Group Time:

• quick review of the usual as today I was going for a discussion.
• I asked the children to bring a dinosaur to the group time and then to sit in a circle and put it in front of them.  I asked them to think back to the other animals we had studied during our endangered animals study and to tell me what they could about a lion.  When they mentioned it was a meat eater, I asked them what the animal had that made it a meat eater.  What did it use to bring down or kill its meal?  Claws, teeth, could run fast, etc.  
       Now, I asked them to look at the dinosaurs and to tell me what they could about them.  I then asked them  to decide whether or not their animal was a herbivore or a carnivore and to put those they thought were herbivores in the middle.  We took a look at them and talked about how these grass eaters would defend themselves against the carnivores. 
       Then we took a look at the carnivores and we talked about the parts that made them good hunters.  We talked about cooperation and hanging around in larger groups and how that is safer and it can also be a more efficient way to hunt, etc.  It was an animated discussion as they are very interested in dinosaurs.  They couldn't wait to begin setting up habitats and the like.  I will have to play more with my AM group though and help them pick up more of a dinosaur background to extend some of their play.  Needless to say, not just a few dinosaurs were well fed today. 

Center Time:

• we had some small group time today:
• I was working with 3 children who although they know their letters and sounds were still reluctant to risk putting down words in their stories, without my agreeing.   I wanted to see if I could somehow make the process less worrisome.   I was using the little squares of letters for each child. I started with simple two letter  words like me, go, see, and had them construct them.  We played with these and then I gave them boat, kite, soap etc.  I was glad when some switched the letter order because we began doing this and seeing what would the new word sound like now?  I think this helped them understand why no is no and on is on.  I like using these letters. I keep them in the little drawers of the nail and screw containers sold at Canadian Tire.  The letter squares come from Cunningham's Word Work books. 
  
• In the PM I worked with my two 'at risk' students.  I still do dumb things with children and get mad because I should know these things by now.  Due to time restraints and wanting to provide daily practice for these children I would have them go play word games and games on the computer, which I would check but I was not there enough.  They were not happy campers of late.  Today, I took the Leap Frog mat out and we played the push any letter to hear its name.  Then we started to make their names and my name, and then call out the letters.  We went next to the guess my letter and did that  and I added the sound.  I could really smile and encourage them and let them  go when I knew they needed to.  A machine cannot do this.  My little girl started to go and then turned around and with a big smile on her face, she came back and hugged me.  She knew she had done well.  She knew too I had finally done a better job, and that her 'thank you' was to encourage me. Ouch! 

No real second group time today. 

• In the PM a new song for our Easter concert and the song from the Joseph CD about the dreams of the butler and baker.  Pharaoh is next.
  

February 27

1st group time:   A Sample Lesson

I have a purpose for my direction at group time.  Today's direction is steered for the writing that is to follow.  The lesson, I hope, would prove supportive of their coming endeavors.  The children when writing their moon theories were asking about the 'ing' sound.  This has come up before as their stories are becoming more personalized.  Today I was going to uncover the mysterious 'ing'. 
     I began with a review of letters, sounds, stretched sounds and a rereading of our literacy board.  I then asked them to spell words off the board.  I asked how do you spell hi, see, me, giant, ant, etc.  Then I
mentioned the above and told them that since they were asking about this sound, we may as well see it.  I introduced the ING. 
-I then asked them how they would write "DI"  Then "NO"  then saur, written DINOSR.
-I then wrote My DINOSAUR IS   "My dinosaur is walking.  How do I write "ing"?  My dinosaur is now running. How do I write "ing"?  My dinosaur is now hiding.  How do I write "ing"? My dinosaur is now chasing.  H____, how do I write "ing"?  Here comes the sad part.  My dinosaur is clawing.  How do I spell "ing."  P----, how do .... My dinosaur is killing, eating. etc. 

I then told them for writer's workshop today I was giving them a choice between two things, this limits them from their usual.  They could draw and write a dinosaur story, or they could draw themselves in the castle days. " Perhaps you could be riding a horse, or hunting for food, or fighting a dragon, etc.  or your dinosaur could be ..." and we read through the list. Now, I asked them that you may want to draw your picture first or you may want to do the writing.  If you started with your picture, where do you put the writing, which side etc.  Then I asked them if they had a huge word they could just put the first letter if they wanted and leave a space for the rest.  Can we leave spaces to help me read their work?  Also you may want to use an!  if you have a roaring dinosaur or .  Can we write across the page and if we run out of room where do we go with our language?  I had them thinking about all these things.  Mind you we have been talking about them
and modeling them all year and we have been writing sentences etc.  

It was a big assignment.  I told my helping parents how to support the children without doing it for them and they did an incredible job.  I still have start in the middles, but maybe they did the spaces and punctuation etc. Each was different.  4 children our of both classes did 2, 3, and 4 sentences.   My non phonetic writer did a whole string of letters complete with spaces, in no time, no sulking or waiting etc.  We celebrated.  We are just too good!!! (bold type added by Webmaster!)

Center Time:

• We have a strange mixture of castles and dinosaurs right now.  I know it is hard for the teacher I share my afternoon class with but I cannot simply take away the castle materials and replace them with the dinosaurs.
  I always leave a transition zone for the children.  My PM class is especially close to castles.  They still come to school in the costumes they are borrowing.  It would be too harsh a change for this group of 4 and 5 boys.  Instead, I have been watching how they are combining the two. Very unique, their ability to do this.
  Two girls made up a wonderful dinosaur story which I taped and they were so excited when I told them that I would play it to the group.  What was so neat about the stories was that there were minus stories in their story.  They said "This is a minus story because these dinosaurs get taken away."  How information is received, percolates, is remade and then surfaces in the play.  The process still amazes me. 
• Testing continues. 

Reggio:  

I am going to transcribe my tapes.  I want these conversations. The story and the children working at constructing a pulley. 

2nd Group Time:  

• A requested dinosaur story.  Dinosaurs.  We talked about dinosaurs, especially the teeth and carnivores, herbivores again.  
•  PM we also did another installment of the Joseph story.

Our kindergarten Open House was tonight.  I am exhausted. 

February 26

1st group time:

• counting by 2's rhyme, and 10's
• alphabet, sound review, key words
• read Dragon's All Around by Sheree Fitch
• talked about what caused the dragon legends - ideas of finding bones, specifically dinosaur bones
• read morning news
• read Dinosaur Dinner by Dennis Lee our new poem

Center Time:

• worked with one group on the sticks and circle wood forms from Handwriting without Tears. Not so much for the standard form of making the letter as just to see how the letters are put together.  We just played with these sticks and bumps. 
• set up Jurassic Park  talked about predators and prey, carnivores and herbivores.
• making teeth out of playdough of both the above groups as we revisit these terms again and study our books 
• literacy centers for 10 minutes today
• testing of number and a survey of activities they like to do in the room to be shared with parents for our celebration of learning

Reggio:

We celebrate our work as the displays of our moon study and The Hungry Giant work go up on our walls.  The castle work went up as well in picture form only.  The other has pictures, documentation and the children's voices and some idea of the process that took place.  I am still finding it very hard to do this well given our time constraints.  They are impressed with themselves, that is worth it.

2nd Group Time:

very short today ended with Time Flies by Eric Rohmann and Raising Dragons in AM and the Joseph stories in the PM as two students brought in the continuing story from home. We listened to two more songs from the CD.  We are now with Joseph interpreting the dreams in jail.

February 24, 2001

I have been so busy of late trying to get ready for our open houses and celebration of learning that I have not had time to do much of anything else.  

