On Tuesday, we had our fourth field trip of the summer to KidCity, which is a kids' museum in Middletown that essentially just did everything right. The rooms are big, bright, colorful mazes of kid-friendly, open-ended play structures and toys. There are lots of little alcoves and seats and lofts for kids to explore, and every inch of the museum is painted over with the most beautiful artwork.
In the first room, kids cook at a restaurant counter, pull levers on the back of a full-size car, sit in a jewel-and-mirror-encrusted cave, write their names in light on a dark wall, keep balls afloat above a pillar of blowing air, and maneuver a spaceship with day-glo wands.In the apple room, they can sit on a massive pig, find and sort eggs in the chicken cages, lift apple baskets on a pulley system, climb to the top of an "apple tree" loft and pet the lift-size horse.
In the "fishery," they collect, sort and distribute red, yellow, and blue fish via a magnetized overhead conveyor belt aboard a ship (or they sequester their fish collections inside the nearby igloo).In the next room, kids can work in the bagel shop, cook at the restaurant-style stove, flip through jukeboxes while they wait to be served at the booths, or control the traffic light above yet another steer-able car.
Upstairs in the former cornfield, they can pop their heads into the middle of train tracks, play at the dino tables, paint a fence, pick carrots, and take care of baby dolls.
Then, in the music room, they can experiment with making different sounds on metal and wood "drum" wall panels and different lengths of tubes - plus there's a slide, monkey bars, and a beautiful see-saw.Like I said, KidCity got it right. And they open late on Tuesdays to allow for groups like us (read: not paying for tickets) to visit free of charge. We planned to stay for 45 minutes (not sure what I was thinking when I budgeted for time) but of course the kids were elated at every nook and cranny they discovered, so we stayed for nearly two hours. They all played beautifully together, respected the other groups (rather, they didn't really seem to notice anyone else, but that said, they didn't bother anyone), and they had the time of their lives. Our friend Cornelia visited and met each of the kids (we've been practicing the "Hi, my name is ___, nice to meet you!" dialogue), was persuaded to come back to school with us, and later was suckered into reading to L through most of quiet time. We like new friends.
Back at school, abandoning our hopes of fitting in circle time and centers, we immediately ate lunch and most of us crashed for quiet time. L was the exception. At one point, as I was downloading photos and came across the funniest progression of photos of K and was laughing hysterically with Cornelia and Taylor as a result, we looked up and saw L looking at us and chuckling heartily. She pointed to us and said, "It is SO funny." Bear in mind that the room was completely dark and she was hanging off the edge of her cot amid a room full of sleeping children. Anyhow, most everyone else slept HARD. It had been an active morning. In the afternoon, Sim and Sam came over from the lab to teach us Old MacDonald in sign language. We learned the signs for cow, horse, pig, dog, chicken, and farm.Finally, on Wednesday, we sort of got back on schedule. At circle time, we read my faaaaavorite kids' book Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse. It's about a mouse named Lilly who loooves her teacher, Mr. Slinger, who wears artistic shirts and says "Howdy!" with a wink every morning (and then all of the kids cheerily repeated "howdy" and blinked furiously) and serves delicious snacks and makes Lilly want to be a teacher when she grows up. One day, though, she brings her brand-new purple plastic purse - which plays music when it is opened and carries her shiny quarters and movie-star sunglasses - to school and insists on talking about it during class. Mr. Slinger takes the purse away. Lilly then draws a mean picture of him and sneaks it into his bag. At the end of the day, though, he gives back her purse with a nice note that says "Today was a difficult day. Tomorrow will be better." Lilly feels terrible, and goes home to write an extra-nice apology note to Mr. Slinger. Fortunately he forgives her and she is allowed to share her purse at Sharing Time.
The kids are getting to be really great at sitting still for circle time. They really engage with books and everyone (seriously, everyone) participates on some level for calendar, weather, and morning song. We've come pretty far. I'm so proud of them.
On the tail end of circle time, we talked about bugs and insects. We read The Very Quiet Cricket (sadly Macdonough's copy is broken and doesn't chirp anymore, but they didn't know what they were missing) and a new book called I Wish A Were a Butterfly about a disillusioned cricket whose feelings are hurt when the frog on Swampswallow Pond tells him that he is ugly. He eventually goes to the Wise Old One, who assures him that he is certainly not ugly and that he shouldn't care what the frog says. The cricket realizes that the opinion of a good friend (the Wise Old One) is far more valuable than that of a mean frog, and he embraces his beautiful cricket-ness. Later, before centers, we read the Very Hungry Caterpillar, which was great practice for counting, identifying foods, and understanding the caterpillar-butterfly metamorphosis. Angela visited from the lab for centers and played fabulous math games with the kids - we're turning it up a notch on the math and lit work for our last week. I started one-on-one letter practice with the kids and got through three great little sessions of practicing our names and the alphabet. I was reminded again that each of the kids has a lot to learn - we'll be kicking the letter practice into high gear too.A had a cranky, cranky day. Like, she was RUDE. When she didn't pop up at the end of quiet time, I decided not to wake her, and she slept soundly through the rest of the afternoon. We found out at the end of the day that she had been up late the night before, which explains everything. Before she left, I took her aside and gave her a chance to own up to her bad behavior, eventually leading her to offering up apologies to her other teachers. I said, "Today was a difficult day. Tomorrow will be better." She agreed.
Thursday was AMAZING. My friend Renee visited and began our day with some impromptu pre-breakfast yoga. Circle time was long again to avoid the rain, but went beautifully. We read Kevin Henkes' Old Bear, which gave us the chance to talk about seasons and encourage theory of mind reasoning. Then we did a rousing rendition of the morning song, during which our accumulated dolls and stuffed animals each got up and danced. Then, the very most special guest arrived: my mama! We've missed her since she left at the end of planning week, and the kids hadn't even met her yet. I warned them that she was coming and told them about how much she had helped us plan for Kickstart, and when she arrived the kids all jumped up and hugged her.
We settled back down on the circle and re-visited our yoga book. Instead of doing every pose (one for each letter), we flipped through the entire book and only did the poses that were animals. Then we practiced our animal sign language (we "taught" Ms. Randi, which is ironic because she is actually signs fluently) to Old MacDonald. Finally we read Going on a Bear Hunt, which we'll bring back next week with audio.
At centers, we played Panda Palace for math and made paper-plate spiders for art. We lunched, rested, and then the magic began.
Bobbie Tundermann of Summer Brook Valley Farm visited with two of her alpacas, Rory (an older white alpaca) and Duffy (a brown baby alpaca). The kids sat in awe on the grass as Mrs. T told us everything there is to know about the animals. Each child got to feed the alpacas and take them for a walk. We learned that there are 22 different colors of alpacas and that they don't have top teeth, so they can't bite. They have the softest fur EVER. The visit was really just phenomenal - couldn't have asked for anything more.
In other (less happy) news, Thursday was Taylor's last day. She is leaving us for her family vacation, which we of course understand but WE WILL MISS HER SOSOOSOOOO much. She got extra love from all of the kids, and promises to visit kindergarten often.
update: click here for Andy's beautiful Week Four Photos!
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