Wishing everyone a wonderful vacation and happy new year!   Here is a link to a short video about our kind kindergarten that was made with Eric Mongeon during technology.
http://voice.adobe.com/v/PyhQeMVZjA3

In continuing with our discussion around the spirit of giving and kindness, on Wednesday morning we took some time to make several gifts for giving.  We were fortunate to have two of our faithful ECO volunteers, Marya Dungan (Hannah's grandmother) and Marycolleen Sinnott, join us for the morning.  They helped children create their own wrapping paper for wrapping gifts, and Marycolleen also brought her ukelele and guitar and led us in singing several songs.  All of the gifts should be coming home today and children are very excited to share them with designated recipients!

We also used Tumblebooks, which is an online collection of animated books, to view and compare two non-fiction books about snow.  We used some of the information we gleaned to create a movement sequence about snow- perhaps your child can share some or all of this with you!
I hope everyone has a wonderful, relaxing, and peaceful holiday.

During the last couple of weeks we have been reading books about different winter celebrations including Diwali, Hanukkah, Christmas, and Kwanzaa.  As we have read about each holiday we have noticed characteristics they have in common:  light, special foods, gifts, songs, and time with family and friends.  We have focused our discussion to the spirit of giving and have since been exploring books about giving, noticing the many ways we can give to others, from making actual gifts, to giving a hug or a compliment, to simply being kind.  A favorite has been The Quiltmaker's Gift by Jeff Brumbeau.  The whole school is focused on noticing random acts of kindness in the next couple of weeks and our class is enthusiastically taking part, reporting the kind acts of others throughout the day.

It felt like a gift to have the playground covered with loads of fresh snow on Thursday morning!

Just before the Thanksgiving break we were fortunate to get a document camera for our classroom.  This has been a fantastic tool for modeling lessons, sharing student work, and reading emergent books together as a class.  It is also extremely motivational, as everyone is eager to have their work projected on the screen!

A few of the things we have been doing in the last couple of week:

Practicing measuring using both craft sticks and cubes.

Teaching our learning buddies some of our favorite math games.

Working on our forest mural.

Our mural with all of our nature names.

Bundled up for recess!

This week we spent some time talking about seed dispersal, both during ECO and in the classroom.  We learned that if seeds are going to successfully grow they will need their own space, away from their parent plant.  But how do they travel?  Ask your child to tell you some of the ways.  We also visited the river on our way back from ECO and explored the many rocks to tie into our next science unit which focuses on rocks and the ways they are similar and different and how they may change over time.

Nora McDonough, our art teacher, has shared the following links from her blog, which highlight some of the kindergarten art work.

http://waitsfieldart.blogspot.com/2014/10/kindergarten-nighttime-adventures.html

http://waitsfieldart.blogspot.com/2014/11/harvest-bean-mandalas.html

Decomposer tag.

Running through the seeds.

Rock art.

We had another fantastic and thankfully dry ECO day.  Our focus was on fire building.  Ask your child to tell you about the three kinds of sticks we used to make our fire.

A regular and much anticipated part of each day in our class is sharing.  On most days there are several children who have something to share.  This is a great opportunity for the child sharing to practice speaking with a loud, clear voice, using details to describe what he or she is sharing.  At the same time other children are practicing really listening by sitting quietly and looking at the speaker and making sure that they are thinking about what the speaker is saying- listening with their whole bodies.  After a share three children are called on to ask a question or make a comment.  We have been working on formulating thoughtful, relevant questions and making specific comments.  (Instead of I like it, I like it because ...) Children do not have specific share days for now, but we have decided that one share each week is reasonable.  We have talked about appropriate things to share – a book, a special object such as a rock, something we made.  We often use someone’s share as a greeting object, passing it around the circle as we say good morning, and I am particularly fond of telling shares, that require slightly sharper listening as we make a picture in our minds.  I have asked children not to bring in overt toys, although I appreciate the gray area around this and it has led to some interesting and thoughtful discussions.   If it’s a really cool lego creation that someone spent lots of time making can they share it?  What if it’s kind of a toy, but it helps you practice writing? For now the system we have seems to be working well and children are getting lots of practice both speaking and listening.

Below are some photos of children playing math games.  This is a fun way for them to work on math skills as well as the social skills involved in playing a partner game (being a good sport and having fun are most important.)

As we continue to learn about living things we have shifted our focus from animals to plants. While plants, like animals, need certain things to survive, we are noticing some key differences between plants and animals, especially that plants make their own food. We have been exploring plants with our third and fourth grade partners. A couple of weeks ago each pair found a plant to examine, draw, and label, roots and all. We then planted corn seeds in clear cups so we can observe the plants as they grow. We use our science notebooks to draw and label our observations. It is especially nice to have our partners with us when we use our notebooks, as they share many of the strategies they have already tried, for example making two drawings showing different perspectives. Our ECO theme this week was leaves, a very important part of the plant we have learned.   During ECO children also had some time for free exploration. It is fascinating to watch their ideas unfold when they have the time and space to let their imaginations go. I saw lots of creative problem solving and team -work as children worked on a variety of projects in the woods.