Literacy events in the classroom are on a recycle schedule.  We have revisited the alphabet, sounds, clapping syllables, sounding out words and putting down the letters we hear, rhyme words, and go through our list of key or sight words. 

Our stories

• Everyone Knows What A Dragon Looks Like (Meyer) 
• The Balloon Tree (Gilman)
• The Hungry Giant (Scholastic)
• The Kissing Hand
• Joseph stories
• 10 In Bed
• Min Lo and The Moon Dragon
• Volcanoes

Writing

Our writing has been incredible.  I have seen what a supportive environment can do for children's learning.  By being allowed to share and help one another - not to be confused with the idea of cheating- students can draw on the strengths of the strongest students in any aspect.  Children who are very creative lend their expertise, those that know sounds lend theirs, those that know what the letters look like, lend theirs.
The children wrote their theories of why the moon changes its shape using phonetic spelling for writer's workshop.    They had the group to work with but not much help from me or my parent helpers, they had each other to work with.  The most help I gave was to stretch sounds out as they wrote what they heard, or I asked them where they thought they could find a word that they needed.  They all write the and moon correctly coming from work with the since the beginning of the year and moon from zoo, boo, moo pattern.
 From the weekly Peek- at- the- Week screens, from conversations, by working with individual children, by working with groups, by their stories, their conversations etc. I have an indication of their individual performances.  I work from this knowledge on my groups and individually with them. 

I think alternate forms of presenting learned data, and a more social concept of learning and the support that comes from that needs to be more in place in our young children's school lives.  I do not like the testing type centers I have added lately.  I am experimenting with a booklet highlighting early literacy skills and our words, and word families that I have made up.  Will see how that goes.

February 18, 2001

To sum up the events of the week, we have been looping through old learning, reviewing and reconnecting with already shared material.  The children have been reconnecting with counting by 10's, by 2's, numbers to 20 and then using them in measurement activities.  We have been reviewing sight words and looking at rimes, at, it and ig.  Joining ig with two of our readers and our 3 Little Pigs Rap.  Our interactive writing has resulted in a finished copy of The Hungry Giant rewritten by the class.  Their illustrations, and mural will all go up together.  They have really enjoyed working on this.  Conversations around the mural will be included in the display as well as their own giant stories. 

The children had very carefully and unknowingly to me, planned many parties this week as well.  One child convinced his mother that it was his turn to bring in treats on Tuesday.  We had a potato chip, cookie celebration.  On Wednesday we had an exchange of cards that the children took part in as they each mailed their valentine's cards by putting them into the paper bags mailboxes, one for each child.  They did much reading and comparing of letters for this.  Then we shared popcorn and treats that one of the parents  sent in.

On Friday, we had our castle feast.  It was truly a feast.  Snack parents sent in our usual fare and then we had some extras.  A boar's head shaped from ground ham and pork was the highlight.  The children had the beast that we pickled over night in salt water- as an experiment in keeping food without refrigeration- and then cooked in a crock pot over night, fish and bird.  We ate these on our bread plates (trenchers) with our fingers etc. It is a celebration they tend to remember for a long time.  Worth all the effort and work I hope.  Everyone was in costume, it was a great day for conversation and organizing by the children. 

Books read/ re-read(RR) 

• The Balloon Tree  by Phoebe Gilman
• Everyone Knows What A Dragon Looks Like  Mercer Meyer
• The Hungry Giant (RR)
• The Three Little Pigs (RR)
• The Kissing Hand
• National Geographic number book to 20
• The Selfish Giant

Group Time Work:

• sight words review new words love and is emphasized reading of Cat Sat On The Mat book
• review letters, sounds singing the alphabet by sounds, singing helping students by sounds
• clapping out syllables for words they name and their names
• stretching out 3 letter words and spelling them
• writing number sentences from made up castle stories that the children act out;  M---- was walking in the forest.  She was lonely but luckily B______ and R ______ joined her.  Now they all had fun walking in the forest.  1+ 2 = 3 is written by the morning helpers.  It is interesting how the number
  sentence is linked to the children acting out the story. M was walking then B and R come now M, B and R are together walking. 
• illustrating our snowstorm poem, Bible sayings and filling in missing words connecting words 
• the children are asking about or needing to write words they know and can find on the word wall and literacy board 
• singing rap, and Wind Wind Wind the thread and dancing to this doing one student's version of Ring Around the Rosey -he wanted to share 
• Learning I Love You Little I love You Lots song 
• Books continue to go home each night for the children to read to their parents.  I have finally got the hang of using my digital camera to help capture the learning in the classroom. 
  

February 15, 2001

If I was a beginning teacher with someone observing me in the  classroom today, I probably would receive a target behavior to improve upon, or perhaps I would be asked in for a serious meeting with my superiors.  I say this with tongue in cheek, but I felt freer to play with the children in their mood during group time because there was no one there to 'judge' me.  

1st. group session:

I began my group session with the rap, 3 Little Pigs.  During the telling several of my boys were snorting like pigs.  The curious thing was that they had started this before I even mentioned the rap.  I did not correct the behaviour as these were my most well behaved boys so I was curious as to what this was all about.  We went into our Clap, clap, clap, slap, slap slap, slap, one and two and here we go, 2,4,6,8,10  then 10 fat sausages frying in the pan, one went pop and the other went bang.  The children are learning to count by two's and they were writing the number sentences 10 - 2 = 8 etc.  They labeled this story a 'take away' story. 

     As we were reviewing numbers and letters and sounds, the snorts became monkey squeals.  They were audible but not continuous, more controlled utterances.   I remember saying something to the tune of how I somehow have been asked to teach a zoo today, and I can't believe how smart pigs and monkeys are these days.  This amused the other children and they seemed to relax and be able to:

• go through our prayer

• re-read and add a sentence to our Hungry Giant story (interactive writing)

• talk about our castle feast

• review our sight words

The children have been very excitable this week and louder than usual.  With our party yesterday, and the excitement around our upcoming medieval feast, I expected them to be excitable and was wondering if they would be able to cope with group time today.  The animal noises was the way this small group
of boys managed it.  The others laughed with them and occasionally joined in.  Everything relaxed once I kind of okayed it and ignored it and we got through lots.  Again, I would not pass a judgment here, but with my experience and just by the feel of what happened it was the right thing for me to do this day, with this group.  My point is, how many times do we not do what feels right because we are so afraid of being judged? 

Centers:

• we are creating a collage, junk mural of The Hungry Giant story

• writing messages for  our incoming kindergarteners to paste on bags for them

• planning a feast

• computer work with writing letters

Reggio:

• digital photos and some video's of creation of giants

• digital photos of castle play

2nd group time:

• preparing the room for the feast according to the story The Medieval Feast by Aliki

• song and dance Wind, Wind, Wind the Thread.

• acting our The Giant poem  many times

  ---

February 7, 2001

Due to convention and staff meeting day this is a two day week for me. I will combine both days, as they were very similar.

1st group time:

• moon

• sang alphabet song plus sounds, recognition of both

• reviewed our sight words

• read Monday morning news

• 3 Little Pig Rap

• introduced +and - and =  plus and take away signs (minus), equals  and what a number sentence looks like.  

• We acted out a plus story, The Snowman one, and then we wrote a sentence down for each part.
  I would walk around the circle saying, "One night I climbed out my window and I made a snowman.  At this point I would touch one of the children and pretend to roll them up, then stand them up and leave them with their hands outstretched.  We would all recite this part.  Roll him and roll him until
  he is big. Roll him until he is fat as a pig.  He has two eyes and a hat on his head.  He'll stand their all night while we go to bed.  We wrote 0 + 1 = 1.  Each time I repeated the process and we added 1 + 1 = 2 etc.  I used names of the children in the story and then told them how we would read it. B___ plus D___ = 2 then we would read 1 plus 1 equals 2.  

