An Amazing Journey: An Overview of Kindergarten
September 2010 – June 2011
A Teacher’s Reflections 5.17.11
Gathering on the blue rug in layers suitable for an outdoor excursion to Mill Creek, the kindergartners and I processed the morning’s disappointing news: due to a small streams flood watch posted earlier in the morning, our off-campus field trip had been cancelled. While we listened to the rain falling on the sidewalk outside our door, we contemplated our morning together: if not a school bus ride to the conservancy for a “River Ramble” workshop today, then what?
As a six year-old kindergartner playfully commented two weeks ago, kindergarten has a particular expertise and appreciation for “hatching ideas.” Perhaps that is why we are so fond of heating popcorn kernels until they explode for morning snack and just as curious to learn how the same kernels of corn on a wet paper towel in a zippered Ziploc bag soak up water, crack open, and “pop out roots.” Perhaps that explains why tiny caterpillars that emerge from pin-sized dots of eggs sustain our attention as they eat leaves, produce frass, and wiggle out of their dry skins. Most certainly it is reflected in how we look upon the monarch emerging from its chrysalis dangling from the screened terrarium and how we playfully land in the spirit of adventure when a morning’s hands-on lesson about milkweed ends with an invitation to explore the open, wild space and meadows of The Puddle. Whether we were raising money to plant a few Oyamel trees in the butterfly sanctuaries in Mexico by packaging mint, chives, and oregano to sell at the spring fair or initiating the construction of a water feature in our garden habitat, kindergartners have been actively engaged in constructing knowledge by sowing the seeds of possibility. Indeed, we have been hatching ideas all year long.
This particular Tuesday morning was no different. The class adeptly reached consensus to go outdoors to work on the creek that they had been digging in the salsa garden. Over the weekend I had purchased plastic sheeting to line the creek and had already requested and received permission to use a pile of river rocks we found on campus if needed in the event the children desired to continue their creek project. If the creek was created during a period of sustained rainfall the children predicted (earlier in the spring, we used a rain gauge to measure rainfall in our garden during sustained periods of rain and found a significant accumulation!), the creek bed would naturally fill with rain. Today seemed a perfect opportunity to get back to work.
Within minutes our class of ten six and seven year olds eagerly snapped up their rain coats, pulled hoods over their heads, stuffed socked feet into their boots, and traipsed up the boardwalk to the garden. We proceeded to unroll the liner that we predicted would slow down the water as it moved through the soil (many months ago we had discovered plastic lining under the sand in the sandbox and were experienced with the liner in the pond in the meadow). The children secured the liner with river rocks. Trekking back and forth from the rock pile to the garden and laying each rock purposefully into position, Wyatt, Mia, Megan, Max, Lindsay, Jared, Jacie, Eric, Christian, and Amina worked with shared vision to complete their morning project; the new water feature was in place by the time we went indoors.
While falling rain puddled in the low-lying portions of our creek we popped a bowl of yellow, red, and blue popcorn and watched the final chapters of The Incredible Journey of the Monarch Butterfly, a 2010 documentary on the migration and lifecycle of the monarch butterfly that we had been saving for a rainy day. While settling our bodies, our minds opened wide to the possibility of living creatures- two-legged, four-legged, no-legged, and winged-- making the garden a home. I smiled as the familiar sound of ideas hatching filled the room once again. “Maybe we should build a bridge,” a child suggested. “We could plant flowers for the butterflies, honeybees, and fairies so they can find food and have a beautiful place to live, “ another chimed in.
In the hands of children, I mused, so much is possible.
End of the Year Evaluation, Section 1: Individual and Community
Play is central to the socialization and emotional well being of children all over the world. While children grow accustomed to living scheduled lives, open-ended play naturally inspires and motivates children; it is a right of all children.
In kindergarten, it has been through peer play that children have learned how communication impacts outcomes. They have explored emergent ideas about fairness and justice and the consequences of choices, taking the perspectives of others, and relating to others through empathy and compassion. The children have made strides in learning to regulate their bodies and impulses, sustain attention in child-initiated play scenarios, and develop new skills as creative, resourceful problem-solvers who share resources, cope with disappointment effectively, and take responsibility for both words and actions.
During the kindergarten year, structured time in the daily schedule for open-ended, child-initiated activities was an essential component of every child’s daily experience. The intentional design of a curriculum that includes Cooperative Play offers children an opportunity to direct their own learning in areas of the classroom designed to inspire, motivate, and engage children in an areas of their affinities. Supervised, open-ended outdoor play was also an essential component of every child’s day in school.
