What’s Up in the classroom

March 2015

CAMPING STORE: Since our families have brought in camping supplies the children designed the camping store layout and organized the shelving. We have made labels for our shelves, barcodes, and price tags for each item. Reasoning and exchanging skills are in full effect! The children have thoughtfully put an amount on each item, for example, a large hammock should cost more than one water bottle. The students created name tags, to express they are workers in the store rather than a customer.  Many students were interested in store hours and created a clock to tell when the store is closed or open for business. Some have even began advertising and encouraging other students to come buy supplies.  We are continuing to discuss coins and bills. While the children have expressed knowledge about the idea of going to a store, you can further their thinking by having conversations with your child when you’re at the store. Look for store signs to direct you to where you would find an item.  Discuss where you found the cost of the item and have them read the numbers. Talk about different jobs throughout the store: stocker, cashier, etc. The children are excited about camping and just waiting for the weather to warm up to take their camping knowledge back outdoors! Until then we have brought the outdoors in, as we are representing night sky motions through dance.  

Counting money in exchange for supplies at the camping store.

Slats: The thinking that began in the fall continues to thrive.  While the children have ironed out concepts about connection and stability, they continue to challenge themselves as new features are added.  For instance, they are working to develop “switches” where the marble changes track.  A part of this is to have the marble “jump” onto another slat or into something at the end.  They are also figuring out how to get sound into the motion by having the marble roll into, onto, and through metal objects.  All of these challenges are developing their problem solving skills and giving them opportunities to develop mathematical thinking as they measure distances and plan for sequence.  In order to solve social logistics, the children have identified all the roles necessary to accomplish a slat goal.  We now have nametags to identify who is doing each job.  While everyone wants to be the “launcher”, no one can launch if there is not a “planner”, “builder”, or “fixer”.  Another thread of thinking the children continue to follow is regarding turns.  Watching a video of a previous kindergarten class inspired the idea to achieve more than 10 turns. The children are determined to get the marble to make “twenty turns” in one launch.  They are on their way as they have developed a theory that “the one before has to be one more” in regard to how tall the slat base is built.  This thinking is provoking problem solving and many science concepts regarding motion and ricocheting (“bump”).

Group time to solve the problem of getting the marble to turn.

 Garden:  2-4-6-8! Meet me at the garden gate!!  We have been dreaming about the garden by building models and perusing garden books and studying our amaryllis. 

Using the garden map to make a model of our garden.

Last week in the garden, the children found the thyme poking through the snow.  This week we found lots of rabbit dung...stay tuned!

We look forward to sharing all of the details with you at the program exhibit on April 8th.

Thanks, as always, for sharing your child with us!!

We wish you a sunny and splendid spring!

Aubrey Smith and Cyndi McAuliffe

Notes from the interns:

Mr. Brown:

During this semester, the children have shown a keen interest in exploring roles in various settings. The interest first stemmed from performing a story we read together called The Soup Opera. In this story, a problem arises and various characters come together to resolve the issue. This theme has continued in much of our exploration throughout the semester.

The children have been exploring roles in much of their everyday explorations. Roles have popped up in numerous areas such as dramatic play. With dramatic play, the children have been exploring roles with planning on what to build, who is the builder, what costumes to use and what characters they wish to explore in their new setting. Most recently the children have been writing letters to family members and as well as each other. The purpose is for children to explore the role of being a writer, as well as a reader. The children have been writing letters to children in the classroom and keeping in mind as a writer who will be reading them. The purpose is to write to a wide variety of audiences.

As this exploration continues, we will focus on the perspectives of people who will read our letters and how roles fit into the delivery of letters. We will be writing to family, previous teachers, and fellow classmates. We have been designing maps of our classroom and school to aid us in the successful delivery of our letters. We hope to create mail boxes for the respective classrooms that will be utilized to each classroom’s needs. The children will have to design and construct the mail boxes by looking at the physical and logistical perspectives of the children in each of the classrooms.

                With the children writing letters, this exploration coincides with early childhood standards by strengthening the children’s writing through drawing, dictation, and teacher support. Roles play a vital aspect in early childhood standards by working together through positive support to solve classroom goals.

              We encourage families to extend the children’s exploration in writing letters or postcards to the classroom. If your child sees you writing or mailing a letter, tell them why you are sending the letter and how the letter will be mailed. We wish for the children to see how much is involved in mailing letters locally, even internationally!

Ms. Smart:

                Throughout the duration of this semester, the children have shown an interest in art and the process of representation. This interest was first brought to my attention during a group project that focused on recreating experiences at the beach or painting what they thought of when they heard the words such as ocean, water, and shells.   The children took to this project fairly quickly, adding images of sea life, a beach, and water. What was even more intriguing about their representation was the details they chose to include. Some animals were painted over to give depth to the painting, representing the animals being underwater. Along with that, many of the animals were painted from a front profile view though the beach and water suggested an aerial view.

                To continue working with the children’s misconceptions about representation and build on their current interest with recreating, we then moved on to exploring different perspectives and times of representation in art. Pablo Picasso’s Three Musicians was investigated due to the way the artist represented people by shapes rather than the typical form of representation. An aerial view of a city was also analyzed. This brought focal points to the attention of the children and provoked their imagination into what else the painting could possibly represent.

                Most recently, the children have begun focusing on Zulie, parrot who is housed at the Early Childhood Education Center. While exploring the shapes and angles seen when observing Zulie, the children have begun creating their own representation through drawing.

From here, we plan to continue exploring perspectives within drawings and move our explorations to representing our ideas with various materials in a 3D manner. This will provoke the children to think about perspective and the process involved in developing a piece of art moving from a 2D representation, to a 3D representation. Stacking materials, problem solving how to stick materials together, and collaboration are some components that will also be included within our explorations.

                We encourage families to participate in this exploration by extending this learning within the home! Tours of famous artists work such as Picasso, Van Gogh, and Seurat are a few examples of artists who create representations of everyday things but do so in a different and interesting way. These artists work can be viewed at the Detroit Institute of Arts but also online through their virtual tours! Along with explorations of 2D representations, working with clay, play dough, or other materials to create a 3D representation instills problem solving and spatial skills necessary for development! 

            As we move along through this semester, we also encourage you to attend our upcoming Curriculum Night. This will take place on Wednesday, April 8th. On this night, you will have the opportunity to explore all the hard work of the children throughout the semester. We look forward to seeing you!