Centers:

• Began The Cat Sat On The Mat book.  This is independently done by the children.  The support I provide is to go to the pocket chart with them where the sentence strips are and have them puzzle through what animal it is.  They know this story very well, that is why I can do this.  At the back of the book I put a page labeled "Words I Know".  I will go through this with them and record any word they know, or can find.  I will also take a mini running record of this as I will check for one to one correspondence, who is at the memory reading stage, who is reading word for word etc.  I also want
  to ask them why they say whatever animal they choose - d for dog, etc. 

• Final giant pictures, before we add color, were drawn.  What a difference from their first ones! 

• Snowman out of junk were built complete with stories. 

• Cut snowscapes were finished and now we will add the stories.

Reggio:

The building of castle weapons continues with the blacksmith.  A new play started again this time the actors because of the visit of the castle seamstress (me) with great amounts of material I picked up in the discard section of Fabricland.  We made long flowing umpire waste dresses by simply cutting a hole for the head in a folded piece of material.  I then tied it with ribbon or lace at the waste making sure I fold the arms in a little. This keeps everything nicely together.  I do two fabrics one over the other.  Then we add lace to the crown, or hat or whatever.  The boys get a tunic and belt at the waste that they can tie together.
Castle continues to be built in block corner.  Dragons are a hit.  I will begin to look at the dragon legends soon. 

click on images for larger photo

PM -

The children planned a going away party for our new child who is moving again to another Province.  We did not realize that he was going this soon, this very day was his last, and they wanted to have a going away party. They were going to order pizza at the office to be delivered to the school.  However, the morning teacher was still there and opted to go and get us some donuts. I mention this here because they wrote him a little note and sang songs, looked over the map he brought us to show us where he was
going etc.  It was the talking, the planning and cooperation that also made this a literacy event. 

2nd group times:

• stories

  • Tikki, Tikki Tembo,

  • Rumpelstiltskin,

  • King Bidgood's In The Bathtub, by Don and Audrey Wood.

• adding letters to pictures sheet

• we celebrated all the wonderful work we did

  ---

  January 31 - February 2nd

A combined schedule for Wednesday through Friday.

Group Time Work ongoing and continuing:

Stories read:

My choices and the children's are reflected here.

• Tikki Tikki Tembo

• The Three Little Pigs by James Marshall

• Clifford's First Snow Day

• The Snowy Day (Keats)

• A Promise is A Promise (Munch+)

• countless readings of The Hungry Giant. 

• Rap of the 3 Little Pigs

• songs of + and - stories acted out for review

Word Making

• work with rime at and ig, constructing words with letter squares. At was placed at the top the children review letters and sounds for f, h, m, r, s, b,c, a, and t.  They had to change the first sound to make a new word. Can you change one letter to make cat, bat, hat? etc.  Then for peek at the week
  sheets they did at words from pictures directly following their word construction work.  These were done individually with very little support needed. Those children who needed more support worked with small groups. 

Writing/Representing

• interactive writing with Giant stories continue.  When completed I am going to place the story on the floor on a huge sheet of paper.  I want the children to first add colors of  paint to the surrounding paper.  They can splash it on in any manner.  Some water color and some tempera.  Then I want
  them to work on a giant collage using all kinds of junk.  I think I will leave this out for the month of February.

• moon drawings

Centers:  

• Finish reading books with individual children.  I have discovered several children are really reading some words and that they follow print in a one to one correspondence.  Those that do not at this time, I ask them to find a certain word I think they know.  This will help them to connect what is
  being said to the words that are written. 

 Reggio: 

• construction of pulleys from wire and spools with our dad.  The children had not used wire before and needed to be shown the tools etc. This dad is the same one who constructed the sand table frame for the pulleys last week. 

• construction of castle things from boxes, swords, shields, etc.  They are talking and problem solving strings and pulleys for the drawbridge and portcullis etc.  They are doing much dramatic play and the idea of a play keeps coming up.  "You have to pull down on the rope for the bridge to go up." was the observation I heard the other day. 

2nd group times: 

• We had short group times as our centers are going longer each day.  I have enough time to do a song and or story. 

• reviewed +and -stories, counting by 10, and numbers to 20, through books and songs.  I will practice this with them again. 

January 31

has been grouped with February...

January 30, 2001

1st group time:

• Sang the alphabet song first with letter names and then by sounds, interesting change.
• We have our moon back a full crescent.
• Interactive writing of giant story.  The giant wanted some bread. He said, "Get me some bread!"  We had fun with the punctuation.
• The children very quickly filled in the __ig list of words.  They were given a sheet of a column of ig and at. We did ig by their choice.  I said the word I wanted they wrote the letter.  This is easy they said.  We now know how to support everyone in their efforts so that all are successful.
• Drew our second version of the giant with a background, no story today yet.  We will do several and then spend time on these stories before we are finished. I told them to take their time we will be spending weeks on these. 

Writer's Workshop  

• Gibbons castle story started, while they were working.

Centers: 

• Continue work with letters, sounds, words, through computers and table activities.
• Finished zoo books.  Will read these now. 
• Gathered last of light stories.
• Dramatic play PM as the children created with cardboard castle swords, shields, a castle drawbridge, portcullis, wrote  a list of things we need. 

Reggio:  

• I must mention that if you came into the room today, you would have seen a zoo happening.  The children were very excited and working in several small groups, on several projects, creating castle weapons and inventing a castle out of cardboard.  They were planning with each other, designing shields, decorating them, exploring all our books for information, finding words they knew, etc.  It was busy and hectic, they were writing and inventing and working together, and I loved it.  I suit zoos.  Ah, but a visit by a less perceptive person may have missed much of what was going on. The children and teacher left on a learning high today! 
• I am going to mention too, that the children made a neat connection from our + and -  stories to  our batteries via our circuit stories.  They began to  tell me that the - side of the battery is where the power is going out of the battery and the + side of the battery is where it is going in.  The minus is going away, the plus is getting it back.  Such understanding of process. 

2nd group time:

• Read rest of A Promise Is a Promise.
• -Read the Napping House for fun by Audrey and Don Wood. 
• Discussed the light bulb and filament, and where did the power in our house come from?  How did it get to our house, how was it made? 
• Danced to Sambalele.

January 29, 2001

Setting The Stage

• Castle Books that may be of interest
  • The Children's Party Handbook by Alison Boteler (feast head of a boar made
    out of meat, a banana joust are some of the suggestions.)
  • Knights  By Carole Lynn Corbin
  • The Medieval Feast  by  Aliki
  • Knights In Shining Armor  by Gail Gibbons
  • King Arthur and the Round Table by Hudson Talbott
  • Knights and Castles  by Richard Dargie.

1st group time:

• Shared Monday morning news.
• Hello Winter song - tied in to winter scenes the children will be creating using cool colors.
• Letters/sounds review, given word peas we stretch it out, find the 3 letters PEZ recorded by children (door, town, pine, cone). 
• Many moon drawings come in, we taped these to the calendar. 
• castle chapter on shields and swords as the children want to begin to make these.  Weapons of the knights are their focus right now.
• Creation of our first sentence from our Hungry Giant story.  The children will write the sequence of events from the story on a story chart, a sentence a day.  The hungry giant came to the town/village. was today's. They will draw and add their own pictures and this will go up with their pictures of the Hungry Giant.  This is an interactive writing lesson.  The words are spelled correctly.  They find most words on our board and can copy them.  They spell those they know.  Again, we are practicing directionality, spacing, punctuation at the same time.

