Getting Ready for the BIG day

Mailboxes ready and waiting to be filled with Kindergarten valentine cards.

These cans were not destined for the recycling.

One of my favorite days of the school year is February 14th. I teach in a school where many of the students have never received a valentine and have little knowledge of the concept.  Thus,   weeks of talking about friendship, kindness, cooperation; singing about it, writing about it lead up to the BIG day of passing out cards. The excitement is palpable.

Let's just say today in my classroom, that excitement. . . wow.  Is that what I experienced today? Sigh. It was tough.  We've all had those days when no matter what, the children in our lives just take things a different directions. Not my best day in the classroom, but I am ready to regroup and head back to celebrate with them tomorrow.

For several years I have been rescuing large tin cans from our school cafeteria recycling.  I use them for lots of things; drums, teaching about cylinders, as a base for paper maché projects, containers for sorting, storage of art and other supplies.

As I climb in our recycling bin, our head custodian has moved beyond asking me, "Why?"  Now he generally favors, " You're up to something again, aren't you?" I smile and invite him down to the room to see the transformation from can of peaches to said creation.  

Most recently the cans  became valentine mailboxes.  

Our school uses a special can opener that leaves no sharp edges. The kids rinsed and washed them out (though they were already quite clean), then dried them off.

They were given a large piece of paper with a heart glued in the middle.  They were to build around it  then I would tape it onto the can and then cut out the middle of the heart.

Students worked in small groups

Some kids laid out their work,
while others charged a head with an internal plan guided purely by the amount of glue they used.

 

This is after we cleaned up.

Fruit cocktail, anyone?

Some have taken on a happy clown like appearance.
 Others look a little like  they might bite.
 I suppose half the fun will be delivering the valentine cards past the friendly fangs!

They can easily be carried home in a backpack or in the proud arms of a student who will no doubt, spend the rest of the weekend admiring the contents!

Tomorrow is sure to be a memorable day for all! I can't wait!

Introducing. . .The Reader Eater

Wood Cookie no more. . . Meet, The Reader Eater!

This fall, a  colleague gave my classroom this awesome, "wood cookie"  when he spoke to the entire kindergarten during a unit of study about materials.  It has been sitting in my classroom since then.  

Kids have sanded it with sandpaper,  attempted to count the rings, (with varying final totals,) picked at the bark a bit and used it a base for various crayon rubbings.  

I knew there was more lying in wait, I had yet to figure it out.

A deliciously literate snack

Before he met his destiny, just a regular "wood cookie"

Recently, as I caught it in my glance for the 217 time, I saw it with eyes, a nose, and an eagerly waiting mouth, open for a snack. 

But, what would my students feed it?  

Garbage, recycled paper, stray mittens?  Nope, sight words of course.  

They could feed The Reader Eater, sight words on a spoon, but only the words they could successfully.

They'd have to practice reading until they could  fluently read all of the words.  Once they had mastered the 50 they need to know by the end of the year they could hunt for words in magazines. They could bring in different environmental print from home or around the school.

 In Minnesota sports words like hockey and baseball are big, Go Twins! 

How about color words, numbers, Spanish words, feelings?  

Please, someone stop me. 

Poor Reader Eater, is going to get sick!

Sure enough, it is a hit! Kids are bringing in all kinds of words for the Reader Eater, to snack on. They are having so much feeding him with their successes that I am certain they don't even realize how much they are learning. Oh, yeah! 

Good Old Fashioned Cut and Paste

My all time favorite valentine candy has to be conversation hearts. 

 Not the chalky ones that have been sitting in the box all year and leave a film on the roof of your mouth.  The softer style with a little edge of creaminess and a note of postage stamp flavoring; preferably the larger sized hearts. Yum, I really do enjoy them and buy them on clearance after February 14th to do "projects" with. 

By that I mean, envisioning hot gluing them to a cute picture frame or shellacking them on top of some little treasure box. In actuality, consuming them  all in 

mass, one night and living to regret it. 

Inspired by the vocabulary on my favorite candy, I set out with my 24 students to make our own set of conversations hearts. First we brain stormed a list of kindness words. I wrote them on chart paper for later reference. Then we practiced folding the paper in half, finding the spine side and making the top part of a two on the paper.  

After a good handful cut the wrong side and ended up with two pieces looking nothing like a heart, the majority started to catch on.  Better yet, those that were struggling were helped by their classmates. 

Hooray… kindness in action!  

I love it when I see that happen naturally.

 Then, I let them loose on a stack of magazines. Despite the fact that only two kids got very distracted by an old copy of National Geographic (you know my favorite candy, now here is my favorite magazine), half an hour later, all 24 students had three hearts to share.

Bummer, "K" you almost made it.  Though you do look quite cute!

This hug is like that sideways/backward hug we teacher get from behind and we don't know which student is giving it until we turn around. 

Hey. . . kind of looks like someone found the word friend and just cut it apart.

Clever, albeit only loosely following the directions. 

Very sneaky and smart little kindergartners I have this year!



Grab some paper, and magazines, and whip up an utterly delicious literacy activity.

