The first six weeks have flown by, and also in some ways have felt like an entire year! What an odd start to the year with all the covid cases and routine changes that went along with. This last week or two have finally felt like we have settled into a groove of kindergarten and it feels so good! So many updates about the curriculum I thought a blog post was the best place to share!
In literacy, we begin each day with "word play" (Heggerty phonemic awareness curriculum) where students learn about rhyming, beginning and ending sounds in words, blending and segmenting syllables, and more. All this oral learning sets the stage for solid skills for reading and writing. It is quite a show, with a microphone and a shield, as it is so important for kindergarten students to see my mouth while we do this work!
After that, we do a daily practice of learning the letter names and sounds. We use the Fundations program as a scaffold, learning two new letters and sounds each week. Students have a chance to sort objects and pictures by the beginning sounds of the week, add the magnet letters to their alphabet boards, and practice writing the lowercase versions of the letters in a variety of ways (dry erase boards, pencil paper, through games, etc). This skill work helps them begin to put all the pieces of the literacy world around them together. Our days are filled with literacy immersion, from the morning message to the schedule on the board, to reading friends' names. We have rich read alouds each day on a variety of topics- right now we've been reading books about kindergarten, kindness, friendship, gender, families, etc. Today we read the book "Between Us and Abuela" by Mitali Perkins to begin some conversation around National Hispanic Heritage Month. We have been touching on self identity in many ways and will move toward more conversation around families and community, all with the lense of kindness, acceptance, inclusion, and diversity.
In math we have been focusing on numbers 1-5. Building them with cubes, flashing them on our fingers, writing them, finding combinations that go together to make five. Building this strong number sense and visualization of numbers is so important for later success in mathematics. We are building a routine of having a lesson on the rug and then moving into independent stations where students play games and do activities to practice the skills we are working on.
We continue to learn and practice social skills which can include work around feelings, friendship, listening to each other, etc. We learn about how to follow directions, be part of the group, and how to get our needs met at different times (be assertive with a friend, be a flexible thinker, or maybe take a break on the beanbag because we are sad or frustrated, etc). Everything overlaps in its own way to build this beautiful, respectful, and lovely classroom community that is really coming together.
Outside we have been spending so much time in the forest classroom. We have had an amazing guest, Chapin, who has jumped in to support our team to continue learning about and evolving the space that is our forest classroom. Some previous kindergartners affectionately named the big hill "tree island". Chapin has helped students learn about the history of this amazing piece of property- Abenaki people that once used this land because it was close to the water, then the farmers who cut down all the trees for their sheep to graze the field and brought in buckthorn to keep the sheep in, then the farmers that used the field for their cows (the Mahan farm) and now it is town land that the fire station was built on. Buckthorn is an invasive species and does not easily allow other growth that makes a better habitat for animals. Chapin has helped to cut down a bunch of the buckthorn, and worked with our classes to do some geurilla planting of some oak and maple trees to speed up the process of it being a hardwood forest! Big thanks to all of Chapin's donated time, and such a beautiful experience for all of us!
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