Centers:

• Literacy centers abound for review of letters, sounds and making 3 letter words.  Cards on word wall and pocket chart so the children can create these.  All from Leap Frog it allows for much diversity.  The mat and new small letter frog are the most popular.  Children are asked to play at these centers in the groups I put them in and then whoever happens by. 
• Word puzzles are out.  Children put picture and word together or letters to make words.
• Computer disk Winnie The Pooh reading one.  
• Again the alphabet jars and the quilt where the children add the missing letter fit in with what we are
  doing right now. Once they work here they can visit other sites but I do assign groupings here this week as well. 
• Children are looking through books for shield design ideas and shapes, as well as, for fireplace which is being drawn and constructed, dungeon and gates. 
• Song Raindrops has gone to can sieves being created and the children are experimenting with the sounds they create with water -making rain sounds. 
• Zoo books are being completed.  The children have really picked up on the ? from this book of theirs.  They have mentioned it often as the mark in the zoo book. 

Reggio:

• Tape recording of conversations around snow pictures.

2nd group time:

• Illustration of Three Crows poem, actually it is  a song. 

Three crows sat upon a wall, 
sat upon a wall 
sat upon a wall.  
Three crows sat upon a wall, 
on a cold and frosty morning.  
(My add on, then one flew away).  
Two crows sat upon a wall, etc.  

This they kept telling me was a minus story.  

• Read two moon books brought in by a child from the library, while they were working on the above. 
• I have purchased a class set of clip boards so that the children can work right under the literacy board on a hard surface.  It works for us.

January 28, 2001

1st group time:

• Share reading of The Hungry Giant for words and sound groupings of ow. Also we added voices to the parts of the giant, and again noted the " " marks.  There is a part in here where the people are so relieved about finding honey (even if it is in hive form) there is an Ah! written in.  We had so much fun acting even this small part out, just to show the relief the people must have felt.
• Usual review of letters, sounds, and stretching out the sounds in the words on our board.
• Drawing of giant from the story, or some part of the story. 
• Our missing moon, is still missing.  We are coming up with new reasons why and are wondering just when we may ever see it again.

Center Time:

• I have been frustrated at center time lately because I have been involved in small group work so much and some testing, I feel I miss much of what is going on and I lose my sense of direction.  I will plug my tape recorder in the block castle area to hear their conversations and hopefully this will help.  I am anxious to finish up projects so that I can play at castles with the children to extend this project.  A parent came in to set up boards over the top of my sand table to allow for the making and using of small pulleys.  This will give the children to work with wire to make the pulleys and to
  build sand castles and set up other lifting devices. 
• I was busy with my Peek at the Week sheets so I did not get to record the children as they helped build and drill the boards to make the overhanging structure.  
• Peek at the Week sheets.  Pictures with boxes were on the what I learned side and I did these with the children in 2's so that I could record how they were tackling this work.  What they knew, what they were using etc.  It was very interesting.  I had an alphabet chart right there for them to use as well.
• Loris Malaguzzi (Reggio) said once, that a teacher's goal is not so much to "facilitate" learning in the sense of "making smooth or easy", but rather to "stimulate" it by making problems more complex, involving, and arousing. Here he was talking about projects, but I am thinking this may apply to learning in general.  I have begun a new direction or stimulus with the interactive sentences and coding of their sounds.   Now I will stay here, in this half built section, and work with this, going back to letters and  sounds and moving forward again and again.  Letting the children make
  connections and proceed according to their individual plans, while supporting their new efforts.  Kindergarten is really such a modeling and supporting year, as we tentatively move out into our world of print.

Reggio:  

• The children began work on the pulley system.  They will now get in on the designing and planning of what we need and how we will put the thing together so that they can experiment with the pulleys that they saw in one of their castle books.  We will also do the same thing as we build the catapults, and ballista's for their castles.  
• Moon theories and light theories. (Popcorn party, snowman committee -see below).

2nd Group Time:

• AM  the children had drawn Giant pictures to go with the story.  I did  a shared writing working with their pictures, again to model sentence construction.  We often used just one letter for a word and used spaces when we thought they were appropriate.  Then without my saying anything the children just started copying their own sentence down. 
• read animal homes - children's request and more about castles 
• PM  we filled out our rock sheets that were not done before and I read Snowballs by Ehlert.  Another very nice book, one the children want to do more with.  They want to make snow people , big snow people out of paper and have a popcorn party to go with them and also to use as snow decoration.
  They will be planning for this next week on a small group committee.  A side path to castles.

Reflection: 

I was thinking about my statement above about taking time now to go back and forth between what the children know and the new learning,  giving the children time to reflect and construct this new knowledge in a way to make it theirs.  This is a luxury I have and can still give my students because I do not have a curriculum that demands I just teach something and then move on regardless of what the children have learned so that I can "get through the curriculum".  

In the 'old' days this idea was based on the assumption that learning means you simply fill a child's head with knowledge.   If  we accept the newer view of learning in which children must construct their own knowledge and that they do it in very individual ways.  That they need time to work through new ideas and integrate them with what they already know.  That they need to revisit and come at new knowledge in new ways.   It does not fit the old  pre-test, fill their heads by presenting information, test, grade, then move on, model.   True and meaningful learning needs the luxury of time. Well used time, where children are actively engaged in their own learning, using their skills for their own purposes. 

January 25, 2001

1st group session:

• letters, sounds, picture sheets where the children fill in the letters that they hear for each picture
• interactive writing  The hungry giant is big. 
• shared reading of The Hungry Giant  pointed out " " and ! which comes through so well in  this story.  And, ran, so, the,  sound grouping ow and the children spotted zoo in zoomed.  They knew to add m to make zoom.  We played with that word as the buzzing sound, caused by the zzzz.  The bees zoomed out.  Both bees and zoom have the buzzing sound of the bees.  We played with this.
• shared writing of the story plot. Simple square of characters, setting, problem, resolution.  We recorded these and will do pictures from this story tomorrow.  The children had fun making the giants words come to life because of the ! sign.  Get me some honey!  Get me some bread! etc.

Center Time: 

• reading group AM  'Big Pig, Little Pig',  for big and little did ig rhyming words before talked about little with blending out words.  Also b plus ig makes big,  w plus ig makes wig etc.
• PM went to the library
• added words to the literacy wall or our version of the word wall.  We wanted My, and,  plus giant.  They needed the word snow so  I put up My Castle Snow Giant.  Giant is in bigger letters so that they can find it much easier.  I also put up So the people ran and ran. , from the story for And
  and Ran. 

Reggio:

• Re-constructing number patterns. The children have been creating with unifix cube and actions.  They are now asked to create repeating patterns using junk materials. They must revisit what they know and then come up with a new way to show it.  It causes them to re-construct their idea of a
  repeating pattern in a new way.   We have added a third item to make it a little more difficult for those that want to try this.  Two beads, 3 pine cones, one leaf repeated over and over again is one example.    The pictures and patterns will go up with the documentation of their oral work, then
  patterns. 

2nd group time:

• very short as we ran late in both classes.  Did raindrops and goldfish songs.
• talked about the moon

January 24, 2001

1st group time:

• we started with our picture phonetic writing today
• reviewed letters and sounds
• write My snowman is fat. for interactive writing
• Children went to literacy tables from here.  They were working on upper and lower case letters, zoo books, read around the room. 

