As a school that prioritizes time in nature, Earth Day is of particular importance here at Discovery School. After much learning and discussion last week, the students decided that the best way that we could take ACTION and help our planet was by creating safe shelters for smaller animals that might be prey for larger animals. This ties in with our current unit of inquiry, which involves learning about different biomes and the animals that live there. We also decided to plant some seeds later this week, but wanted to take advantage of the sunshine to get outside and do some building! I was so impressed by their teamwork, communication, and collaboration. Our students were being Principled, Communicators, Risk-Takers, and Thinkers as they worked together to build some animal shelters. Great work, kindergarten!
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It's hard to believe we have a mere 28 days left in the school year! Time certainly does fly, and our home stretch isn't shaping up to be any different. As we delve deeper into our unit of inquiry concerning animal habitats, we have the opportunity to practice some cross-curricular skills as well. Each week, we pick a new habitat to learn about. Our week-long inquiry includes watching videos, reading books, and creating the animals and habitats themselves out of construction paper, all of which culminates in the creation of a class book. So far, we've created books about the ocean, the arctic, and most recently, the rainforest! The students have been working so hard on their writing and drawing skills, and I see genuine improvement every day. Th recent fair weather has given us many more opportunities to be outside (hooray!), but it hasn't stopped us from moving our bodies indoors as well. In gym class, we're starting to learn about basketball. We learned how to make a basket, and got to practice that skill alongside the soft skills of patience and self-control. Our soft skills have been at play on the playground as well. Just the other day, a monkey-bars master helped another friend learn to use them. He even moved the stool along so our monkey-bars novice felt secure. Bravo, kindergarten! Way to be Caring! By this point in the year, most of our students are reading simple books. Even those that aren't just yet are working hard on decoding words! Because of this, we're able to use our reading skills in many more contexts than before. In preparation for Earth Day, we read a book together and the students were able to read almost all of the words independently! We're also playing words games, and recently visited the library to get some new books. The world of books is opening for our youngest learners, and it's a wondrous sight to see! Although our time as kindergarteners in our Little School in the Woods is coming to a close, the love of the woods themselves will stay with them forever. The springtime weather has made nature walks possible once again, and we will take as many as possible between now and the end of the year!
It's hard to believe we're already at Spring Break - this year will be over before we know it! These past few weeks have been full of so much learning, and I am continually impressed by my students' incredible inquires into the world around us. While learning about the upcoming solar eclipse, we got to experiment with gravity, inertia, and how planets orbit in space - all entirely prompted by the students' own wonders! What an amazing thing as an educator to be able to stand back and watch your students take charge of their own learning. I am truly lucky! In math, we've been working hard on our 3D shapes. Students had the opportunity to take this learning into the kinesthetic space by building some 3D shapes using marshmallows and toothpicks! We created cubes, rectangular prisms, and pyramids. We also discussed why some of our round shapes wouldn't work very well for our toothpick activity. Nothing like some fun fine motor practice to bring some novelty into our math lessons! Reading has also seen more hands-on activities as of late, including a CVC word building center. At this station, students use the letter tiles to sound out and build the CVC word. The best part? The tiles and board are magnetic! Writing has also been a big part of our daily routine. Recently, we've been working on our color words. Students had the opportunity to write a sentence using the color word and an item of their choice, such as a crayon, flower, or cupcake. These picture cards will be used after spring break as a color sorting activity to help reinforce the color words that we worked so hard to learn! A big thank you to everyone that came out to our Intercultural Fair! There were so many different countries and cultures represented, and it was great to see the students' hard work on display. Our most exciting inquires, however, had to do with the upcoming solar eclipse. First, we watched a video explaining what the eclipse is and how it works. Then, we used our globe, a flashlight, and a ball to simulate the eclipse as a group. Students had so many great wonders during this portion of our lesson: Why doesn't it cover the whole earth? Could it just cover a part of it? These inquiries led into a whole host of other questions regarding the planets and how they orbit the sun. We talked about how the earth is spinning and orbiting the sun at the same time, which is why sometimes the moon passes in front of it. Then, the students began to wonder about the spinning: if the earth was really spinning, and we're on the earth, why don't we feel it? Some students even connected this idea to being in a car or on a bike, and how when the car or bike turns, we can feel it. This prompted the discovery of two new vocabulary words: gravity and inertia. I made sure to point out how smart they were for already discovering these incredible science words! Gravity became of particular interest, as students began to wonder why we weren't flattened to the ground like pancakes all the time. Could there be another type of gravity, one pulling us up instead of down? After all of this, we decided to take some action. Students set up four centers: one for exploring the eclipse, one for simulating an orbit, one for figuring out how gravity worked, and one for researching about the eclipse. Everyone rotated through our stations, and it was such fun to see the learning take place! We've clearly sparked an interested in outer space, so I hope to explore that further during our Genius Hour time after spring break. We're coming down the home stretch - everyone enjoy your time off, and I'll see you soon!
