We received a very thoughtful note from a neighbor in the community who tracked us down. They did some wicked detective work to find us to thank us for the card we taped to their door on Valentine's Day. She said we made her feel special. At the end of her note she said, "Remember to throw Kindness around like confetti!" And we took turns literally throwing around the confetti she placed in the envelope. Not often do you get to know how much an act of kindness can mean to someone else but cards like this one sure feels good! After we read our Thank You card I read The Foot Book, by Dr. Seuss. Then we turned it into a math lesson. We counted all the feet we met this morning when coming into the classroom. Then we traced each other's feet, cut them out, measured them with unifix cubes, and compared our measurements with each other. Then Mr. M wanted to see how many cubes long ALL our feet would be if we added them together. We made estimates and then put them all together and counted. What a fabulous math lesson with so many levels of complexity for all learners, and inspired by a Dr. Seuss book! We had another parent visitor today. Kathryn, Mr. M's mom, helps promote software for computers that help schools. She also volunteers at Lewis and Clark and teaches kids coding. We also made our March Calendars that should have come home with your kiddo.
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We had another parent visitor today. Adrienne, Mr. L's mom, is a Certified Nurses Assisstant. She helps patients in her facility by listening to them tell stories, checks their vitals, gets them anything they need, and generally takes care of any and all needs they may have. She also helps the nurses and doctors in any way needed. Conferences are coming soon. To get ready for report cards we have been assessing the kinder kiddos to have documentation of their growth so far this year. They are totally rocking the assessments! I am one proud teacher. I can't wait to meet with you to share with you the growth they've made. Writer's Workshop has become one of our favorite times of the day. These kiddos have become responsible, independent little writers. They love finding a comfy place in the room and get right to work.
We began the day with Ms. Cooper's kiddos in the gym for Movement. Today we moved showing different emotions. Then we did some audience work where groups performed and showed an emotion word and the audience had to guess which word they were moving. After first recess we went to the library with our blankets and stuffed animal friends. It was a special day in library indeed! We had another parent visitor today. Cliff, Ms. V's dad, came in and spoke with us about his role as a Subaru Ambassador. He helps Subaru by helping the community in Sabaru's name, like helping people with housing, passing out coats to those that need them, giving warm blankets, etc. Our afternoon was filled with learning about the artist Wassily Kandinsky. We learned that Kandinsky was courageous and started a new kind of art form... Abstract Art. During a time when paintings were realistic he had the courage enough to paint the colors he saw in his brain when he listened to music. His type of art was frowned upon but he never gave up, creating an abstract art form Movement. Thank You Kandinsky! Then we looked at one of his paintings and noticed he made this painting by painting circles inside of circles, or "concentric circles". We decided to try it out. We drew our circles with a pencil first. We connected our circles to our lives. The center circle is us, the next circles symbolize the communitites in which we belong: family, classroom, school, Missoula, Montana, our country and then the world. We listened to music and let the music speak to us as we mixed our colors on our palate and painted our concentric circles. Check out this awesome video of the kiddos focusing on their work. (My phone shut off mid video. I apologize for only getting half the class.) What a great day for a walking field trip to the fire house. We learned about the roles fire fighters play in our community. After lunch Carla, Mr. T's mom, came in and shared with us her role in the community as a cosmetologist. Then she cut my bangs to illustrate one of her roles. For the last half hour of our day we snuggled up with our blankets, read books, and ate a snack. It was a great way to end a great day!
We had another parent visitor today. Morgan, Mr. S's dad, came in and shared with us his role as a law enforcement officer for the Forest Service. He shared the many ways he helps keep the community safe. One of our kinder kiddos asked how he does such a dangerous job and how come he doesn't get hurt. He shared that he goes through lots of lots of training so that he is prepared to be the safest that he can be, but he also says goodbye to his family every morning on his way to work, just in case. During Inquiry Centers many of the kiddos made tactical belts and communication devices just like Morgan's in the creation station. We snuggled with our stuffed animal friends throughout the day but the best was when we got to eat snack and share a book with them before specials. At last recess I had rearranged the tables. When they were lined up for specials all of sudden there were great gasps coming from the back of the line. They were so excited to discover that the negative space in the center of the table was the shape of a hexagon! So we had a quick lesson on finding shapes in our environment. We walked to specials noticing all the shapes around the school. Needless to say we were a little late for specials. Boy do I love kinder kiddos!
