Outdoor Classroom Day!

Children learn and appreciate nature most when they have the opportunity to spend time interacting with their natural environment - that's just what we did in the field and woods at Harrison Field, Montpelier today. 
Our  morning began with a game of Flying Squirrel and Fisher Cat/Owl freeze tag. Ask your child how the Fischer Cat and Owl are the same, and what makes them different? What special abilities do Flying Squirrels and who are their predators? What do they do to stay safe? 
Small groups of kindergarten nature explorers then teamed up with an adult volunteer to find and collect natural items from the field and forest in a scavenger hunt. Each team worked together as stewards of nature, and environmental scientists. Everyone asked lots of questions, and shared many, many interesting possible answers - that's what scientists do to learn more about something!

Raccoon Touch team focused on using their sense of touch to find items with a variety of texture, including moss. Cool raccoon hat! 

Dog Sniffing team used their sense of smell to find a variety of living and non-living plants. With their Owl Eyes, this team of children looked for items with a variety of colors and sizes. They found a bird next high up in a tree and a both a living tree and non-living branch home to different collections of fungi. 
Deer Ears team worked hard to listen for the sounds of animals, falling leaves, acorns and crackling sticks. They also heard the cars and construction activity from a nearby neighborhood, and collected crackly sounding leaves, and wet slippery leaves. Fox Walking team used their super quiet walking feet to sneak right by the other teams and discovered a collection of unique pinecones and an uprooted tree covered in mud and moss. 

We said good by to the forest and to our friends... 
Thanks for a great day in nature parents, families and North Branch Nature Center naturalists! 

Reading, Reading & More Reading with Grade 3 Buddies

Since the launch of Read to Someone as a component of our literacy learning this week, we decided it was time to get reading with our grade three buddies. Today kindergartners chose one book that they could read themselves to their buddy, and one book that is a challenge to read independently that their buddy could read to them.

We met in Mrs. Erdossy's classroom and within five minutes the space was buzzing with the hum of great reading. Children sat elbow to elbow, knee to knee with their buddy and read a variety of books, including Magic Tree House, I See My Class and our new National Geographic Young Explorer magazines.

Ask your child what s/he read to their buddy, and something they learned? So much fun learning is happening in Kindergarten!

Paul Cezanne - KinderArt Impressionist Art Study

Cezanne Follow up - Kindergarten artists study apples, and still life perspective to create their own pieces of notable art. 

Kindergartner quotes about working as an artist like Cezanne:
"My picture is just like Cezanne's!" 
"I would like to show Cezanne how I do art just like him."
"I think I should tell him about how I mixed yellow and red to make orange."

We kicked off our first KinderArt study on Friday learning about Paul Cezanne's Apples and Oranges impressionist painting. The purpose of our year-long KinderArt program is to engage children in looking closely - taking their time to notice details such as shapes, colors, design, perspective, texture and ideas through art created by some of the world's most famous artists. These skills are critical in all areas of lifelong learning, including the main focus of our curriculum science, math and literacy.

So far, we have re-created Cezanne's Apples and Oranges still life in our classroom, made community paper to share in an the upcoming related project, looked closely at the shapes in Cezanne's work and made comparisons to real apples then sketched and colored our own apples as our first still life piece.

Stay tuned for more about our focus on Cezanne, and to learn more about what we notice in his art. Watch carefully to notice how our thinking about his work, and the related learning we do this Fall impacts your child's own artwork.

4Winds Science Friday - Focus on Fall Leaves

Thanks to Dustin Rand, Mark Montminey and Hilary Sales our 4Winds parent volunteers this week, Kindergartners in our class spent the morning learning new things about Fall leaves.

Following a fun and very funny puppet show, children enjoyed a variety of leaf activities in which they could try out their new learning about leaves.

Children sorted leaves by many categories, including shape, color, size, number of veins and type of tree.

Once sorted, each student chose one leaf to do a rubbing. Then the children traded and made leaf rubbings of each other's favorite leaves. We made comparisons between the choices and learned how leaves are different and the same.

Children learned fun science words too. We call these WOW words, including:
chlorophyll - plant food or green pigment that is found in the leaf that gives it its color ("the special sauce that makes plants grow")
petiole or stem - hold the leave and allow it to twist in the wind and rain without injury
veins - the thin spaces in the leaf that allow the food to reach all parts of the leaf.

Our lesson concluded with a sing-along. Hilary taught us two new songs related to the seasonal change in nature taking place in Fall.