Centers: 

• literacy centers
• zoo books
• testing of upper and lower case letters

2nd group time:

• Snowball
• Sadie and the Snowman 
• share read The Hungry Giant
• introduce !  Children are learning .   , ? (from zoo book) and !
• Hello Winter, Raindrops and Goldfish  songs

January 23, 2001

1st group time:

• letters, name or phonetic work
• phonological and phonemic awareness activities: (we played with our language) clapping syllables, given sounds for rope change "r" to "s" we now have soap, fat to cat, can to man car to far, manipulating sounds boat - drop the b it becomes oat fan to an etc.  stretching out go, me, hi
• interactive writing/actually dictated and written by group entirely,  I have a cat.
• writer's workshop:

The Snowman
Roll him and roll him until he is _ig.
Roll him until he is fat as a _ig.
_e has two eyes and a _at on his head.
He'll stand there all night,
While _e go to bed.

The children had to decorate and read the poem.  When the missing letters were discovered, I asked them what letter  do we need for?  and they filled it in.  We reread it many times.

• I also gave them a group sheet, they worked in groups of 2's and 3's. They were given a picture of a boat with 3 boxes underneath.  We talked about the sounds we hear in boat and stretched them out.   I told them I would go first and I added the middle sound to the middle box.  Then I asked them to add the beginning and ending letters, telling them that they could talk it over in their group and come up with the sounds.  We did four words, foot, road, boat, cup.  I put in the middle sounds for all.  The greatest part was if they put rot for rod  for example, when we went over the sounds together we ended up with wrote instead of road.  I loved the puzzled look on their faces.   I said that is another great word but then asked if it would fit this picture, they said the word again caught the 'd', and then added the D.  This happened to two groups and they were able to see it, hear it, and correct it.  We celebrate mistakes and then doing something with them.  I liked to see this as they were beginning to really see the sound connections and how one letter really can change a word.
   We all had 12 claps on the back for doing this job so well.

Center Time:  

• The children were allowed to play a full hour.  I did not pull children who were really involved in their explorations because they had worked so hard at our morning group time, and I did not want to disturb them.  
• AM had library. 

Reggio:

• I pulled in the PM only as children were changing spots, or going for snack. I added these explanations about how a light, lights. 
  • M.-  The power is in the wire.  It comes from the battery.  It goes through the wire into the light bulb.  Then it goes back through the wire to the battery.  Then it comes back down again and goes up.  And it keeps doing that.  It needs the wire or it doesn't light up.
  • D. - It's because of the electricity, the bulb lights up.  The power in the battery goes through the wire to the bulb and makes it light up.  It goes through the black thing to the bulb.  It's going around.  All around.  The power is going through the little sticks in the light (the filament on the
    inside). 

2nd. Group Time:

• Castle story called Knights, we went over the clothing, Castle book about drawbridge and portcullis in PM.  The children now create and share their repeating patterns made from unifix cubes. 

• listened to Raindrops a new plus song:

One little rain drop riding on a cloud, 
Two little rain drops falling from the sky, 
Three little raindrops knocking on the roof, 
Four little rain drops dancing up and down, to 7. 

January 22, 2001

1st group time:

• Monday morning news is read
• letters for names, review sounds, sentences, letters, finding words
• share read Cat Sat On The Mat -children had sentence strips they stood up in the correct order 
• we discussed why goat could not be cow "How do you know this word could not be  cow?" was the question.  We talked about first letters and then last letters when looking at cow and cat. 
• moon picture 
• did poem The Snowman interactive writing  Today we are looking at the word BIG. 

Centers: 

• New Leap Frog electronic game, frog face with lower case letters on it. This was popular as it was new.  
• Children worked on zoo books, reading the parts and putting in the pictures. 
• Dramatic play.

Reggio:

• Clay bowls are being made for castle days, these will be our Easter baskets.  
• Stories for the moon's disappearance discussed in groups.  The children are coming down with some theories that are recorded on their own moon sheet.  Each child gets theirs but they are done in groups of 5.

2nd Group Time:

• review key words
• rhyme big to wig, pig, jig, zig, twig, rig, dig, fig, gig
• read' Big Long Animal Song' Little Celebrations
• read Papa Can You Get Me The Moon?  Eric Carle  talked about shapes and what they thought would happen. 
• I am especially interested this week in how they will find their sentence writing on Friday after we have been emphasizing this increase in the words they attempt to write.
• minus story 5 Green And Speckled Frogs , 5 Little Sparrows, Little Ducks plus story.

January 21, 2001

     
1st group session:

• A faster time as I wanted to work in groups with them.
• review of letters and sounds, what sound does a word begin/end with, stretch the word 
• interactive writing Q___has a loose tooth.,  T____misses his cat.
• PM Dear Mom and Dad, I love you.
• moon recording 
• with my alphabet pocket mat we sang the alphabet song then I would say t____sing with me and this time we would sing his name as I pointed to the letters, I did this for 3 other children as well, who I am making sure know the letters in their name. 

Center Time:

• Table language activities now involve words and lower case letters along with the upper case letters.
• Light bright is now out to help some of my students with the strengthening of fine-motor control. 
• Guided reading of The Beach
• Writing Peek at the Week sheets in small groups (4 or 5 students).  I first reviewed the letters, had them read over our snowman poem and find the words hat, big, we, he, in other work love and my.  Then I tested for letters LOVE  M  Y   and words  love, and, my.  The children were to draw a picture and then write their story.  Everyone could help each other.  In this setting they got very busy and needed my help as they were too busy doing their own work to help each other out. 

2nd group time:

• Story song by Charlotte Diamond  5 Little Sparrows. We did this song with my glove and they took turns taking a bird off, and then we acted this out, with the children as the birds.  I did this at least 3 times as they kept asking for it over and over again.  This is a minus story.
• read The Biggest, Best Snowman  by Cuyler.  A wonderful book for the word big.  We will do this word next week.

Jan. 18 Thursday

1st group time:

• I had a concentrated day on the alphabet and their sounds.  Specifically using sounds and letters to create sentence type structures for their stories. 

• review letters, sounds, words, on literacy board

• asked if I wanted to write the word he, where would I find it?  Could you show us where it is? 

• hid pieces of paper over the beginning letters on our poems, asked what letter would be there for cat, sat, mat, snow, big, etc. 

• on chart paper I drew a picture of a castle.  I made my story I am standing in the castle.  I had the children work together and write the sentence, they were telling the others not to forget the spaces, fighting for turns as they really wanted one, etc.  Such excitement over this collaborative supported event.  They like this more than working alone.  I am going to encourage groups and group work on their peek at the week sheets tomorrow as I think this is a better format for them.  I need to model that same whole group support, in the 5 and 6 children groups. 

• writer's workshop followed, they were to try to come up with a sentence (story) and hopefully the first letters of the words they wanted, or what ever they could hear.  I still have to convince a few that they can really do this.  They work well in groups.  I make sure that the children who I know need much support are near me.  I go to where they are if I can. I have to watch myself here.  I can forget that for the child I was working with a sentence is too much.  Instead, he sadly told me about the cat that
  was taken away from him.  He drew him and we wrote the name of his cat. That was satisfying to him.  I almost missed that, he sat with a blank paper for too long before I got it.  I was much better for the PM as I watched!

Center time: 

• AM - I worked with groups of two children, one new on the letters of his name.  He can write them I wanted to see if we could learn the names of them. 

• PM- the children chose to go to the live opera performance of Cinderella in the gym.  Being that I had mostly boys, I was surprised.  I should know better than to assume they wouldn't go.  They went and really enjoyed it. It fits well into castles. 