We had another parent visitor in today teaching us about his role in the community. Rance, Ms. K's dad, shared with us his role as a preacher. He not only teaches other people about the Christian Faith, he also helps others any way he can. For example, he shovels others walks, does manual labor to those that need help, he listens to people and helps them when they are sad, and generally helps out when needed. He travels around the world learning about other cultures and religions while teaching them about his. Rance also made it clear that people from all over the world have different beliefs. His favorite thing about being a preacher is to inspire people to be better. He taught us this saying, "Be kind all the time, turn a frown upside down!" We had a great afternoon of Inquiry Centers. We added a block center provocation to get the kiddos thinking about the buildings in our community. We put out pictures and asked the question, "Can you make a building from our community?" And hung pictures of places around Missoula. Check out some student creations taken by the student herself. We had many great things happening at Inquiry Centers. We went out for a little extra recess time since the rain had stopped. We started the day in Movement with Ms. Cooper's class. We did the Community Tissue Dance. We had to use mindfulness to concentrate on moving through the spaces while keeping our tissues on our heads. If your tissue dropped you had to freeze in an interesting shape and wait for another person from the Movement community to come pick up your tissue and hand it to you. After a "thank you" and a " you're welcome" the tissue goes back on the head and the tissue dance continues. What a great way to start the day. We had another parent visit today. Sara, Mr. C's mom, shared with us her role in the community. She works for Five Valleys Land Trust and helps people learn about the land in Montana. One example is if someone wants to build on a piece of land she is someone that can help them learn about that land. She brought in some colorful maps of the area that were definitely exciting to look at! We also had a visit from Ms. Myers, the school counselor, that read us a book about "heart prints". When someone does something nice for you or shows they care that special feeling you get is a heart print. We are definitely going to use this language from now on! We also went to library and checked out new books. Today was an exciting and adventurous day in kindergarten. There was an overflow of kindness being shown around the room through conversations, play, and during center time. Ms. K decided to go above and beyond by challenging herself to complete both sides of her Math addition sheet. She felt very proud of her hard work during this center. We had Ms Keri, Mr. K's mom, visit us to tell us about her role in the community. She discussed how she supports individuals with disabilities. She explained to us that some people need help or extra support and she is the person that helps those people. The students asked many questions and were curious about how she supports others. We discussed how we can support others in our community. The students decided to create a book showing ways to help people with or without disabilities. Mr. Q decided to create a matching game of his own using numbers. Mr. K and Ms. V enjoyed pretending to be teachers. By using our classroom pointers, they were creating conversations about sight words, he weekly poem, numbers, patterns, and place value. Ms. F made a model of a part of our community: the airport!
We had a visit from Dave, Mr. C's dad today. He shared with us how he is an attorney which is someone who helps others solve problems. He specializes in Indian Law. When he works with different tribes he gets to learn about their culture. He gave us a gift of braided sweet grass that is said to bring good things to our classroom. Oh, and the highlight of his visit... the super heavy law books and yellow legal pad. Gotta love Kindergarteners!
I wish everyday could be Valentine's Day. Your kiddos are so amazing! After we were finished making our Valentine's for our classmates your kiddos came up with a wonderful idea. They decided that they wanted to make Valentine's for the neighborhood. They wanted to add the saying "Somebody Loves You". They got this idea from the story Somebody Loves You Mr. Hatch. I printed out labels with this saying and we added it to the back of the MANY Valentine's they ended up making. Then we took a walk around the neighborhood and taped these Valentine's to many of the front doors around the neighborhood! Warms my heart!!!!!!! After lunch we did a lesson on opposites and introduced the idea of warm and cool colors. Then we did a heart art project being mindful of the colors we chose using warm and cool colors for the hearts and the background. After last recess we had a fantastic healthy snack and passed out our Valentine's we made for each other.
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by Mrs. WinterKindergarten is truly the BEST and that is why I want to share our world with you! Archives
September 2017
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