We have officially started our final unit of inquiry for this year: exploring animal habitats and the environments they need to survive. We have an animal-loving group this year, so I get the feeling this one will be a hit! We recently wrapped up our unit on sound with the creation of musical instruments using nothing but recycled materials. First, the students planned out their design by drawing and labeling the different parts they would need. Then, they got to work assembling! It was great fun to see all of the creative instruments they made. Now that our sound unit is finished, we can start learning about animal habitats! The students were given several provocations this week: first, they were challenged to create animal habitats using some learning kits we recently acquired. As I circled around, I spoke with each student and had them explain why they built the habitat the way they did. Their answers were enlightening! They're already thinking about safety and shelter, and we can now reflect on our initial discoveries since the habitats they built were photographed and are now hanging in our classroom. We'll refer back to them as we go, and will continue to document our learning. Secondly, the students were given some 'Mix and Match' animals. With this kit, they could 'build' an animal using different animal parts (head of an elephant, body of a cheetah, etc.). The students created an animal, then drew it along with the habitat it might need. This created some interesting inquiries: if the animal has the head of a lion, what kind of food would it need? Since it has the feet of a crocodile, where might it live? Students defended their answers and created some very silly creatures! We've also been working hard on our CVC words, most recently through the use of word ladders. A word ladder is an activity where one word transforms into another by changing one letter for each rung of the ladder. For example, the word 'cat' could become the word 'dog' like this: cat, cot, dot, dog. The students enjoy sounding out each word, and the extra challenge of finding the letter that changed keeps things interesting. In addition to our musical instruments and word work, the students have been working hard in preparation for our Intercultural Fair. The country we're studying is South Africa (where I did my student teaching!), and the students are creating South African animals out of air dry clay and beans. These will be displayed on our table during the Fair, along with the board displaying all the fun facts we've learned! Learning about the animals in South Africa has also sparked in interest in conservation. When students learned that rhinos are an endangered species, they wanted to take ACTION! We started by making posters declaring the need to SAVE THE RHINOS!, which are now hanging prominently in the hallway for everyone to see. We have plans to create videos and write letters explaining why the rhinos need to be saved, and I can't wait to see just how big our rhino conservation project can get. Spring Break will be here before we know it, and the end of the school year will be here before too long as well. Our incredible students have shown so much growth and excitement for learning; I am thrilled to get to teach them each and every day!