2nd group time:

• number story song by Charlotte Diamond  10 Crunchy Carrots

• castle cards about a Baron and the Lady Alice and their castle 

• Hello Winter

   January 15: 

Introduction -

For the past three years I have been studying the municipal schools in Reggio Emilia Italy.  These schools have pre-school programs from 3 months to 6 years.  The schools are supported by the community and they are the finest schools for young children in the world.  While it is impossible to copy and transplant what goes on in these centers, there are groups of interested teachers all over the world studying and then creating their own Reggio inspired approach.  There are also trained liaisons from Reggio that work with groups in the US, Australia, Norway, etc.  Even after three years of studying and creating my own answers, in my particular learning community, I feel I have taken very few steps.  However, because there are more and more activities and documentation done at this time in my class, it has become necessary for me to list some of these activities.  I want to separate them out from the other activities even though they are not truly separate from the children's work.  Whatever the children do that contain a kind of communication of their ideas or theories, must also be considered a literacy event, even though they may use one of 100 other languages, many of them visual.    I will now record these under a separate heading.  

 *************

1st group session:

• read names of helpers 

• looked at K, and V ( Can you feel this buzzing sound?)

• share wrote/read:  Can you read this word?  LOVE  Discussed how we could use this word.

• drew  pictures of the moon, discussed/ I recorded theories about what was happening

• read 3 factual pages of our Castle Book

Center Time:

• The children spent time on their zoo books today and they also worked on the last of their animal/food chain pictures and stories.  The children read their zoo books to me, when they finish them and then take them home.   I am still struggling with the fact that for these tasks, I do ask that all children participate.  There are others they do not need to attempt, but these kinds of activities, right or wrong, I insist upon.  

• Several children used the pointers in the morning class to read over The Cat Sat On The Mat strips in the pocket chart.  Worked with a specific group on letters using the magnetic letters.

• Perhaps the greatest literacy event is occurring in the area of dramatic play.  Here the children are becoming knights, queens, kings, and fighting battles, etc.  There are also the ever present castle animals.  They are still exploring the materials, I am going to record their conversations and plan my next move from them.  I have ordered in cardboard for building castles but right now they are very interested in the weapons.  Our 'you must say, you can play', rule is being tested regularly as more of our girls want access to the boy's play. 

Reggio:

• The children's ideas about the changing of the moon centered around the idea of the sun.  Two children knew that it had something to do with the sun, but they were not quite sure what.  They adopted a melting theory.  The sun is melting the moon.   Maybe it was made out of cheese and mice are eating it.  These are the two favored theories offered so far. 

• The pictures that the children drew of the circuit that they put together to make the light, light are being revisited.  They have now constructed a ringing bell too.  I am asking each child for their explanations of what is happening in their pictures.  They have the real circuit and their detailed drawings of the circuit to work from.  I am including some of their responses.  Their understandings give me a better idea of what they know, and what they still need to come to better understand.

  • V:  The power in the battery is making the light, light.  There is really electrical power and it works because of the wires.  It (electrical power) goes into the wire down to the light bulb.  If there were no light bulb, there would be no light.  This wire takes it to the battery.  It keeps going back and forth, back and forth.

  • M:  The power makes the light, light.  The power comes from the battery.  It uses the wire to go down the wire to the light.  Then the light starts lighting.  And then it goes back up into the springs.  Then into the battery and back. 

2nd Group Time:

• number rhymes both + and -  Five Fat Sausages,  One Elephant, Three Crows

• share read our poem The Snowman  - found we, hat, and  the

• read Moon Game by Frank Asch

• shared one animal report, acted out one animal/food story

Friday, January 12

1st group time:

• Write rest of numbers on calendar, compare moon pictures of children.

• Review words, letters and especially concentrating on sounds, from word board.

• Read Moon Game AM by Frank Asch

Center time:

• zoo pictures continue

• key word cards

• Peek  at the Week sheets done in small groups and mail put in backpacks. The children were to draw their pictures today and write their story.  If their story had my they wrote this and sounded out whatever letters they needed for other words.  Most did two words.  Tested My, me, I, l and y
  along the top.

• finished Make A Pinata in AM class in small groups

2nd group time

• Did animal reports

• Did Theatre In The Round

• PM  We uncovered our polished rocks, wiped them up and took them home.

Thursday, January 11

I am testing out the new FM system in the classroom.  I have to wear a microphone and can be heard in surround sound using 4 speakers.  It is louder and I find I am less dramatic.  

1st group time:

• AM introduced stuffed animal  Little Bear 

• read Sand Cake by Frank Asch, a Little Bear story. 

• PM the same except we did Clifford. Clifford and the New Kitten and Castles

• reviewed letters l, y 

• made a calendar with the children, they did it for the moon watching

• library in PM

Center Time:

• computers Chicka and Pooh Math

• zoo books

• key words

• reading group in the AM  Make A Pinata looked at letters and made words

2nd group time:

• songs Hello Winter and Sambalele/dance

• in the PM we did Theater In the Round with their animal/food chain stories. They loved acting these out so I add their voices to this work today.  The stories are written by me on their work this time.  The background is the warm colored one - orange, yellow, red, brick brown etc.  They used felts
  and some crayon over the paint.  We talked about predators and prey, herbivore, carnivores, etc.

  • z - characters:  rabbit, snake. 
    The rabbit is living in the desert.  He was eating grass.  The snake sneaked up on him and bit him.  Then he ate him.

  • M-  Characters:  Man, elephant
    There is an elephant and he is eating grass and bushes.  A man is hunting him for his tusks.  The man killed him. 

  • V.-  Characters;   zebra, zebras.
    The zebra lives in the grassland.  He is eating grass.  He found a good herd of zebras with no carnivores. 

  • T.- characters:  leopard, tree, antelope.
    My leopard is hunting in Africa.  He is a predator.  And he is hunting an antelope.  He gets real close and pounces.  Then the leopard drags him up a tree to eat him.  Sometimes he saves him for a snack. 

  • D. -characters:  elephant, water snake.
    My elephant lives in the grasslands.  He was drinking water.  He sucked up a water snake.  Four days later he blew him out his nose because he is a plant eater. 

  • B.- characters: elephant
    The elephant is eating grass.  He lives in the grasslands.  He is just on his own.
    

Wednesday, Jan. 10 

 I love surprises!  I like to have many things available to me, I work from a whole rather that going step by planned step through a project.   It is not that there is no order to the way I like to do things it is just that there is not always a straight path.  I like taking the side paths and following a tangent if one presents itself.   I like variety. Maybe that is why kindergarten appeals to me. 

I had to let go of my testing situation in writing today to follow the children's path of talking and sharing their way through this task.  By allowing them to do this I saw how the children's attitude toward writing and literacy skills had changed.  They were more confident, helpful, and focused.  They took over the task, made it theirs and were very satisfied and confident in the end.

1st group time:

• Tools I use for group time: 

  • Artist's easel that hold my chart paper, that we have poems on and messages and word work.  

  • One white board, also magnetic so that it holds my magnetic letters and shapes.  

  • One felt board that can also go up here for special felt stories.

• Please note Monday through Thursday children will take home their readers.

• review of letters and sounds on literacy board

• review of sight words on cards

• review of sentence strips for The Cat Sat On The Mat, talked about at.  We had written this out on chart paper and that chart was facing the children.

• read story Thomas' Snowsuit by Robert Munch  made no and on words, read in the story

Writers Workshop:

• Children were given a sheet I Can Write These Words.  They were to write as many words as they could on this sheet and they could use the board, charts or poems, etc.  I had an idea that this would be a sort of I will do this more alone task.  I started giving them ideas like, Can you write the word I, a, hi, me?  Then things like;  If you can write the word me can you change one letter and make we?  Can you write the word zoo?  If you can write the word zoo, can you write boo?  I watched the children take over this task as they began to talk out loud about the words.  If one was thinking about spelling a word they said it out loud and gave someone else an idea of what to do.  Some looked at words on the other children's papers, and those children freely shared and talked about what they were doing, and then those children began working more on their own.  They read sentences on
  the board to get a word, this became such a successful collaborative workshop in a way I did not expect nor would have appreciated if this had been a test.

