OUR DAY IN KINDERGARTEN

Now, what do all these different things mean?

The school day begins when the students arrive- officially at 8:10, but we take attendance in K at 8:30. When the kids come in, they put their things away in the cubby room and then do their morning calendar and weather, put their tag on the Are You Here Today chart, and check to see if they have work to do. Each day 3 children work on their writing with a teacher at this time. If not, they are free to play with their friends until morning meeting. Their choices are, blocks, puzzles and games or writing and drawing, as well as looking at books. This "settle-in" time is very important for the children. They get time to relax and greet their friends and teachers, time to say goodbye to parents and time to play. So, although we do take the attendance at 8:30, please try to arrive in plenty of time for your child to have a chance to settle in before their busy day begins.

Morning Meeting is an important starting point in our day. Each child has a job in the classroom and many of them involve the activities in Morning Meeting. We begin by doing a greeting. We form a circle and greet one another individually with a handshake( or some other greeting- we've had lots of funny ideas from the kids), a good morning,(name) and a smile. We believe that it is important for the children to greet their friends by using their name and a friendly greeting. After each child has been greeted we begin our day.

The calendar- One helper comes up to put the correct date on the calendar, another child finds the correct day. We practice saying the whole date together. We also keep track of how many days we have been in school in several different ways. We have a number line that we began on the first day of school. We put a new number up every day. These numbers also form patterns of both colors and shapes. The pattern can change when Zero the Hero visits every 10 days , or it may stay the same. Zero the Hero only comes every 10 school days. We have a special song we sing for her.

Zero the Hero came to school.

Zero the Hero she's no fool.

Zero the Hero holds her place.

So all the other numbers

Don't fall on their face!

She wears a funny costume and brings us a jar of things to estimate, usually zero shaped things! She sings her own Zero the Hero song too! Another way we keep track of the days in school is with straws. We put one straw in our 1s pocket for every of school. When we have 10 straws, they get bundled up and moved over to the 10s pocket and when we get 10 bundles of 10 , they will move over to the 100s pocket. This helps us learn a little bit about place value. We also keep a running tally of the number of days we have been in school in each month. Learning how to use tally marks and count by 5s is fun.

Some of our other jobs at morning meeting include:

The Weather Person, who comes up and tells us what the weather will be for the day and fills in a graph. We sing a little song for the weather person too.

The tune is Shortenin' Bread.

What will the weather, weather, weather,

What will the weather person say? (repeat)

This year, for the first time, we have had "weather chickens", who do the chicken dance. This has inspired weather dogs, weather knights, and the list goes on....Our "thanks" go to the Emmas, for all their inspiring dances!

The Schedule Reader, who reads our daily schedule. This is posted every day on cards with both print and pictures. The children learn very quickly to identify what these cards say.

The Poem Picker, who rolls a large die to tell us which of our 6 poems we will read. Our poems are based on the theme we are studying and are written on large chart paper. They usually have picture clues to help and are often rhymes that we can sing or fingerplays to perform. We also type up these poems for the children to illustrate in their poetry folders. These poetry pages go home each month.

The Cheerleader, is a new job this year. The cheerleader gets to come up in front of the group, pick out pom-poms, and lead a cheer. These cheers are either names of the children in the class or sight words. They learn to recognize letters, names and sight words. These cheers are very dramatic at times! They vary from "give me an..__" to making different motions for vowels and consonants.

The Morning Message

Every day we write a new message to the children. This is usually theme-based, or based on a special activity that we will be doing. It almost always has a question to answer or a blank to be filled in. It has very predictable parts- the date is always at the top, followed by Dear K-Kids; and the closing says Love, Mrs. Carpenter Mrs. Tumenas (we reverse the order of our names every day). The body of the message usually has picture clues to help the children decode unfamiliar words. The children are very excited about being word detectives and figuring out what the message says every day! They learn about the theme we are studying, but most importantly, each child can be successful reading the message. Some children will read the date or the greeting every single day, until they feel comfortable enough to take the risk to try the other words. Some children will come up and try to phonetically sound out each and every word. Some rely on the pictures or try to guess from the context. The children are learning many different strategies to decode and many different concepts of print (left to right directionality, return sweep, etc.) This is an important part of our day!