As we get to experience the highs and lows of March in Ohio, we've been going back to the core of all learning: play! Through centers, activities, and special guests, we've been able to experience a lot of fun as of late. We've also had a lot of sickness going around, and it's even gotten me. We decided to mix things up by using some of my old teaching videos (from the days of e-learning!) to teach some short /e/ CVC words. The kids were incredibly impressed that their teacher 'was on YouTube!' It added an element of novelty for the students, and saved what little voice I had left for conferences! Last week was Right to Read week, and the whole school celebrated with 20 minutes of silent reading in the hallway. I'll be the first to admit that I was nervous - twenty minutes of sustained reading is a long time for a kindergartener! - but the students impressed me as usual. Everyone stayed focused, traded books quietly, and enjoyed their time bonding with the whole student body. Speaking of reading, we also celebrated Right to Read week with some very special guest readers! Both Mr. Simon and Teacher Jesse read to our combined kindergarten classes on Friday, and the students enjoyed it immensely. Centers have been a highlight of our learning recently. Here in kindergarten, we utilize open-ended materials to facilitate learning. Our box of fruits can be used for sorting, balancing, and estimating. Our letter cubes can be used for ABC order, making names, or building words. And the students always love PlayDoh and Big Books! Today, several students were reading a counting book and taking turns counting the number of objects on each page. It was great to see them put their learning into action! Finally, we got to celebrate filling up our marble jar for good behavior with a marble party! The students voted for snow cones as their reward, so after recess, we all sat down and ate some icy treats. It was a hit, and I can't wait to see what we earn at our next marble party!
Our unit on sound is in full swing, and we've been working hard making new discoveries about how sound is all around us. Most recently, we made drums, went on a virtual field trip to learn about animal sounds, and explored the science behind how our ears process sound. We've been learning so much! We've looked at how string instruments make sound, and we've made pan flutes using straws. Now, we're looking at how drums make sound; specifically, how the material of our drum and our choice of drumsticks affects the sound we create. Students were given a choice between a plastic cup and a paper cup. Most choice plastic, but a few chose paper! Students were then allowed to decorate their cup using a combination of markers and stickers (we love some extra fine motor practice!). Once everyone's cup was decorated, we flipped them over and used them as drums. First, we used our fingers to drum. Then, we tried using our hands. Finally, we used classroom objects such as pencils and crayons as our drumsticks. This was by far the favorite choice, because it made such a great sound! Along with Mrs. Sidders' class, we had the opportunity to go on a virtual field trip the Great Smoky Mountains and learn all about the different animal sounds you can hear there. Thanks to some park rangers, we got to listen to some animal sounds and guess which animal made it. We also got to learn about how animals use their five senses to find food in their environment. It was a great connection to everything we've been learning so far! We got to put on our scientist hats recently to learn about how our ear processes sound. The students were fascinated by all the different parts! Everyone loved the cochlea, the part of the inner ear that looks like a snail shell and turns the vibrations into a nerve signal the brain can process. After playing a virtual game where we put the pieces of the ear in the right place, we used PlayDoh on the same diagram to practice forming the different parts. This was such a hit that we're bringing it back again tomorrow, and on Wednesday we'll be creating our own ear diagrams using construction paper. I can't wait to see how they turn out!
We have just one more month in this unit, and we'll be ending it with the creation of musical instruments using recycling. After all of this, I'm sure they're going to turn out fantastic! February is always such an exciting month with lots of milestones and holidays to celebrate! After our 100th Day, we created pan flutes using straws, celebrated Valentine's Day, and chose a country to learn about for the Intercultural Fair coming up in March. It's been busy, busy, busy over here in kindergarten! Our pan flutes turned out better than I ever could have imagined - these students are so smart! We used everyday kitchen straws, cut them to different lengths, ordered them by length, and taped them together. Then, the students got to blow on their pan flutes to discover what kind of sound they would make. They were surprised to find they made a 'windier' sound that a normal pan flute (which we looked at before), but were still impressed by the sound they made. Furthermore, we tied in our current math concept of measurement when we ordered the straws by length. Students had agency in their pan flute building as they got to decide what length to cut their straws, and we all worked together to make sure the tape was nice and strong. Valentine's Day was a blast - we spent the morning creating bookmarks with our Big Buddies, who then led us in some gym games once everyone was done. In the afternoon, we had our party and Valentine exchange, complete with homemade bags decorated with plenty of hearts! We capped off our day with a heart craft now hanging in the hall - the students did all the cutting, pasting, and writing themselves. We wrote about things and people we love, and I was so impressed by their sweet responses! Our current unit of inquiry is about sound - how it's created, how it moves, and how it is all around us. Ms. Lori was kind enough to share some of her incredible musical instruments with us - the glockenspiel, the recorder, and the class favorite: the trombone! We met up with Mrs. Sidders class and practiced being principled listeners during her demonstration, then asked lots of great questions when she was done. I'm sure many students were inspired to create musical instruments of their own! Speaking of things to come, we began looking forward to our Intercultural Fair happening in March. Our class explored the globe, and had lots of great questions and observations! Students were amazed by how large the oceans are, as well as how far I had traveled. They loved finding Ohio on the globe, and were even curious about the construction of the globe itself. After much exploration, we decided that we would research the country of South Africa: the same country where I did my student teaching! Stay tuned for all the wonderful things we're going to learn! With all the excitement happening, we've still been having fun in the day-to-day. With student-led demonstrations on how to find Balance, visits to the library, and new skills learned on the playground, the discoveries never seem to stop!
