these conferences tomorrow and then the real fun begins! :)

 

Looking forward to a fantastic year with our divas, our shy guys, our sassafrasses and our spitfires. :)

 

 



'Twas the night before kindergarten.....

After what has seemed like the longest half of a summer ever-it is the night before my first day of kindergarten. Kind of. :)

I hate to wish summer away-and I am more then grateful that I was able to spend hours and hours with my children and husby this August-BUT i have been counting down the days until tomorrow morning.

I am not sure if I explained this all to you before-but this career move is something that I have been working at for a long time. It started in my second year of post secondary at Fanshawe College. It was being whispered about in the ECE community that the government was thinking of instating Early Learning in Kindergarten classes-and I immediately got excited. As details emerged-the excitement grew. I graduated in 2005 and immediately got hired at a daycare-the program was not yet in schools. I worked for several years at the daycare-gaining experience. I supervised an After-School program, I worked with toddlers, infants and preschoolers, building my knowledge on early learning. I volunteered at 2 different schools in their kindergarten classes, I made connections, I worked on the casual list to get my name in the schools and to meet principals, I crossed my fingers hard and I worked harder to get an interview-and here I am! :)

I feel ready and excited to finally be doing what it is that I have dreamt of doing for the last 8 years.

I feel relief and excitement over the teacher I have been paired with. So far-we mesh well. We share many of the same opinions and thoughts on the program, and I think our strengths and weaknesses will compliment one another. I feel optimistic about our ability to allow these kinders to grow and learn through inquiry and play.

AND---I feel uber excited about this blog! Slowly-my numbers are growing. People are reading it! And it can't just be my mom-because no matter how much she loves me-she would not view my blog over 1000 times to read the same 6 posts! :) So that means-there are more of you!

I encourage and BEG you to keep coming back. I can't wait to share our class with you. I hope you take ideas from this blog-and use them in your own class-or with your own children. I also hope you share ideas with me :) I'd love to hear your thoughts on this blog. Comments excite me like nothing else :)

See you back here tomorrow with my full report on MY FIRST DAY OF KINDERGARTEN! :)

(We are meeting some of the sweet Junior Kinders and their parents tomorrow for Parent/Teacher Kindergarten Entry Conferences.)