September | 2014 | The Kinder Class

“The richest classroom and deepest cupboard is roofed only by the sky”

~David Sobel ~ Environmental Educator

My fondest memories as a young child are exploring the great outdoors with my family. Walks through the woods, biking to the river or trips to the beach, played a big role in our weekend adventures and daily activities. My brother and I not only gained an appreciation for God’s beauty but we learned a great deal about sustainability, the importance of taking care of all living things and what it means to truly wonder.

As a teacher, I view the outdoors as much more than a place to play and get some exercise. I see it through the lenses of an educator. A place where we can get real life experiences that teach us about science, math, health, and language.

Our class will be taking our learning outside on a daily basis. Recently, we have introduced Forest Friday’s to the children. This past Friday we went with the purpose of finding letters in nature and in our environment. Our class decided that we would create the alphabet out of photos of letters that we have found in unusual places.

We had to stop in our Kinder Garden to see the sun flowers that had fallen over first. This group was estimating how many seed were in the sunflower.

A.R was sure that their were “100 seeds in it” but J. convinced the rest that she was sure their were 1000.

One friend spotted this bee hive from quite a distance. Some children wondered where all the bees were? Ms. Smidt and I were glad that it seemed to be a vacant hive!

We will continue our hunt for the missing letters to complete our environmental alphabet.

Our room is buzzing with the sound of children getting to know their classroom, teachers and friends. We have been learning each others names and get to know the class routines. Miss. Smidt and I couldn’t be more pleased with the way that the children show respect toward one another and their classroom. We are beginning to learn about the different learning areas and what the expectations are in those areas. The children are familiar with our nine learning areas and have had the opportunity to explore all of them. So far the most visited areas are Construction, The Art Studio and The Graphic Communication Area. It’s wonderful to see how eager all of the children are to write and draw pictures. We are even beginning to plan on our own shows! It seems that Frozen is still a popular choice for re-enactment.

In this photo, one of our students was recording the names of people who would be attending the Frozen show. She counted the names and with the help of other children, set out enough chairs for everyone to watch the show. This is a great example of how we cover many curriculum expectations though the children’s play (Language, Social Emotional Development, The Arts and Math).

Last spring we planted seeds, bulbs and perennials in our Kinder Garden with the hopes that some of the plants would survive the summer with little attention and minimal watering. To our surprise, we came back in September to some of the biggest sunflowers we have ever seen! The children are fascinated by them and have been exploring them in many ways. We cut some down and placed them at the Art Studio with paper, sharpies, and orange, yellow and brown pencil crayons. The children began to draw what they saw and the still life drawings are truly remarkable. Since the children seem to be so interested in the sunflowers we will be using this as our starting point for an inquiry project. Keep an eye out to see what we will be doing next!

Our play-doh area has been very popular with our JK students. Here we see one student making a car. The children are given different found materials that they can use to create what ever their imagination desires.

Construction is by far the most popular area in the classroom. Both the boys and girls are interested in creating castles, in particular Elsa’s castle from Frozen. At the beginning of the week the children were just using the blocks for their structures. As the week progressed and the children became more familiar with the items in our room, they began adding loose parts. The addition of the loose parts helped to make their play scripts more elaborate. Adding open ended material, such as looses parts, to learning areas helps to maintain the children interests in a particular activity which encourages more in depth play. We encourage the children to choose an area to play in and stay their for an extended period of time. This allows them to think more deeply and benefit from exploring the various materials that are presented in the learning area.

We are beginning to see signs of Fall all around us. On the light table we explored some nature slides and worked together to create our own Fall tree scenes.

We also took some time to explore the outdoors and enjoy the beautiful weather