Symbolic Butterfly Migration - Class Send Off at Montpelier Post Office

Today our class travelled to the Montpelier post office to do a very special job - we postal mailed our Symbolic Monarch Butterfly to Mexico to live for the Winter. After raising several Monarchs in our classroom, and releasing them into the big, big, world, Kindergartners are excited to think about where they will travel and what they will do.

As part of our study of Monarch Butterflies we are learning about the importance of migration in the butterfly's lifecycle. The book, Gotta Go to Mexico has helped us think more about how/why butterflies go to Mexico. Here is what a few children shared they know about the purpose of migration in the life of a monarch:

"They don't go there to wear suntan lotion, they go there to stay warm." -Halle
"They go there to be with other butterflies, where it is warm." -Avery
"Butterflies migrate so they can rest in Mexico, then come back and lay eggs and the cycle starts all over again." -Charlie
"The butterflies have to rest for the winter. It is too cold for them to be in Vermont." -Anja
"They go to Mexico to get ready to fly home and make more caterpillars." -Maddox

To learn more about this national project and follow the migration of the monarch, visit: http://www.learner.org/jnorth/sm/ Also, you can visit the site to learn about what the butterflies do
when they spend the winter in Mexico, and how the people of Mexico take care of them. We will be tracking the progression of this project here at school!

            Traveling through town - we met up with Maddox's dad outside the post office - fun surprise!

            Stamp time at the post office - eight stamps, $1.56 for our class butterfly to travel to Mexico.

What beautiful Kindergarten butterflies... Ask your child about Velma Gratch and what she learned about butterflies, and what a monarch taught her, too.

Outdoor Classroom Morning!

The weather was perfect, we had our fox feet on, owl eyes looking and deer ears listening... what more could we ask for to make an ideal morning for Outdoor Classroom! Led by our guide, Amy Butler, and accompanied by several parent volunteers (thank you volunteers!) we ventured to Harrison Field for games, and nature exploration both in the field and forest.

Our owl eyes helped us notice a hawk soaring above while we were sharing a snack. Did you know baby owls are called owlets? Your child glided like a flying squirrel, and practiced being a hungry owlet in a fun and energizing whole class game today.

Our deer ears helped us hear the beat of Amy's drum, and learn the words & sounds to new songs. Look what great big listening ears deer have!

Our fox feet helped us be safe and respectful of each other, nature in the field and forest.

Ask your Kindergartner what colors s/he found in the forest - what plants did s/he find and bring back to our Science Center in the classroom to study further?

We also learned more about how to work together as a team - practicing listening, being safe, taking turns and sharing materials with each other. Talk to your Kindergartner about his/her favorite part of the morning, and what they did to help themselves, each other, and our Earth.

Apples, Apples... & Grade 3 Buddies Everywhere!

Kindergartners and their grade 3 buddies in Mrs. Erdossy's class went wild learning about apples today! 
-We made apple sauce, and worked hard peeling, coring and cooking apples together - focusing on using cooking tools safely, following directions and "kitchen" clean up. 
-Using Fall leaves we collected on a walk two days ago, and fresh green leaves picked today, Kindergartners and their buddies compared the texture, size and durability of each in a hands-on leaf rubbing art project. 
-Who likes apple juice? Who likes apple sauce? Who likes apple pie? Who likes a whole apple? Kinders did some critical thinking and worked with their buddy on an apple opinion project to order which apple food they liked best. Our learning focused on thinking carefully, formulating an opinion based on experience, cardinal/ordinal numbers and creating a sequential order to reflect what each student liked best. 
Very importantly - we had so much fun together! Tomorrow we will share our homemade applesauce snack with one another... mmm, learning can be so yummy! 

Sunflower Science Day

Today was Sunflower Science Friday! Your Kindergartners became plant scientists, sunflower seed pickers & inspectors, sunflower counters and sunflower artists. Enjoy the products of your child's learning, which went home in green folders today. We will have a Science center open all this week to continue collecting and studying seeds from the wide variety of sunflower heads we have collected in our classroom. The goal of this fun science learning project is to plant a Kindergarten sunflower garden this spring here at UES... the most fun will be in returning as First Graders in August/September to see the flowers that became from the tiny seeds we collected, sowed and cared for as seedlings!

Parent Teacher Conferences Coming Up

The Kindergarten team will be scheduling conferences early in October this year. Grades 1-5 are having conferences in November, and we feel it is important to meet with you a bit sooner. We'd like to take this opportunity to talk about the individual needs of your child, their response to the first six weeks of social learning, as well as address any questions or concerns you may have. Conferences will start the week of Oct. 11th and continue until the end of the month. Please watch for a sign-up schedule from me in your child's green folder.