Throughout the year we have gathered as a whole class to share conversations about our relationships with one another. By talking about problems that arise (sometimes at the Ice Cream Cone peace-making cushions, sometimes in Meetings for Community on the blue rug) and by acknowledging our feelings and affirming our humanity, we have learned to work together to create possibilities that work for everyone and reflect a sense of community. Sharing classroom jobs, engaging in whole group cooperative projects, and being in service to others were an important focus for students and teachers in bringing to life the Quaker tenets of simplicity, peace, integrity, community, equality, and stewardship.
End of the Year Evaluation, Section 2: Language and Literacy
In kindergarten, children have made great strides as young storytellers, writers, and readers.
Our kindergartners began each day by reading Morning Messages building skills of emerging readers. Kindergartners are invited to practice story telling during the day in a variety of contexts, including social play, shared meal times, whole class meetings (Meeting for Sharing, Meeting for Learning), and Treasures Sharing. During Reading Buddies, children read independently, one-on-one with a teacher, or shoulder-to-shoulder with a peer.
With beautifully crafted picture books for children displayed in eye-catching ways throughout the classroom for booklook and siesta time, just right leveled books readily available in individual Reading Buddies bags for Meeting for Learning, and read aloud story time every day, the experience of kindergarten resonates with a love for reading that propels children forward as life-long readers. Students develop a love of narrative, an ability to comprehend, and a powerful motive for reading often even before they can read independently. During Meeting for Learning, books came alive as we absorbed brilliant stories and discussed techniques of authors and illustrators of both fiction and non-fiction children’s literature. From our favorite Mo Willems’ characters (which now include Country Frog and City Dog, Knuffle Bunny, Elephant and Piggy, and the lovable pigeon of Willems’ pigeon stories) to recipe books, field guides, picture books, dictionaries, online references, poetry and rhyming books, and favorite chapter books (especially the My Fathers’ Dragon series and Charlotte’s Web), kindergartners have been inspired by books and conversations about books. Baskets and child-sized bookshelves overflow with both library and classroom book collections in all areas of the classroom; books are a part of everything we do and are accessible throughout the day for spontaneous as well as scheduled booklook and story time.
Additional literacy-based activities in kindergarten included but were not limited to: phonemic awareness games and activities, Alphabet Soup sharing days (exploration of initial sounds in words), introduction to sight words and decoding strategies for independent reading, re-telling stories using pictures as clues, making predictions and connections (book to self, book to book, book to world), and exploring thematic content of stories including a kids’ theater project in the fall with Sam Swope’s Gotta Go! Gotta Go!
Kindergartners have engaged in the writing process as authors and illustrators; while expanding storytelling in the ever-evolving use of line, shape, and space on a page, kindergartners have also begun to use print. Kindergartners explored ways of recording ideas on paper with drawings and print as a whole class (teacher models the process) as well as in their independent work (children choose writing materials, work on their own ideas). Practice as writers this year has included whole class brainstorming sessions too in which the teacher acted as the scribe and guided the class in composing and recording their ideas in print.
Our young authors and illustrators have been introduced to sound spelling (listening to sounds in words; writing first, ending, and medial sounds) and other strategies for using print such as copying words in the classroom and asking peers for help. They have been introduced to ways that authors/illustrators record stories in several parts across several pages. As authors themselves, kindergarteners have explored the recording of stories in pre-stapled booklets. They have practiced telling and writing stories with a beginning, middle, and ending in layers of representation using line, shape, and color. The children have journals to record their experiences, feelings, dreams, and ideas about the world around and have derived joy in this open-ended opportunity for written self-expression. Child-directed choices to draw and write increased tremendously with the gift of the spiral bound notebooks, the establishment of a new, cozier writing and reading area in the classroom and an open invitation to use these special materials throughout the day for drawing and writing.
Kindergartners have practiced writing stories from their lives using symbols, numerals, letters, words, and to represent elements of their stories (including speech bubbles, thinking bubbles, title pages, arrows to show movement, numerals to show sequence, close-up features etc.) and are growing in their abilities to sustain writing for extended periods of time. Through our shared experience writing activities our kindergartners made real-life connections to writing as a craft and building on techniques in their independent work that were initially modeled by a teacher. Our young authors and illustrators favored an atmosphere for writing that was social; kindergartners shared ideas with their peers, asked questions of one another, modeled each other’s writing, and yet every child’s unique voice and perspective as an author and illustrator was consistently reflected in his/her work.
End of the Year Evaluation, Section 3: Math
The Math Trailblazers curriculum offers kindergarten teachers a foundation for supporting emerging interests of children with math across many areas of the curriculum, including (but not limited to) science. As young observers of the natural world, inquisitive and curious by nature, our kindergartners have whole-heartedly embraced opportunities to learn about math in meaningful ways both indoors and outdoors. Kindergartners have had first-hand experience applying math to real life with math and science tools, such as thermometers, tape measures, and measuring cups and spoons. These last items were invaluable during cooking projects. Kindergartners are consistently engaged with math concepts during snack time as well. With many math manipulatives and games (including our personal counting boxes), we practiced making tallies, sorting objects into groups, creating patterns, and telling mathematical stories. We have worked with part/whole, practiced counting, made and read graphs in teacher-led math workshop settings as well as independent explorations.
