It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Winter...

This week we examined landscape art, focusing on the work of Grandma Moses.  We discussed how objects in the front were bigger and had more detail than in the back, and how there were many layers in the land.  I introduced the idea of foreground, middle ground and background, and shared the differences between them.  Inspired by Grandma Moses' landscapes, we created our own wintry scene. First, we created layers in the land that set up the foreground and middle ground.  We then created our evening sky.  Finally, using construction paper we constructed trees and buildings. Notice that many students applied the illusion that objects in the middle ground were smaller than in the foreground.

Painting the foreground and middle ground

Adding an evening sky

Cutting trees and building in different sizes

We used this landscape as our inspiration, by Grandma Moses

Math and Art Turkey Style!

A continuous theme in mathematics is that it is all based on patterns.  Young children learn about patterns by creating repeating chains, like red, blue, red, blue, etc. Every mathematical concept has some element of a pattern, whether it is repeating, growing, shrinking, or doing a combination. Today, we talked about the pattern block shapes and how they are called polygons; shapes that have sides and corners. We then used the shapes to create a growing pattern, starting from the middle and working outwards. Concepts of symmetry were also explored.  The challenge then came in when I had the students recreate their pattern using pattern block stickers.  This required a bit of visual spatial processing, and everyone was successful.  Here is the finished product and how they worked through it.

Integrated Studies

Research has supported for years that young children learn best through experiential learning; learning by doing.  That is why in our pre-k-k classes you will see blocks, a kitchen, dollhouse, etc. They act out their personal experiences while learning how to problem solve and cooperate with others. In addition, their learning needs to be RELEVANT.  Our integrated studies give the students a context for the importance of many math, science and social studies skills.  All these experiences and mini-lessons on specific skills allow the students to understand the world in which they will someday be in charge of, and to ask questions about things that are unfamiliar or don't make sense.

Here's an example of how it all ties together for open-ended, experiential learning:

We are studying the idea of community.  I have showed them different types and given them the correct terms: rural, suburban, and urban.  On the bus to a play in Seattle, the students were identifying landmarks and buildings and determining that it was an urban community.  Back in the classroom, we begin making our own community, thinking about certain elements such as providing a service or selling goods, business hours, marketing, pricing, etc.

With that, we had to start thinking about money.  We use money everyday in our lives, and we will want to make money at our businesses right?  So, I conduct several mini-lessons that introduce coins and their values and begin to make different combinations for one price.

Finally, we have been cooped up in the class with all this rain!  So, I asked them, "Where does the rain come from?"  The rain plays a huge factor in our communities based on opportunities for outdoor fun, infrastructure with roads, pipes, etc.  Each child had an excellent hypothesis to share as we begin examining the properties of water.  Here are some of their responses:

AL: I think it comes from little vapor.
VM: I think the clouds and sun make ice and falls as rain.
ZK, YK, RH: The clouds make rain.
MK: I think water goes to the sky, turns to clouds, then it rains.

Today we did a game where we were a water droplet. They traveled between the Earth and sky.  Throughout many were beginning to wonder...Why do I stay in the ocean so long? and Why can't I stay in the clouds? (The colored beads represent where they have traveled to.)

And just when you think we are done, I circle back around in a different way.  In the community, the students love writing letters to each other, so we wrote letters and had a postmaster visit us.  Many of the students were surprised to learn that mail can be delivered by boat (ferry boats), planes, bikes and even horses back in the days! Look in your mailbox over the next few days to see who wrote your child a letter!

My overall goal with all of this?  I don't expect them to remember every new vocabulary word, and I don't believe in giving them piles of worksheets that have them cutting and pasting pictures, or filling in the blanks. Rather, I hope that these experiences make their way into dinner conversations, and encourage students to continue to be careful observers and thoughtful scientists as they continue to discover the world around them.

Fall is in the Air

We have been busy observing and discovering the world around us as the seasons change! After a walk in the neighborhood observing nature, several questions popped up, such as: " I wonder why leaves turn yellow, red and orange in the fall. I wonder if trees fall down in fall. I wonder why trees have small branches and are different sizes." We brought back leaves and the students drew them in their observation notebooks. We even conducted an experiment to determine why the leaves changed colors!

 

Later, we went to the Pumpkin Patch to observe other plants and trees ready for fall harvest. We also observed our surroundings, as we are comparing the country to the city since reading "Town Mouse and Country Mouse." In the classroom, we are examining different types of communities and beginning to explore the many roles and jobs people do to make our community work.

Lastly, we continued to observe and discover many things that we harvested at the Pumpkin Patch. It was so wonderful to have parents help us weigh, measure and compare our fruits and vegetables. More discoveries were made, such as "a pumpkin weighs more than my apples AND potatoes. I noticed that my pumpkin had lots of lines on it."

Using Technology in Kindergarten

Technology plays a big role in our lives. They help us learn lots of new things about our world, and keep us entertained.  We are fortunate to have regular access to six classroom ipads that will be used a tool for learning and documenting our ideas.  We have a variety of educational apps that we allow the children to use, and this week I explicitly taught the Bumblebees how to document using photos and (later) Keynote--an apple version to Powerpoint. 

 

 

After taking pictures with the photo app, each group presented their pictures to the class.  In addition to using technology, documenting our learning, we are also learning how to share our work with others through formal presentations.

In addition, we used the ipads to help us with our self-portraits.  Every month I will have the students draw a picture of themselves. This informal assessment looks at the developmental level of your child, as well as observing how the see themselves.  I took pictures of some of the kids so that they had an image to study while drawing. This made a significant difference between this month and last month's drawing.  Those observation and drawing skills will be used throughout science to make new discoveries with nature.