Mark Those Calendars!
- Parent Meeting THIS WEEK: The next parent meeting will be Wednesday September
14th 6:30-7:30pm - PSC Meeting: Thursday 6:30-8pm
- NO SCHOOL Friday September 16th: Faculty Professional Development Day
- Art Materials: Please bring in anything you can of Christina’s requested list above 🙂
- Community Snack Schedule: This week is the Olsen Family. Please, use the snack signup genius here to sign up for a week to ring snack. Let the Snack Coordinator Kudsana (kkizaraly@yahoo.com) know if you need special accommodations. And a BIG thank you to the Wayne family who volunteered last week!
- Early Classroom Help Request: If you’re a former D2 TK parent, have an older child in the school, and finished your Positive Discipline Requirements to volunteer in the classroom, please sign up to help in the classroom throughout the week, if you can: http://www.signupgenius.com/go/30e0c49aea72daa8-kinder.Thanks!
- Parent Work Shifts Start: Monday September 19th (observations start 9/12)
- NO SCHOOL Fall Break: September 24-October 9th
Full Roster: Two New Students Added!
We happily welcomed Mia Fox (below, left) and Nadia Ho (below, right) to our classroom, this week! Children were very warm and inviting, showing the girls how to navigate spaces, treat materials, and asking them to play. We will continue to wear our name tags, next week, in order to make it easier for them to learn our names and for us to remember theirs. Thank you 🙂
Marbles: Courageous Conversations About Gender and Play
Three weeks ago, it came to my attention that although the marbles were a hot commodity for all children to play with, only boys for the most part played with them. After a lengthy conversation, children came up with agreements for using them fairly: Using a 5-minute timer for children to play in small groups of 4 at a time, and choosing attendance rocks, randomly. This week, children didn’t want the agreements we made and so I gave them a choice on Tuesday of having the agreements conversation then, but cutting into exploration, or waiting until Wednesday and not having the marbles out for a day. They chose the latter of the two choices. They said that 5 minutes was a little short for playing, and some kids had a hard time transitioning out. It was a very interesting math conversation, actually. Because children were grappling with group counting. Some wanted 20 minutes for 4 people, but we only have 40 minutes total for exploration, at most. So, I laid out the number of rocks for 10 minutes and 20 minutes. And a few children put together that if we did 10 minutes for groups of 4, we’d be able to have 4 groups (or 16 people) and if we did 20 minutes for groups of 4 there would only be 2 
groups (or 8 people). Tyler exclaimed, “OH, OH, I KNOW! Because well if we only have 40 minutes of exploration and we did 20 minutes per group, then that means only 2 groups would go because 20 + 20 = 40.” Then, I laid out the rocks in a formation to help them understand and another child said, “Oh, I get it, so if we did 10 minutes with marbles, we could have 1, 2, 3,….16 people take turns! But if we did 20 minutes, then, only 8 people would go.” They understood MORE people could play if we agreed on 10 minutes, and the agreements are as follows:
- Pick random attendance rocks (to ensure everyone has the opportunity to play)
- 10 minutes on the timer (twice as long as before!)
- 4 children in a group (same as before)
1
7 people said YES to the above marble agreements, 2 said no, and 5 didn’t vote. I said “I noticed the majority of us, that means most of us, said YES, two said NO, and 5 people didn’t vote at all.” Children were worried at first, so I reassured them, “No, no, that’s okay! You are allowed to not vote, but then, because you’ve given up your vote you can’t be upset with the results since you had a chance to affect them. There’s a fancy, adult word for NOT voting called ‘abstain.’ When you don’t know enough about your choices to make an informed decision or you don’t like either of your options, you can choose neither or give up your choice by abstaining. When you choose not to vote, you…(children: abstain! -repeated 3x) now, how many people ABSTAINED from our marble vote? (children: 5!)”
Our voting talk was perfect timing, too, because that Thursday was our student council voting. Many children later abstained from voting, during the Student Council Fall Election, if they didn’t know the candidates at all or felt they didn’t have enough information to make an informed decision.
Weekly Highlights:
- Whole Kinder Water Exploration: This Thursday the whole kinder pod had an amazing indoor/outdoor water exploration with bubbles, mud, sprinklers, floating boats, and water color experimenting on light table. Parents were asked to bring a change of clothes for each student via this communication platform.
- Family Photo: Where is yours? I know who you are! lol I would like to label family photos with names, but I don’t have everyone yet. Please bring in your photos ASAP. We’re a community!
- Student Council Voting: We listened to speeches for 20 minutes, talked about why voting is important and what it means to vote for someone you know about and want who would be good at the job- not someone your friends vote for. They looked at pictures of candidates I took and voted for a president, vice president, historian, and social chairperson.
- “Show Me” Math: We did a counting activity for numbers 1-10 in which children
Math Game
used buttons, large stones, pebbles, pine cones, and pom-poms to make an artful design. “Show me the number….7! Use the materials at your table!”
- Tissue Roll Painting: Cutting tissue rolls into a “sun” shape and letting children explore with the prints made!
- Mosaic Pattern Making: I introduced gluing colorful square shapes onto black and white mosaic prints to make various patterns. Children enjoyed this activity
immensely! - Guided Discovery: Liquid Elmer’s glue! Children learn about new materials and tools in our room through guided discovery and then exploration with those tools afterward.
- Alphabet Legumes: Children did fine motor art with liquid glue and beans.
- Watercolors/Light Tables: Children loved experimenting with water colors and pipettes on light tables.
- Buddy Time: We played on the playground!
Whole Kinder Water Exploration
A Message From Our Art Coordinator
Christina with her husband Christian and their three children.
My name is Christina Wayne and I will be the
Art coordinator for Kate’s Kinder class for the 2016/2017 school year. I am new to the role, but very excited to see what the children can introduce to me with their art explorations. While doing some research on how to best support the children and the classroom, I came across this excerpt that I wanted to share:
“Reggio Emilia is an approach to creativity and learning that was founded by Loris Mallaguzzi in the Northern Italian city, Reggio Emilia. Lorris Magaluzzi has created a forum where children can express what he calls the 100 languages of children, which refers to their unlimited creative potential. He believes that when we perceive children as strong, capable and creative we inspire children to the highest of their creative potential. Instead of seeing children as empty vessels that need filling up with information and knowledge, he sees them as already full of creative potential and artists in their own right. This philosophy can be applied to adults as well as children.”
Art Material Wishlist:
- Toilet paper rolls
- Random flowers if you have a garden
- Nature items – twigs, stones, leaves, shells, feathers, branches, tree bark, flowers, acorns, etc.
- Marbles
- String
- Plastic caps – from orange juice, milk, etc. – please wash before donating – All colors, shapes and sizes are welcome.
- Wine corks
- Misc. Fabric – various sizes, prints, colors, etc.
- Rubber Bands
- Lace
- Bubble Wrap
- Tree Branch Stumps – Anyone cutting down a tree soon or maybe just some branches?
Whole-Group Read-Aloud Books & Songs:
- Wibble Wobble by Miriam Moss
- The Girl Who Never Made Mistakes by Mark Pett
- The Brand New Kid by Katie Couric
- Kinder Sing Songs: Good Morning Song, Country Roads, Bumble Bee, This Land Is Your Land, and Together on Monday Again
- Go Noodle Songs: Pop See Ko, Pop See Ko 2.0 Wobbly Man, This or That, I Get Loose, Class Dismissed, Secret Handshake, Rollercoaster, and Wobbly Man
Kate's Rm 7 Kinder Class: Exploring Who We Are 1 Day at a Time! 