Choice Time

We have choice time every day. This is when the children make their own choices about what they would like to do and where they would like to play. There is a lot more information about the various learning centers on the Learning Center Page. The children use the Choice Chart to pick where they would like to play. They look at the number of tags in the pocket and compare them to the maximum number of children allowed in the area to know if there is enough room for them to make that choice. They are not required to stay in any area for any length of time, or to perform any specific tasks. They simply need to clean up after themselves before they move their tag to a new area. This is absolutely the children's favorite part of the day! We do have 3 required "workjobs" every week- one in math, one in writing and one in the Star Corner (language arts). The children can choose to do these jobs in the morning, in any free time or may do them during choice time. If they have not completed them by Friday, Teacher's Choice is invoked, and they need to do them at choice time.

Weekend News

We do our weekend News every Monday. This begins on the very first day of school with our Summer Vacation News. The children talk briefly about what they did on the weekend, then draw a picture to illustrate it. They write a sentence or two, independently or with assistance from a teacher. Children are at many different levels in the writing process at this age. There is more information about writing stages on the Writing Page. We ask them to write the letters for the sounds that they hear. Some children know all of the letters and sounds when they enter Kindergarten, while others may struggle to recall the letters of their name and have little phonemic awareness as yet. Each child is successful in writing at his/her level. We publish the K-Kids' Weekend News every Tuesday, complete with pictures and their very own writing. They are very proud of their accomplishments and make incredible progress throughout the year!

Math

There are many pictures of our math activities on the Math Page. We use many different hands-on activities to teach patterning, counting, sorting and classifying, number sets, geometry and more. The children learn to write the numbers 1-20 and to count with one-to-one correspondence. We learn to use graphs to organize data, and to present data in different ways with glyphs.

Small Group Time

This time is used in different ways. We do our class writing projects during these times, or we may do our handwriting practice in a small group. Sometimes we extend a math project into a small group time. This is also a time when we work on special projects.

Phonics

Just a note: on the current schedule it looks like we do phonics twice on Tuesdays! The first "phonics" period is with our Reading Specialist who comes in to play phonemic awareness and phonics games with the children. She also comes during our Folder time on Friday and may work with the whole group or just take a few children to work with.

We use the primer to Explode the Code in Kindergarten. There are 3 workbooks, Get Ready, Get Set, and Go for the Code. We go through the letters of the alphabet, focusing on a new letter almost every week. We have a special friend, Susie the Sound Muncher, whom we feed pictures beginning with the different letter sounds to every week. We are making a big alphabet book with all the pictures Susie munches. We follow the order of the letters in the workbooks. This is not alphabetical, nor does it have anything to do with formation, and is only marginally related to the types of sounds the letters make. We introduce a new letter early in the week and brainstorm a list of all the words that begin with that sound. We practice the correct formation of the letter. Our handwriting program is based on the Zaner Bloser system, which is continued in first grade. We do a "listening" page with the group- this focuses on hearing the sound the letter makes and picking out the correct picture to match the sound. The children work in the workbooks on many different activities to strengthen not only their phonemic awareness, but handwriting, spatial awareness and phonics skills. We also do a little book for each letter of the alphabet and an letter wheel, with words that begin with that letter. Throughout the week the letter we are focusing on is used for transition activities, for example: Tell me a word that begins with "d" before we dismiss each child to the next activity.

It is important to learn the lowercase letters of the alphabet and the letter/sound connections in Kindergarten . We work on phonemic awareness in many activities throughout the day and integrate phonics skills in our morning message and in our writing activities, as well as in many of the choices offered at choice time.

