Green Street site: First week re-cap

As G announced this afternoon to her grandmother, tomorrow is "the United States of America's birthday!" Our very patriotic students have a long weekend to celebrate Independence Day, so we had a short first week at the Green Street Arts Center Kindergarten Kickstart site. The days have been flying by just as fast as they did last year: from the moment our first student arrives around 8:45 until the last student is signed out around 3:30, we don't stop moving. Here's our daily schedule:

Dress-up

New friends!

8:45-9:15 Students arrive, say goodbye to families, and jump right into playing. Dramatic Play is, as usual, our most popular area of the room. We have two kitchen sets, a dollhouse and a castle, and a miscellany of costumes, hats, and props. To our delight, our girls and boys have been proudly parading around in dresses and capes. 

Note: this is a cucumber and
organic apple chip sandwich

9:15-9:45 We serve breakfast, provided by the Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) through the Community Renewal Team (CRT). The kids practice pouring their own milk out of shiny silver pitchers, and some volunteer to pour milk for their friends. We've had some controversy over bubble-blowing in milk. This morning I told them that they could blow bubbles only if they kept their bubbles from flowing out of their cups with the hope that they would work on controlling their bubbles if they were given clear and rational rules for milk bubbles. Unfortunately, at lunchtime, the inevitable spilled bubble crisis occurred and Ms. Julie (one of our visiting teachers) had to declare that bubble blowing was not allowed at the table. It's probably for the best considering that the Farm Hill lunch monitors are going to immediately put the kibosh on any food play. After breakfast, the kids clean up their spaces and report immediately (or eventually in some cases) to the red carpet for circle time. (Meanwhile, Ms. Felicia, the responsible one, sprays down the tables to prepare for our mid-morning snack.)

"Dancing"

My helping hand for art clean-up

9:45-10:15 I think we've really nailed circle time this year. We begin with the good morning song, during which each child gets to stand up and dance while the class chants his/her name (K sits still and covers his face in embarrassment while I vigorously reassure him that it's fine to not dance). We run through the calendar spiel including season, month, and day of the week. Miraculously, our first day of school was July 1, so the numbering of our days on the calendar has been pretty intuitive. We've added a job chart this summer, which is something the kids will be able to recognize when they begin kindergarten in September. After calendaring, we rotate our clips (clothespins printed with each kid's name) around the three classroom jobs: line leader, helping hand, and weather watcher. The weather watcher is immediately engaged in his/her new vocation as we begin our weather watching song: "Weather watcher, weather watcher, what do you see? Tell me what the weather's like, won't you please?" We record the day's weather (cloudy, cloudy, partly cloudy) on our weather graph so that we can count up how many days of sun, clouds, and rain we've had so far. We've also talked about making predictions for the weather and other events in the future. At this point, the kids are quite literally bouncing up and down, if they aren't crawling around the room, so we have a get-up-and-move-freeze-dance-character-improv break (I play a song and pause it every twenty seconds, instructing them to move a different way - heavy, light, slow motion, like certain animals, etc. - when the music comes back on. After they return to their spots ("slither back to circle time!"), we read as many books as can hold their attention. On Monday, we introduced "bucket-filling" and our collective classroom bucket (an improvement from last year's individual buckets, which had the potential for competition) has been slowly filling all week.

Yogini A

10:15-10:45 Outdoor play. We have bubbles, balls, and magnifying glasses for insect inspection. The kids wave to neighbors as we walk on our rope through the parking lot to the playground. 

10:45-11:00 Morning snack is provided by Kickstart and is always super healthy. This week, we had Nutrigrain and Nature Valley granola bars, red and green grapes, strawberries, yellow and red bell peppers, and cucumbers.

11:00-12:00 We've also added a set of clothespins and a chart to keep track of where everyone goes for centers. A few kids are instructed to go to Math (alias "Games") and Writing (alias "Stories"), and the others get to choose their first centers. When they're ready to switch, they go to the chart and move their clothespin to their next center. In Stories, Ms. Olivia has not only been working on writing names, but she's helped students to write entire stories (with pictures) and read them to friends. In Math, I've been playing math games from the Cognitive Development Lab repertoire. In Art, we've had painters at the easel every day, often opting to work in pairs. We've also traced our hands to create "helping hands" artwork and made our own flags from red stripes, blue squares, and white stars. 

12:00-12:30 Lunch.

12:30-1:30 Quiet time. A couple kids are asleep quickly; most of the others do as much as they possibly can to keep from falling asleep. They are allowed to choose two books for quiet time. Today, I think most of the kids only asked to go to the bathroom four times during quiet time. It's getting better every day. 

1:30-2 Outdoor play to wake up from rest.

2-2:45 Our afternoon activity is different every day. On Monday, we went through our yoga alphabet books, practicing three deep breaths in every pose and returning to namaste (legs crossed, hands on knees, eyes closed) between poses. Yesterday, we walked to Russell Library for a field trip with the Macdonough Kickstart site. Ms. Kate gave us a tour of the library, read us a few stories about the 4th of July, and helped us create 4th of July flags.

Story time at Russell Library

2:45-3 We bid farewell to our students and families and prepare the classroom for the next day.

Stay tuned for a post about our favorite moments of the week!

S 7/3/2013