Building literacy in kindergarten looks like...

San'i practices printing in a sand tray with his dominant hand. Sensory work helps create neural connections in our brains as we learn!

Jay works at sand tray attending to the direction of the continuous curve and size difference of uppercase and lowercase letter U. We use the  Handwriting Without Tears program in kindergarten.

Thatcher demonstrates writing position with three finger grasp of his "writing hand" and position of non-dominant "helping hand."

Kindergartners strengthen language skills and imagination as storytellers during pretend play. Today they are role-playing "Chinese Restaurant" with the "loose parts" (props) that they found in the pretend play area. They are acting out agreed upon roles in a story they created together. Creative problem-solving is a hallmark of social play and spurs language development.

 

 

Ella and Duncan are practicing spelling complex words with jewels. How do you play? Choose an object from the Alphabet Soup Bucket, say the name of the object aloud, listen for the sounds/sound parts (phonemes) in the word, and represent each sound/ sound part (phoneme) with jewels. Later on, translate your jewels into letters!

Michael works on a "shared experience"journal entry. He works as author and illustrator recording an activity we did with thermometers.  A written record of an authentic and meaningful, hands-on. thematic. and collaborative endeavor promotes writing in the context of the real world.. Young children love sharing their work with peers and teachers alike.

Structured board games and card games are very effective ways to build many skills at once! In this photo kindergartners are playing a matching game with sounds and letter cards. Besides letter work, what else do you think they are working on with Teacher Ben?

Bookflix is a lot of fun!  Cecilia is at "Tech Buddies" during Cooperative Play listening and reading along with a book of her choice. Both fiction and non-fiction books are available for children in an easy to navigate format.  Sign on from home and enjoy Bookflix today! (Username: fhaverford  Password: bookflix)

Anna and Lina follow their own initiative as authors and illustrators during Cooperative Play.  Many kindergartners love making cards, notes, drawings, and books on their own during Cooperative Play. Playful endeavors in areas of a child's affinity inspire imagination, nurture sustained focus and attention to task, and at the writing desk, affirm a child's sense of herself as a writer.

 Tuesday, January 23

As it happens every January, the weather inspired our work with thermometers this week.  While we tried to understand how water turns to ice in containers on the sidewalk outside our backdoor, indoors we had an introduction to the use of a thermometer. We took our thermometers on and indoor-outdoor walk through the school to observe the rise and fall of the red liquid in the tube in our thermometers. It was very exciting as the differences between the temperature of the air indoors and the temperature of the air outdoors fluctuated greatly.  We focused on collecting information about the temperature with our thermometers by paying close attention to the position of the red in the tube and the numbers alongside the tube.   Some children reported  that the liquid "goes down" outdoors and "goes up" indoors.  Some reported the opposite.  Students practiced reading numerals on both the Celsius and Fahrenheit scales on their thermometers:  "When the red liquid in the tube stops moving, what number is it closest to?" teachers asked.

We found a thermometer outside the third grade classroom that looked a lot like ours.  The temperature on the thermometer on the building was different than on our thermometers Duncan observed.  "It could be," said Duncan, "because the other thermometer is outdoors all the time and in the shade."

Wednesday, January 23

Kindergarten worked with the thermometers again today, taking what we learned the day before and stretching a bit further.  We measured the temperature of water today instead of air and learned how to position the thermometer for an accurate reading. After measuring a cup of warm water, we added ice cubes, making the water colder. We watched carefully as the water got colder: which way did the red liquid in the tube move?  What temperature did the thermometer measure in warm water?  How about in cold water?  How are the two temperatures different?  Why?  The room was a buzz of excitement as children shared their observations with one another and with their teachers.

Later, kindergarten received Winter Journals to begin writing and journaling about our work with the thermometers.  When we do a group project and all take part in the same activity we call these activities "shared experiences."  In a shared experience, we all work with the same materials (more or less) and learn from one another as the experience unfolds. Journaling about shared experiences is different than writing workshop.  Here, we are all practicing writing and drawing on the same topic though independently we decide what we are going to record in our own journal entries.  We apply many skills across the curriculum to the task of recording shared experiences.  Today, many students drew pictures of thermometers and worked on representing the details of the experience with pencils and crayons and word and number labels.

Be sure to stay tuned for updates!