• I saw students empowering each other as they risked.  My heartbreak was my one student who still felt powerless and not empowered to go on without me.  My greatest joy was the child who never would do anything without me, not even bother to talk to me.  My second surprise.  Each paper was
  different.  Each paper told this child's own story of how they are connecting their literacy learning, what they know and are still working on etc.  I am going to put these up and document their work.  I want to add my sight, my readings of their work to help the parents celebrate their child's learning instead of comparing it too. 

Center Time:

• Key words were started.  I went through our sight words and recorded the ones the children knew and put them in their drawers (part of our tool box, each child has a drawer)  I recorded those they need on a single card with their name on it and they chose a word of their own they wanted to learn.

• Small reading groups  with I like continue and in the PM with Make A Pinata (little celebrations).

• Zoo books and animal pictures with food stories continue to be worked on. 

2nd Group Time:

• Read Grandfather Twilight , talked about the moon several of us had seen so clearly.  It was a full moon.  We talked about the moon and how it changes shapes and decided to record this.  The children want to make a calendar to record their drawings of the moon.  We will ask for parents
  help.

• sang Sambalele and turned it into a dance and The Lion Sleeps Tonight by Jack Grunsky.
  

Tuesday, Jan. 9

Day's Review:  

There were two students today, one in each class, that had a hard time coming back to school.  I have not had this happen before so that it threw me.  I also had a new student join us in the PM class and he was scared to death.  I did not blame him and know I will try to work him into our class so that he feels comfortable as quickly as possible.  This already will change my day. 

1st Group Time: 

• Borrowing readers that go home

• informal talks about pictures,  presents, and sharing of some that came in. 

• Review of literacy board (word wall) and introduction to y, l, my and castle

• Story:  Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom  by Bill Martin, Jr. 

• Song:  Sambalele - this brought my reluctant student into the classroom.

Center time: 

• Literacy centers:  

  • zoo books

  • paintings

  • alphabet boards

  • Chicka, Chicka tree,  with lower case letters, 

  • monkeys and alligators for that number rhyme

• Computer:  Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom CD

• Felt board: with castle scene and fairy tale pieces

• Two groups of children shared a guided reading lesson of I Like a scholastic high- frequency  book.
  I introduce the book much like Reading Recovery does going over the title - they told me the I part.  We talk about what the book could be about using pictures as clues, as well as, other stories we know.  I accepted all answers as possibilities and when a student said paste instead of glue for
  example, I simply said " If you were the author that is a wonderful word you could have chosen.  This author chose another word that starts with GGGGGG."  Usually they give me the word or I simply say the sounds and they give me the word.  I am modelling one strategy for finding out words with them,
  attending to beginning sounds and figuring out pictures and using them as clues. Then they all read through the book at their own pace and I have them underline the print as they are reading.  I had four children in each group.

2nd group time: 

• Phonemic awareness : guess my word  baaat.  I sound it out, they say it. They gave me the letter a word started with when I sounded it out and  then I changed to what letter the word ended with.  

• From Chicka, Chicka practice with rhyming words.  Do these words rhyme?  Can you give me other rhyming words?  were my questions. 

• I introduced the rime 'at' to show them that rhyming words ended the same. They came up with this.  We added sounds to at to make bat, fat, hat, mat , pat, rat, sat, cat, that, splat, etc.  I told them this was a way of being able to write lots of words when you know just 2 letters "at". 

• The children read:  The Cat Sat On The Mat by Brian Wildsmith.  They loved this book and had quite the discussions over the way the cat got mad and finally hissed the other animals away.  The cats anger was shown in its posture and its fur.  

• This story is up in the pocket chart, on sentence strips.  

  • The cat sat on the mat.  
    The dog sat on the mat.  
    The goat sat on the mat.  
    The cow sat on the mat.  
    The elephant sat on the mat. 

• We sang:  Charlotte Diamond's Hello  Winter.  We left the room laughing and singing.

• The castle toys were a hit so we will continue to observe their play with these pieces.

Reader's Theatre

Today I did not have any children so I thought I would talk about literacy and some things that I like and was doing in the classroom instead.

I have started Reader's Theater in the classroom, as mentioned earlier. We have done three poems so far.  Reader's Theater is a cooperative or shared reading of a poem, story or lyrics of a favorite song. Two or more readers can take part.  If a piece is scripted for only two readers, and you want more than two readers to participate, assign parts to a duet or chorus, or renumber the parts.  I like Reader's Theater because you do not need to really memorize lines and speak them and because you do not have to worry
about costumes. 

There are two ways I like to organize them.  One with two or three students reading parts alone and another more like poems in two voices, where the children read together and separately.  The poems in two voices are harder but the children enjoy them, practice them on their own and take them home to read.  They seem to enjoy getting up on the chairs in front of their classmates.  This is a formal time.  The children present both rehearsals and performance level productions.  The audience has its part of good and interested listeners to play, and they do celebrate and clap for the performances occasionally yelling bravo, bravo, etc.  

I work with the two or three children separately.  They are volunteers. I use well known material and we talk about what a performance is, how to use voices, we have fun experimenting with these.  How we need to sit up , what is means to project your voice, how a performer must practice and practice and then make it look so easy and fun for the audience etc.  We work on the poem and then they decide whether they want to do a live rehearsal or wait until performance level and then read the poem.  Most want a live rehearsal. 

I underline the lines in separate colors on all the children's sheets. They learn that they need to listen to each other in order to come in at the right time.  I really am pushing this experience for the children for
several reasons.  One the poems or stories can be made easier for the more emerging reader's and harder for the early emergent readers.  They enjoy it they must follow the print in line of direction and they must follow each other.  It works for oral language and performing yet with the support of the group, it empowers them and again they feel they have done something very worthwhile.  Here are some poems that I have done so far. 

Both:            Spin Spider Spin
1st reader:  Spin, spider, spin
2nd reader: Spin your web round and wide
2nd reader: Spin your silky web with pride
1st reader:  Great the guests who come inside   (This line is said with much feeling)
Both:            Spin, spider, spin


Both:            The Walkingstick
1st:               The Walkingstick is thin, not thick.
2nd:              And has a disappearing trick.
1st                By looking like a twig or stalk,
2nd:              It lives another day to walk.    

by Douglas Florian

All:              Jack Be Nimble
chorus:       Oh, no, ouch, oh, no, ouch
1st:             Jack be nimble
2nd:            Jack be quick
3rd:            Jack jump over the candlestick
chorus:      Oh, no, ouch, oh, no ouch.
1st:             If Jack didn't jump just a little bit higher
 all three:    He might have caught his pants on fire!
 chorus:      Oh,no, ouch, oh, no ouch.
1st:            Jack was nimble, Jack was quick,
2nd:           Jack jumped over the candle stick.
3rd:            Good job Jack,
All:              Good job Jack!
  
 Both:    Slow Sloth's Slow Song    ( read very slowly  lines actually are written like the first one)
1st:  I........  am.............  a.............  sloth.
2nd:  A  sloth am I. 
1st:  I     live    in   trees.
2nd:  But   I can't  fly.
1st:  I do  not run.
2nd:  I am   so  slow.
Both:  But I am where.
Both:  I  want to go.

I wrote the poems as samples.
                            