Folders

We use this time to work on our "red folders". These folders contain many different types of "paper and pencil" activities. They may have number or letter dot to dots, mazes, matching, word searches, cut and paste, or tracing activities. This is another way we work on many of the skills in Kindergarten, both alphabet and number recognition, alphabetizing, numerical order, spatial awareness, developing the muscles needed for fine motor activities, and more. Much of our work in Kindergarten is verbal or hands-on. Our folder time gives the children an opportunity to practice many of the skills they are learning on paper.

Outside Time

We go out every day, unless it's pouring rain or the wind chill in the winter is very severe. Our playground offers many different choices of activities, from the trike path, to the climbing structures, the sandbox, the swings, the fields, the woods, to the sliding hill. The children are outside with both teachers and may be joined by the Beginner 3s or 4s. The older children have their own separate outside time. The children in Kindergarten are becoming much more independent and can usually get themselves ready to go out with very little assistance, although we do have children in the class who are "expert" shoe tiers and zipperers who help their friends.

Peer Readers

Our peer readers are the third graders who join us on Fridays (expect in the winter when we dismiss at 12:45 for skiing). Depending on the size of the group, we may split up into sharks and whales and alternate going to the third grade classroom and hosting the third graders or may stay as one group. The peer readers are matched up with the k-kids and develop a friendship over the year. The Beginner 4s students are matched up with second grade, so many of the third graders are familiar friends when the children move up to Kindergarten. Our activities vary. Sometimes the children simply read to their peer buddies, other times we may do a special project or activity together. If it's nice out we will read outside. We invite the third grade to many of our special events and enjoy going to their classroom when they have special activities. It is a wonderful program to foster reading and friendship throughout the school.

Specials

As mentioned in the beginning of this section, Kindergarten children have 6 special subjects (not including the Reading Specialist). They go out of the classroom to Science, Gym, Library and Art. The Music teacher and French teacher both come to our classroom. We walk the children to the specials in different buildings for the first week or so of school, until they feel comfortable going on their on.

Snack and Lunch

Both snacks and lunches are provided from home and are eaten in the classroom. The eighth grade has traditionally held pizza sales once a month. See your weekly ABCs for more information.

Sharing Time

We have sharing time every day. Each child is assigned one day to share with the class. This time is not a typical "show and tell", but an opportunity to share with the class their thoughts or opinions, or something about themselves. We begin the year with the teachers modeling how to do this and assigning a topic. One example may be "tell us about your family". As the year goes on , the children come up with topics that they are interested in. We do a lot of favorites, i.e., my favorite restaurant, my favorite color, movie, etc. These ideas are generated by the children and reflect their interests. After a child shares something about the topic for the week, he may take 2 questions. Comments, like "me, too". "I have one of those." , etc. are not allowed. We spend time discussing the difference between a question and a comment. The children learn a special "me too" sign to do with their fingers if they want to show that they have something in common with the speaker. This helps keep the focus on the person who is sharing, but allows the children who are listening to quietly show that they have something in common. We often use the information generated at sharing time to make class books and have the children draw and write about what they shared on the following morning.

Story Time

We read to the class every day. Although we may read books at other times in the day, we always set aside the time between sharing time and lunch for a group story time. We read many different kinds of books, ranging from fiction to non-fiction, poetry and alphabet books. Most of the time we read a book that is directly related to our theme, but sometimes we read other books that are just plain fun or great children's literature. On Wednesdays Mr. Peterson comes in to read to us!

Rest Time

Rest time is after lunch every day, for about a half hour, by the time we get settled. The children bring in their own rest blankets, which are stored at school. We listen to books on tape for most of the time. We read chapter books for about the last 10 minutes or so. Some of our favorite books to read include: James and the Giant Peach, Dr. Dolittle and Charlotte's Web. The children have a very busy day and truly need some down time. They usually do not fall asleep, but are quiet and resting for a bit.

If you have questions that have not been answered about how our days are structured, please do not hesitate to call or email us.

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