While working with 10-frames, counting the days of school, using a calendar and weather graph, and playing math games have supported the development of math skills, math work is visible in other areas of the kindergarten experience. Kindergartners learn through teachable moments, for example, about symmetry, as it appears in a Lego design or in a tower in the block-building corner and at the art table when cutting out a snowflake or Mexican Papel Picado on folded paper.
Some of our connections to math emerged with child-initiated use of the tools of a scientist to collect information (clipboards, paper, pencils, thermometers, measuring tools) in nature corner discoveries or outdoors in the real world. On the blue rug, learning the rules of play in a card or board game, working with puzzles, or initiating play spontaneously with math manipulatives, children made connections to math concepts and exercised mathematical vocabulary in meaningful ways. Cooking projects and gardening projects bring to life mathematical concepts such as order and sequencing, measurement, and change over time, in addition to providing a natural link to other areas of the curriculum such as writing, reading, and science through record-keeping and mathematical storytelling.
End of the Year Evaluation, Section 4: Thematic and Experiential Learning (Environmental Education, Social Studies)
In kindergarten, multi-sensory, hands-on activities and project-based learning offered children the possibility of learning through the experience of being kindergartners. With thematic and experiential learning, teachers introduced children to ideas that brought about extended opportunities to make discoveries about the world. In many cases, children’s responses to teacher-inspired themes or projects led to further study as a class (emergent learning).
Kindergarten had first hand experience this past fall hand-raising monarch butterflies in screened terrariums in the classroom. We witnessed the wonder of nature as expressed in egg, caterpillar, chrysalis, and butterfly; whenever a monarch began to emerge from its chrysalis, all activity in the classroom would cease and ten pair of eyes would fix on the dark body wiggling out of the transparent cuticle. To learn more about the life of the southward migration of the monarch butterflies to overwintering sites in Mexico we participated in Monarch Watch's fall tagging program, adhering tiny numbered stickers to the wing of each butterfly before releasing it in to the monarch meadows. Again this year kindergarten participated in Journey South's symbolic migration pen pal project with children in Canada and Mexico. At the same time we released live butterflies, kindergarten sent paper butterflies to children who live in or near the sanctuaries in Mexico. Our butterflies (decorated after we had a lesson on symmetry) contained messages of friendship to the children who eagerly awaited the return of the monarchs to their schoolyards. To celebrate the arrival of the monarchs to the overwintering sites in Mexico on November 1, Dia De Los Muertos kindergarten made monarch winged headbands and hiked to the Osage orange Climbing Tree (our symbolic oyamel tree) on the campus of Haverford College for a special morning snack of fruits and fruit nectar. Kindergarten planted ten milkweed plants in the meadows around The Puddle, our certified Monarch Way station.
The outdoor classroom at Friends School Haverford inspired child-directed exploration and discovery in many ways that transformed our learning. We loved finding out about seeds and opening seedpods of all kinds. In our schoolyard, we found oregano seeds popping out of dried stalks, milkweed seeds floating on white cotton-like tufts, black walnuts and acorns falling from the branches of trees nearby. We harvested tomatoes and peppers to make fresh salsa and homemade tomato pizza pies and collected little seeds to view under magnification. We collected different seeds from the apples we used for pressing applesauce, our jack-o-lantern at Halloween, the oranges used to make fresh squeezed orange juice and the kernels of popcorn we love to explode in the air-popper for snack. This fall our thematic and experiential learning took us to Lower Merion Conservancy for a Pennsylvanian woodland hike and lesson on seed dispersal.
When winter drew near and the first signs of frost appeared, kindergarteners were intrigued. Over the next few weeks, as the temperatures slowly dropped outdoors, we began growing sugar crystals in jars in our classroom, examined rock crystals under magnification, and marched around the playground on cold sunny mornings looking at ice crystals (frost) under magnifying lenses. Cold rainy days filled our sand box toys with small amounts of water that helped us find out how frozen water takes the shape of the containers it's in until the temperatures rise and the warm sun melts the ice. When snow began falling this winter we found great joy in being outdoors catching snowflakes in our hands or on the sleeves of our jackets and examining their shapes; could we find two that matched, we wondered? We sculpted with snow, engineered icehouses with large chunks of re-frozen snow, tracked footprints of a fox along the edge of our playground, and filled the bird feeders for the cardinals and sparrows. Extended periods of snow, freezing temperatures, and timely spring thaw made measuring changes in temperatures a meaningful activity for our kindergartners this year who used both Fahrenheit and Celsius scales to measure increments of five and ten degrees.
