Kindergarten Newsflash!

On Friday, February 24, kindergarten received a wonderful surprise! A package arrived from American School Foundation's kindergarten class and Tr. Erin in Mexico City.

A few months ago our kindergarten class made a friendship book for David to give as a gift to his cousin Natalie's kindergarten class at American School Foundation in Mexico City when he and his family traveled to Mexico over winter break. FSH kindergarten was excited about David's trip because of all the many wonderful connections we've made to Mexico this year as we've journeyed to Mexico "on the wings of the monarchs."

It's not often that a kindergarten classmate has an opportunity to take on the role of an ambassador of friendship from one school to another but that is exactly what David did! David visited Tr. Erin's kindergarten, greeted the kindergartners, and presented our friendship book to the class.

Upon his return to Pennsylvania, David worked on a slideshow about his trip to Mexico City and his visit to ASF. For Treasures Sharing one day, David and his dad showed us the slideshow and digital book about their trip to Mexico.

We found out that David's visit and our class' book of friendship inspired Tr. Erin and her class to make a book for our class. We were so excited to open the package when it finally arrived that we came in early from outdoor play to open it together.


When we opened it last Friday we took a "first look" at the book and read a short note Tr. Erin had enclosed. Yesterday we read the book, looked at the photos of the children, and studied the details of the children's drawings.

Tr. Erin's class wrote about things they like to do and as we read the book aloud page by page, FSH kindergartners got very, very excited. FSH kindergartners discovered that they like to do the same kinds of things the children at ASF do!

As the kindergartners made a connection with each child and his/her page in the book, the miles between ASF and FSH seemed to magically disappear. By the end of the book we decided that if we were to meet and play with one another, we would definitely get along and have a lot of fun.

However, as long as there are thousands of miles between our two classrooms and schools we decided, we will have to figure out other ways of being friends. Teacher Erin and Teacher Ann are already emailing to make plans for ASF and FSH kindergarten classes to chat via Skype from our classrooms next week!

Stay tuned for updates!

Emerging curriculum: What is a rock? a crystal? a mineral?

Four kindergartners presented "clipboard research" to the class today. During booklook a few weeks ago Danny, David, James, and Aidan began studying several non-fiction books in our classroom on rocks, crystals, and minerals. They marked favorite pages with book marks and made drawings on their clipboards about their interests. The four of them and I met last week to develop ideas on the topic to share with the class. Today they shared their ideas and invited others to join in with clipboard research of their own! Our research is supported with two bins of books that our research team signed out from the library . We have books about rocks, crystals, minerals, volcanoes, snowflakes, and fossils.





Mason took the initiative to bring his rock collection to school for Treasures Sharing. He introduced every rock to us and described the textures, colors, and shapes of the rocks in his collection with gusto. He talked to us about how he started his rock collection by looking for rocks himself, receiving them as gifts, and visiting places and buying them where they are for sale. Later on the playground Mason demonstrated how to start a rock collection by looking for rocks. He started a rock collection with Matthew in an empty egg carton.





One of our project ideas is to find out about crystals by "growing" one of our own. We researched "growing your own sugar crystal" on the internet. We found a recipe that matched the illustrations in one of our books. The class watched the video and then worked in small groups to make sugar syrup for the cyrstal project.


Add 3 cups sugar....



....to one cup of water. Mix until dissolved and heat to a rolling boil. (Teacher Ann did this part for us on the stove!)



Add a few drops of food color to change the bland sugar water to a beautiful rose-colored syrup...


...and pour it into a large jar. We are growing our sugar crystals on skewers and will be checking them everyday through the transparent sides of the jar. It is fun to imagine the crystals that will form over the next two weeks! We wonder what they will look like and taste like. Stay tuned for updates!

Our First Field Trip 11.11.11

A field trip holds many delights for kindergartners. From the bus ride to the fun of being outdoors in the natural classroom with Tr. Lindsay under beautifully blue skies, there was something new at every turn. Eating snack outdoors and playing a fast-paced game of Shadow Tag added something special to the morning, too.

With Tr. Lindsay leading, we hiked on meandering paths and stopped occasionally under trees to search the ground for leaves and seeds. We kept an eye open for various colors and shapes of fall leaves as we hiked. We found many things to pick up and look at along the way including robust earthworms hiding under the fallen leaves.

Thanks go out to our parent volunteers and to Tr. Lindsay for leading our Pennsylvanian woodland hike today!

Nov. 1 and Nov. 2: Our Ofrenda

After viewing a slideshow about Dias De Los Muertos that Tr. Ann wrote earlier this week, we were very excited about today's project: setting up the kindergarten ofrenda. Each kindergartner collected the special things that he/she made by hand last week and added his/her pieces to the ofrenda table positioned under the papel picado banner in the center of our classroom.





Our ofrenda is as colorful as it is sparkly. It is covered with brightly-decorated sugar skulls, tissue paper flowers, tin art butterfly decorations, chili peppers, silk flowers, fruit, candles and candleholders, Mexican pottery, and photos and drawings of loved ones who are no longer with us. We made glittery frames for photos of our monarchs, too!

After our ofrenda was complete we gathered for snack with the lights off so we could enjoy the ofrenda for a time of remembrance in candlelight as is traditional in Mexico. For morning snack we shared round loaves of pan de muertos (a traditional sweet bread of Dias de Los Muertos) and warm tortillas that were made at Tortilleria San Roman the same morning in Phildelphia! (Muchas gracias, Daniel, for the extra special delivery this morning!)

A surprise visitor shares stories from Mexico!

On Wednesday, October 26 David's dad Daniel came to kindergarten today to talk to us about Mexico and what it was like to grow up in Mexico City. David had great time helping his dad with the slideshow presentation. Daniel's stories really got us thinking about Mexico in new ways!

Daniel returned to kindergarten the following week to help us make sugar skulls for our ofrenda.

Working in small groups we mixed sugar, water, and meringue powder together in big bowls and then scooped and packed the mixture in to molds to form the shape of the sugar skull. One by one the skulls were tapped out of their molds and left to dry.





To recreate the colorful and intricately decorated Dias De Los Muertos sugar skulls made by Mexican artists we squeezed colorful icing out of the tips of plastic bags and added colorful candies to our sugar skulls once they had dried.







The shared experience of making sugar skulls together provides not only an opportunity to learn through the process of cooking and creating edible art but a fantastic foundation on which to practice the art of storytelling! Be sure to ask your kindergartner to tell you all about making sugar skulls for our Dias De Los Muertos ofrenda!