We just celebrated our 100th day of school! How incredible to think we're over halfway through our school year, and our students are 100 days smarter. We kicked off our day making 100th Day hats, then learned about the letter Yy for 'Yippee, it's the 100th Day!' After recess, we had a special 100th day snack, counted to 100, and made a book with 100 stamps during math. After lunch, we shared our collections of 100 things and wrote about ourselves at 100 years old. The students loved seeing their 'aged' photos! Finally, we capped off the day the best way we know how: by saying Hooray for 100th Day! We've certainly had our fair share of delays and cancellations recently, so it feels nice to get back into a bit of a routine this week! We've been working hard on our letters, sounds, and shapes, as well as exploring our unit of inquiry into how sound is made. As we head toward conferences, we're also entering assessment season: it's always exciting to see how much the students have grown! Our reading groups this week focused on the letters Mm, Ii, Ss, Ff, and Rr. We explored these letters and sounds by dictating words on whiteboards, building them with Wiki sticks, and sorting pictures by beginning sounds. The students are making amazing progress, and are beginning to use the sounds to make words! Math saw us counting all the way to 100 (wow!), exploring the concept of addition by using dice and unifix cubes, and building pictures using shapes. Using concrete materials like cubes help to make the very abstract concept of addition much more accessible. During Genius Hour, we wrapped up our exploration of the water cycle by returning to our original experiment cup. If you recall, we added salt to snow to see how it affected the melting process. After the snow had melted, it also evaporated, leaving just the salt behind. After learning about the water cycle, we had one final inquiry to make: what would happen to the salt if we added water back to the cup? We hypothesized, then carried out our experiment. Everyone was shocked to see that this time, it was the salt that disappeared! This prompted us to learn the new vocabulary words dissolve, and wrapped up our inquires into water. We used pictures to show the water cycle and how water moves through the different phases. We opted for a directed drawing, and even discussed the correct vocabulary words as we worked! A large part of our week was spent digging into sound. We spent our Unit time looking at various instruments, discovering how they made sound, and finding the vibration in each. We discovered that string instruments, like the guitar, create sound when the strings are plucked and vibrate. They even went one step further, inquiring into how the hollow inside of the guitar affected the sound it made. Some students connected this to YouTube videos they had seen where the guitar was filled with water, which made the sound deeper and more 'whooshy.' Although it hurts my musician heart to think about filling a guitar with water, it was a great connection! Each student had the opportunity to play the guitar and feel the neck and body for vibrations, and some even inquired into how the frets could affect the sound as they played. After everyone had had a chance to play the guitar, we took it one step further: we made our own instruments using geoboards and rubber bands! The students explored how different shapes make different sound, how stretching the rubber band more made a higher sound, and how a loose rubber band made a lower sound. We added our discoveries to our KWL chart, and will revisit this concept when it's time to create our own musical instruments at the end of the unit. Later in the week, we explored how our voices create sound. Using a hand placed gently on our throats, we spoke, sang, whispered, and shouted. We sang high and low, introducing our vocabulary word pitch, and discovered that the vibrations in our throats feel different based on the sound we're making. Finally, during Genius Hour, we used rice and beans to make individual shakers. We practiced rhythm by playing them as we sang through our story of the day, 'Oh, A-Hunting We Will Go.' Oh, a-hunting we will go. A-hunting we will go. We'll just pretend, and in the end We'll always let them go! The most impressive thing to happen this week was when a student described how sound waves work without being taught! Based solely on his own discoveries (specifically using our voices), he described how the sound feels like it moves up and down, then drew a model to explain his thinking. Little did he know, he was spot on! We then watched a quick video explaining sound waves, and it was like watching a lightbulb go off. What an incredible learning moment! It was a short, but full, week in kindergarten, and I'm hoping we can have a full week when we return! Despite feeling like carrots in the produce section, we got outside and braved the misty weather for both Woods and recess. Apologies for the bags of muddy clothes coming home - if there's a mud puddle, they will find it! The students were thrilled to be outside again after last week's cold chill, so a little rain wasn't going to bother us. Here's hoping next week brings a bit of sun!
