TCPS Kindergarten

So often, we as teachers need to let the students lead the way down the path to learning. As this kindergarten class grows in their thinking, we are able to head down paths that typically are left for older students.

During our reading/ language arts time recently, we started off the period by listing various nouns and verbs. After creating a sizable list, we took our words and turned them into sentences. One student gave us a sentence about “meeting some meat”. This sentence led us to talk about homophones. We then started listing all the words we could think of that sound the same but are spelled differently. I was amazed at the list the class created. We ran out of space on the whiteboard!

Anything can be turned into a toy when you are in Kindergarten.

Recently, the kindergartners have started collecting water bottle tops. I find them everywhere; in their pockets, in cubbies, on the floor, the list goes on and on. I asked one of the students why he had five bottle tops in his pocket the other day and he said they were his “rollers”.

At this point I started to pay more attention to these “rollers.” The students don’t just roll them on the ground. They have created a number of games to play with their bottle tops. I watch them throw the tops up a slide to see how far they will go when they come down.
I see them race them on the black top or bounce them off a wall.

It is a powerful thing to see the imaginations of so many children in action. Just think of all they will accomplish as they grow.

The eggs hatched, the tadpoles grew, and the adult grass frogs have entered our environment. We finished creating our frog models early this week. Come by the classroom and see the latest addition.

We had a great opportunity this week. Thanks to Cassie (6th grade), our class was able to watch a butterfly be released. We were studying the life cycle of moths and butterflies, so the kindergartners were very excited to see the chrysalis and the adult butterfly. They were interested to find that butterflies are less likely to fly when the environment is noisy. The students all sat very still and waited for the butterfly to fly away. What a wonderful experience!

Welcome back everyone!

We are experiencing many changes in the Kindergarten classroom this week. We said goodbye to Ms. Price, who is now teaching first grade, and hello to Mrs. Howard.

I will be taking over as the head kindergarten teacher and Mrs. Howard will be in every Monday – Thursday to assist. I am so pleased that our wonderfully adaptable students have welcomed Mrs. Howard so effortlessly.

I am looking forward to a great rest of the year.

Mrs. Mao

We have continued to fit in short periods to dissect more of our bird nest (See our Comfy little nest from March 8th) … our count for the fiber-like strands is up to 629!  We also counted and tallied 20 twigs, 19 leaves, 4 longish pieces of ribbon, 1 tiny feather, 6 pieces of yarn, 3 pieces of string, and quite a few clumps of cotton-like stuffing.  The number of pieces of material is awe-inspiring, but the way the fibers were all woven so tightly together is… beyond amazing!  And this feat was not accomplished with ten deft little fingers, but with a beak!

After our week of spring break, we will see how many more pieces we can count! Keep watching!

Noticing the number of school days today, I asked, “What other number would have three of the same numerals?”  One kindergartner volunteered, “Two, two, two,” and then read it correctly, “Two hundred twenty two!”   Many more examples followed… 666,  999,  555,  and  888.  Then someone wanted to do “billions!”  I gave a little support as the class read “8,888,888,888!”  Big numbers are really fun to read. 

We have been talking about nests. Most birds make nests.  We learned that there are two jobs in making a nest- collecting the materials and putting the materials together into the shape of the nest.  The books we read so far did not tell us how long it takes, but they told us sometimes birds have to go quite a distance to find the kind of mud or other material they need.

Birds use natural materials and sometimes some man-made materials.  After we thought of some of the things they might use, we did some detective work.  We began to dissect a nest.  This was a nest one of our afterschool classes found in the park.  It had fallen out of a tree and was empty. 

First we looked at it and estimated how many pieces of material it took to make the nest.  Students gave estimates from 90 up to 200.  After we dissected during one science period, we look at the pieces we had pulled out and the pieces we had left.  (We had counted well over 200 pieces!) Everyone changed his/her estimates.  Estimates are guesses… but they are not wild guesses; they are guesses based on your observations and experience.  Once we had the experience of starting to dissect, our estimates were adjusted… Now they range from 1,000 to 2,000.  We could see there were many more pieces left than pieces we had counted.

Ask your kindergartener what kinds of things we found!

During the last month or so we have observed many birds from the Natural History Museum and from resource books. The astute members of our class have noticed many ways all birds are alike and detailed differences among birds.  This week we talked about adaptation.

Students said that birds live in different places and eat different foods and “do different things”… and so birds need to have the feet and beaks that “suit” (student word) them.  Students practiced matching an activity (”grab food” or “swim” or “walking up a tree trunk”)  to the feet that work best for the activity.  They also matched beaks to the type of food a bird eats (cracking seeds, water plants and creatures, nectar).  What excellent reasoning skills!

Today we celebrated our 100th day of Kindergarten.  During our handwriting practice, we took “dictation” just like upper graders do.  We wrote our name and date on our paper.  Then we wrote “Today is the 100th day of school at TCPS.”  We talked about what punctuation we use at the end of a sentence.  Since our sentence was NOT a question, we decided we could use a period or an exclamation point.  Each person made her/his own decision about what punctuation to use.  Students have the option of adding some glitter to the announcement before they take it home!