 Tuesday,  January 22

Covered from head to toe in winter gear,  our five and six year-olds happily spent time outdoors today on the first "snowy" school day of the 2012-2013 school year!

 

 

Jay discovered the light dusting of snow was a perfect place to do some writing and drawing!

  
Thatcher says "Look at my snow butterfly, Teacher Ann! It's like an angel except it's a butterfly!"

Cecilia and friends make an awesome discovery about speed on a snow-covered slide...what do you think it was?

Thursday, January 25

On a very cold morning in January we unpacked our "just right" Reading Buddies books from our individual bags. We all chose a place of our own to sit and read aloud.  We practiced a "book walk" and studied the pictures in our books for clues about our books. We practiced matching spoken word to printed word by following with our "reading finger."  When we found a word we didn't know, we practiced using the illustration as a clue.  Teacher Ann explained ta couple of things that great readers do: we can look at the first sound in a word to figure it out, we can say all the sounds of the letters of the word and blend the sounds together until we "hear" the word,  and we can try and figure out the unknown word by the context of the entire sentence.

 

Teacher Ben conferred with several children today during Reading Buddies.  Kindergartners are learning that during a Reading Buddies conference, sharing your books with a teacher can be fun. You can also have help with words you don't know. You can also talk about how the book connects to other books you read, to your life, or to other things you know about in the world all around you. You can laugh together about what's funny or be surprised together when something unexpected happens on the last page!\

Three cheers for our young readers!

Melting ice, frozen carrots, and an expieriment...

Wednesday, January 16

We returned to school today and checked our tray of ice but wait, the tray is filled with water!

And at snack A Very Curious Thing Happened...again!

 

This morning we we discovered the ice from our water pitchers melted completely overnight; all that was left was a tray of water!  At snack today we discovered that the carrots (cleaned and packed in water several days ago) were frozen solid in a chunk of water.  We tipped out the chunk of carrot-ice and checked it throughout the day.  We noticed the carrots became loose and the ice started melting.  We observed that the ice was melting but the carrots were not.   We checked on the containers of water we filled yesterday and set outdoors on the sidewalk in hopes that it was cold enough to make ice.  We are not sure why but our containers outside on the sidewalk did not have ice-only water.  We plan to check again tomorrow.

                                         

     

Update: Thursday, January 17

This morning we checked our containers.  The water is cold but there is no ice.  We found out the water is cold because we tested it with our fingers.  We agreed to keep the containers on the trays on the sidewalk for a while longer.

Update: Tuesday, January 22 

Our containers are filled with ice!  The ice is cold and solid. Water that leaked out of three containers has frozen solid on the trays.  The other containers are frozen into the ice on the tray. Robin noticed that a leaf got frozen into the ice that was covering the bottom of the trays.

Update: Thursday, January 24

After siesta today we brought our trays of ice indoors and passed the containers around the circle.  As soon as we brought it indoors we noticed that the ice began to melt. Every container that had had water in it now had ice in it. Larger containers we observed had larger chunks of ice.  Smaller containers had smaller chunks of ice. The containers that leaked water were completely dry. We observed that the ice was shaped differently from container to container.  Shapes of the ice chunks were a perfect match to the container it was formed in.  Teacher Ann introduced the words "liquid" and "solid" as we thought about how our water changed to ice.  Based on our experiments with our thermometers earlier this week, we think that the water changed to ice when the temperature outdoors "went down."  It snowed a little bit this week, too. That gives us a clue that the temperature "went down."  If temperature goes "down" far enough we think water will freeze and so will rain.

Teacher Ann and Thatcher came  up with an idea; we could continue exploring the differences between liquid states and solid states by using containers that all hold water without leaking and try again to make ice. We could vary the project by adding small toys from the classroom into our containers. Thatcher pointed out that we should put the toys in the cups first and then fill the cups so the "water won't overflow." 

Kindergarten had fun getting ready. We used all kinds of small toys from the classroom for this experiment.  Some children noticed they had materials that floated, others noticed they used materials that sank. We used glass marbles and jewels, plastic math manipulatives, pennies, plastic Bingo  dots, small stones, plastic insects, Legos, and shells.  Before we left for the day we put our cups of water and toys outdoors on the sidewalk. We are excited to see what happens!