It's been another great week! Even though cold temperatures have kept us mostly indoors, we still found ways to learn and have fun. We've started our second round of letters and sounds, and the students are doing an exceptional job putting their skills into practice. We've also been exploring teen numbers in math, and have been using lots of hands-on projects to demonstrate our learning. Finally, the students have shown a great interest in the properties of snow during Genius Hour. We've been conducting snow experiments, and learning about where snow fits in the water cycle. We have a group of little scientists this year, and it's incredible to watch them learn! Students had the opportunity to do some hands-on letter practice this week using Wiki-Sticks, a fun flexible learning tool similar to a sticky pipe cleaner. We reviewed the letters A, M, and N and practiced letter formation, beginning sounds, and blending CVC words. Here, students can be seen building an uppercase M! In addition to teen numbers, we also did a bit more review of 2D shapes in math. Here, students can be seen going for a 'shape walk,' recording shapes they found in our classroom on their clipboards. In this picture, these students were discussing how the crayons had a rectangle bottom, a triangle top, and an oval center. Later in the week, we explored how teen numbers can be made using a ten and some more ones (i.e., 13 can be made using a 10 and 3 ones). To show this, we made paper chains! Students chose a color of paper, then made a paper chain 10 loops long. After that, they got to choose a teen number and add the additional loops in another color. When finished, they show our teen numbers as a ten and some more ones. In addition to the teen number skills, students were practicing fine motor skills, counting, and problem solving (there was some difficulty figuring out how to attach the loops to one another, but they persevered!). These will be hung up in the hallways so students can be reminded of their teen numbers as well as their hard work. Last week, the students brainstormed a lot of great questions they'd like to explore during Genius Hour. This week, we chose the question 'Where does snow come from?'. The students noticed that the snow was disappearing, so we decided to start exploring this question by first figuring out what was happening to the snow. We conducted an experiment where we brought in two cups of snow and added salt to one. Then, we observed to see what would happen. In this picture, you can see that the snow in both cups has melted. However, the students observed that the snow with salt melted faster than the snow without. When we returned to school two days later (thanks, snow day!), the students discovered something amazing - not only had the snow disappeared completely, but there was a strange substance left in one of the cups! The students first hypothesis was that it was ice, but after a bit more exploring, they realized it was salt. We passed around both cups to give everyone a chance to observe and discover, and the conversation was just incredible. They discussed what the strange substance could be, how it got there, and why the other cup was completely empty. After everyone had a chance to see the cups, we brainstormed a whole new list of questions. Most of these questions revolved around temperature - the students are starting to realize that the snow only seems to stick around when it's cold, which should prompt some really fun experiments in the weeks to come. One student even proposed an answer to our original question - maybe snow comes from the North Pole! After much hypothesizing, we finally began to find some answers. We learned about the water cycle, how water can change forms, and how it eventually comes back down to earth. It took some thinking, but the students eventually figured out how snow fit into our water cycle - when the clouds get cold enough, we get snow instead of rain! Even though we spent most of our week indoors (and probably will this week, too!), the students still found lots of ways to have fun. Stay warm, Wolfpack!
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April 2024
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