We sometimes observed with binoculars and magnifying lenses but more often with bare hands and open minds. We explored every corner of our playground garden and when the first signs of spring appeared, we were there. The bunnies (born in the Salsa Garden last summer) hopped out of the hole under the boardwalk ramp the same week we read about differences between migration and hibernation. Milkweed began appearing in The Puddle meadows and by the middle of April four inch stems of mint, chives, and oregano appeared above the soil. Fairy houses popped up numerous places on the playground, reflecting kindergarten's love and appreciation for gifts of the natural world (acorns, twigs, blossoms, seeds, pebbles, colorful leaves, diverse tree bark, puddles, and curiosities such as holes in leaves, praying mantis egg sacs, lost-n-found feathers, frozen chunks of ice that formed in water-filled buckets, and even a sun-loving, bellowing bullfrog this spring), creativity, imagination, and resourcefulness. Kindergartners constructed life-size stick houses with intricate connections of I, T, and Y-shaped sticks until a heavy rain and windstorm blew through one night.
With the help of the fairies, kindergartners planted a rainbow of flowers that will bloom throughout the summer and dispersed seeds for nectar sources for butterflies, hummingbirds, and honeybees in the meadow (these activities inspired by two of our favorite children’s books: Planting a Rainbow and Miss Rumphius). Integrating what they had learned about providing a habitat that includes food, shelter, and water for living things, kindergarten created a water feature through the Salsa Garden with a liner, river rocks, and boards for a small bridge. We created Xiang Bao silk necklaces too with the fragrant leaves of the mint, the beautiful petals of our Sunset Honeysuckle vine and our large sprays of purple headed chives; in China children wear Xiang Bao necklaces to protect them from things that are frightening to children.
As mulberry leaves opened on the tree and tiny caterpillars hatched from the silkworm eggs in a small cup in our classroom, our beloved Friends School Haverford tradition of hand-raising silkworm moths began. Kindergartners studied the behavior of caterpillars in clear-cup habitats, raising them on mulberry leaves, making observations of their growth patterns and eating habits over time, and finally, experiencing the wonder of transformation of the final two life stages. The kindergartners vocabulary expanded with words such as frass, larva, pupa, and cocoon. We examined earthworms and read non-fiction books about earthworms as we grew to appreciate important differences between earthworms and caterpillars. Lily Toy Hong's book The Empress and the Silk Moth stirred our interest in our silkworms even further: more than 5,000 years ago, no one outside of China new the secret of the origins of silk but now, even we know! Our silkworm caterpillars once wild but now completely domesticated create the very same silk cocoons that are harvested on silk farms around the world. We began raising monarchs again, too. We used maps on Journey North's website to follow the generational migration of the monarchs as the milkweed emerged across the Gulf States and northward. This spring our focus was on the life cycle (and the similarities and differences thereof) between moths and butterflies. While both moths and butterflies achieve complete metamorphosis we learned about the differences in the life stages, body parts, and behavior of these insects. After caring for our caterpillars for several weeks, we responded to the emergence of completely different life forms from the cocoons and chrysalides with great celebration!
Throughout the year, all kindergartners practiced recycling used paper and plastic containers and collected fruit and vegetable scraps from their lunches for our compost bin. Inspired by Capri Sun juice container pouches made by last year’s first graders, kindergarten continued the tradition for the Kindergarten Rocks! Booth at the spring fair that featured our beloved hand-painted Kindergarten Rocks!, garden pebbles, and this year (for the first time at Friends School Haverford) packages of mint, oregano, and chives from our spring harvest in the salsa garden. Proceeds from our service learning projects sold at the fair will enable our kindergartners to support the reforestation efforts underway in Mexico in the butterfly sanctuaries this year with the planting of ten oyamel trees.
Our kindergarten year wrapped up with a lemonade stand project and a children’s celebration (beach style) of the inspiring life story of a woman surfer who captured our hearts and minds with her courage and her athleticism. Our Keepsake Box Day, a long-standing and beloved tradition of the FSH kindergarten program was a special time for affirmation and celebration. Creating a portfolio featuring work from an entire year in kindergarten in a freshly-decorated pizza box was as much fun to create and fill as it was to unpack and share with parents this past June as we said good-bye for the summer.
Our classroom blog called “Kindergarten Connections” highlights our winter and spring thematic learning activities and is available indefinitely at http://award-fshk.blogspot.com/. Access to all photos of kindergarten activities can be garnered by navigating the blog; simply click on the photos published on the blog and photo folders stored in Picasa web albums will open. Photos may be downloaded to your computer desktop from this site.