Inch by Inch, Row by Row

A small farmer preparing the soil

Oh my, the weather has had us house bound for a long time! More polar vortex is in the forecast.  Not that I am complaining, it is beautiful and the people of Minnesota embrace activities in all temperatures. However, the children need time to run and play and get snow in their boots. Even a few snowballs in the face from time to time are essential to childhood.

What to do when we are craving the dirt?Make an early spring in your kitchen window. 


I dragged in an old pot from the garage last night and let it thaw by a heat vent. This morning, the littlest who is always up for a project, pulled some bins from the recycling. We had fun stabbing them with a meat thermometer and then picking the pebbles out of the soil. It was not your ideal soil, it was a combinations of tiny pine cones, grass clippings, birch bark, clay, and well, just a bit of soil.  Wet it, and you get mud.
                 
Scientific question of the day, Will basil grown in mud? Hope so!

Inspecting the soil/mud and making sure there is adequate drainage

"Mom, the seeds actually smell like basil!"

Tomorrow morning, I have 24 empty milk cartons waiting for me in the classroom and 24 applesauce cups.  Wheat grass will go in the milk cartons and we'll try basil in the applesauce cups.  The wheat grass grows quick, it is edible, (I actually love it, once you get past the initial taste of someone mowing a lawn in your mouth) kids can trim it with scissors and it will rebound.  Once each child has their crop in full swing I might even offer that they take off shoes and let them have a little moment with their feet on the grass. A little unorthodox teaching, I know. Maybe I won't invite the superintendent in that day. Certainly, memorable as classroom experiences go.

Suddenly afraid that there might actually be a worm somewhere in there.

Planting the crop.

Mashing down the mud with a fork

Proudly awaiting the harvest

Kids love the to watch things grow. We, their parents and teachers love to watch the kids grow. The creativity that comes from helping a child plant a "seed" any kind of seed, literacy, music, mathematical, artistic or scientific is a gift whose wealth cannot be measured.  What seed will you plant today?

Wishing you joyful planting and memorable growing season!

Rocking it Old School Kindergarten Style

My favorite assortment of instruments, that are quite likely older than me---

Okay, sometimes kids just need to bang things. Call it a primal need, but well, it is real.  Today was one of those days in my classroom.

Too cold to go outside to play.  Checked the phase of the moon, not full. Clearly my plan for quiet work with a partner literacy would dissolve into chaos.
My Beethoven slide show on the SMART board with the  serene pictures of wildflowers and mountain tops was not cutting it.  Okay, let's just bang stuff then.

I got out my crustiest half broken watermelon picnic basket and pulled out all my old school instruments. There were tambourines, triangles, maracas, rhythm sticks, assorted bells, weird jingly things that I have assigned names.  We played our alphabet chant.  We chanted our sounds.  We chanted our sight words.  We dinged and clanked along to a new song I have written called, Everyone Matters. 

No one accidentally dinged or clanked a classmate.  Our door was closed securely, so as not to bother any classroom that was not fulfilling their daily primal banging of things during literacy time.  No 40-year-old tambourines were damaged in the process and everyone had a meaningful literacy experience, and an Advil. 

Just kidding. . .maybe.

A Simple Joy We Never Knew to Appreciate as Kids

I took my kindergarteners outside today, after over a week long frigid stretch.  We have had this crazy polar vortex weather, forcing three days of school closing in Minnesota in one week. 

Finally another seven inches of snow arrived this morning, but brought the temp to a balmy 17 degree. That is  flip flop weather in the Land of 10,000 lakes.

My students were a little, well nuts, actually. We really needed  time to explore the snow piles on the edge of the playground.

We headed out and played until most had soggy mittens.  We returned to classroom pink cheeked and I turned on my hot pot, for hot chocolate.  We lined up the wet boots in the hallway and as the students drank their hot chocolate, I sang them some of our classroom standards with my guitar. I am quite certain that not one knew to articulate an appreciation for their teacher deferring their math lesson, to get some much needed fresh air. But, they sure knew it was fun, and so did I. Our math will still be there tomorrow.

Thank you, Pete Seeger, for many musical memories

Pete Seeger, Where have all the flowers gone?

We all have early memories music. 
Music programs at school or church where we were dressed in our very best and forbidden from doing anything messy until we made it though looking presentable. Practicing for piano lessons with that slightly or seriously scary piano teacher, depending on the day. 
Singing at the top of our lungs because it always sounded better in the bathroom with the door shut.

With Pete Seeger's music I am transported back to 1981, lying on my back and combing patterns into the carpeting while listening to my parents record player over and over again. When I heard, Where have all the flowers gone, as a child, even at a young age I knew it was about growing up and changing.  Years later, in my teens when it became one of the first songs I learned to play on my own guitar I listened more heard it as more of a protest song about doing the things we "have to" because it is what society expects. Now in my 30's I hear it much again like I did when I was five,  things move on and life's cycle of things we both can and cannot control, though we may try.  Regardless, it has brought me many years of peace. 

The ideas that were so prevalent in the music Pete Seeger both wrote and played were inspiring for many generations of people and I continue to hear the message of the preciousness of life and how at every turn, we all matter.   Peace to you, and thank you, Mr. Seeger.