     Another performance style comes from Vivian Paley.  Here the children become actors and act out their very own stories.  They really love this too.  I call this theater in the round, as we sit in a big circle.  I use the children's stories, the ones they draw and write for writer's workshop. These are stories like.  I went for a walk with my dog, we went to the park.  Does not sound like much but just try turning it into a play.  At first the children are shy but soon they start acting out the parts by using more movements and varying voices and adding funny extras if they are encouraged to do so.  So for this story I ask the children what parts are in his story and to choose actors for each part.  Students who do not wish to participate
do not indicate that they want a part and are not forced to take a part.  I usually try to make sure I do their story soon and they again have the choice to read their story or act in their story.  Even my shyest students
eventually participate, I have not had a year when no one ever did a story.  In this case we could have the dog and the child and maybe a tree for the park.  The children act out going to the park etc. and sometimes add to the story.  In this story there is room here for the dog to start to run or shake himself.  I ask them how the dog would behave, and encourage different interpretations.  We do several.  We also act out our number stories, and starting next week we will be acting out their animal drawings/ food chain
stories about how and what their animal is eating.  The hunt stories are always exciting as the grass eater, herbivore, is peacefully eating and along comes the predator etc.  This is another way of making their work real for them and showing how important their work is.  It helps them to better understand these harder concepts and it gives me another chance to continually use the words, habitat, carnivore, herbivore, predator, prey, food and food chain. 

Secondly, we act out our number stories. 

• One elephant went out to play   

• Five little monkeys..., 

• Five little pumpkins and the like.  

Anything can be done including helpful incidents that happen during the day that you want to encourage, which then become your story or even problems to help see about better solutions.  I do not use the last one, only if the situation occurs regularly, I will then make up a story about it and we act that out for solutions, it is not done to embarrass anyone.  

I wanted to clarify what it was that happened yesterday in the group for their writer's workshop.  I guess what I was seeing was a lesson that was happening because everyone was involved in running it so to speak.  The children had a way of making it theirs too and forwarding their learning by their own participation and by encouraging the others and by talking and comparing etc.  I was only an observer and the instigator of the words, not the source of knowledge for the answers.  I could not interfere for this
reason and say something like, we need to work on this sheet alone, or not 

Jan. 8

I am taking time to review some of what we did in the last 4 months as I will need to draw or redraw connections to that learning tomorrow. To help me do that I have done two things, one I am putting photographs that the children have not seen from their trip to the zoo.  I will have these on the rug as well as the new book they can take home.  Once we revisit this theme we will be working at a center in the room on a book they will make entitled the zoo.  It is from a rhyme.

We are going to the zoo, to the zoo, to the zoo.  
We are going to the zoo.  
Won't you come along? 
We will see the elephants, elephants, elephants, etc.  
(I also added two pages that say) We saw ______,_______,_______.  

They can put a picture, a photograph or draw a picture here.  I am working on the we  to help them recognize it.  Zoo and the they already know.  That will be our revisiting moving on activity for the week or so.  They will also be working with warm colors, reds, oranges, yellows, orangey browns to create a warm painted background that they will add animal to.  Their animal must also have the food they eat, plus the food the animal they eat, eats, etc.  It will be a food chain animal picture, complete with story.  These get very creative as they continue to develop a sense of habitat.  The children are also continuing to share their animal reports with each other.  All these will reconnect with our animal study which began in November and will finish hopefully this month as we weave in castles, and snow and sand castles.

I gave parents a sheet marking what letters and words we had taken time to really look at and sent these home for practice through the holidays.  I do this in case children have time and are interested as a fun
activity not as a drill.  I explain this to them.  They are very excited about what they can do.   Each child went through the sheet with me before taking it  home so that we could show how much they had learned.    Letters: H, I M, O A N D E P R C, S, T, G, B, W, Z, WORDS:  the hi me and dad I see mom go no zoo boo we to.  

This way they have both capital and small letters and are reading print in small case.  I reviewed with the parents on the same sheet some of the vocabulary words we had touched on,  Menorah, Shamash, Hanukkah, grit, sludge, lapidary from our rocks, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, birds, habitats, carnivores, herbivores, predator, prey, endangered,  circuit, battery power motor, piñata, Posada.  etc.

I should explain what I do when I return to school after the month of December.  I pack a suitcase full of possibilities, as  it were.  I look at things I know I need to work on and those that will add to the children's
interest also I add a few centers to spark a new direction or project.  I have many possibilities and I have webs for them that I add to as the children add their input to my ideas and then we go and wind through the
various possibilities in a new path of our own making.  In other words I may do the possibilities but I play with the children and they set the direction, timing and ideas of what they would like to do. I do not make a blue print for them and just stay in a straight line.  I travel through weeks sometimes doing castles, sometimes doing a side journey or mini study.  As I go I make sure I build in the necessary math and literacy skills.   I am hoping to build an interest in castle days and with my boys this year I think this will entail a detailed look at weapons with the building of catapults, ballista,  drawbridges, portcullis, pulleys  over the sand table made from wire and spools etc. 

We will be looking at the letters y and l.  We have two sentences up on the board.  One for My Snowman  and Castle Days.  My and castle are the words we will be looking at first.  These are up on our literacy board along with some new poems,  Dragon Smoke,  The Snowman,  Snow and The Giant I hope to have a castle and or snow in the water table to take a look at recording and observing melting temperature of the snow etc.  Experiments and theories about how water evaporates can be brought into snow play.  Thus
snow and no from Thomas' Snowsuit will come in.  I also know that I will begin with a new song tomorrow by Charlotte Diamond called Hello Winter. The children really enjoy this song.  And because we will be doing plus and minus stories and acting them out, the children will be listening to many songs and poems like One elephant went out to play on a spider's web one day, she had such enormous fun, etc as a plus story they will connect the action of adding on to, and poems and songs like 10 Crunchy Carrots, 5 Little sparrows and 3 Little Monkeys Sitting in the tree, teasing Mr. Alligator can't catch me etc. for the minus story.  We act these out and observe the action then they label the story verbally with a plus or minus. Later I connect the plus and minus sign we drew on the battery with the action and they tell me which one for our stories.  Then they make up stories of their own and I finally show them how their number sentences that
they are already creating are written.  I include this here because the combination of math and literacy in this instance is so strong.  It is really easy for them this way.  This is some of what I am returning with.  I
also went through and pulled several phonemic awareness skills I want to start working on with the children,  I will detail these on a daily basis. I can now use their foundation to start building a few floor boards with. We will be looking at the "at" rime and creating and reading books with at words, too. 

December 18

I have set up an assembly line this morning a bizarre plan to try to finish up some projects.  It worked.  There were cards to write, banks to paint, angel presents to finish, pictures to paint, and stories to collect. There were about two or three children who had not quite completed these projects.   Quite the scene.   Add an assembly in the PM with my class performing both in the PM and night and there is my day.  Singing and working together in a group is about as much literacy as we did today in the PM although they did write cards.  On Friday both groups drew four animals for these groups of animals  mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and birds.  They wrote the first one or two letters of their animals and some wrote the titles.  This all fit into 4 boxes on a standard sized paper.  To mom and dad and Merry Christmas are the letters and words we are writing and reading right now.  We talked about Menorahs, Hanukkah, Shamash, dreidle and we played the dreidle game, and the four mentioned animal groups.  We divided our zoo pictures up into the four groups and pictures of other animals and shared their animal sheet mentioned above.  The children are also presenting their animal reports that they did at home.  We managed to sing and do a Mexican Christmas story today as we will have our own Posada on Wednesday.  Is it just me or do we all go a little crazy and get just a little busy with projects to finish up at this time?  

December 14

I have just returned from our Christmas Activity Evening at my old school. I had to prepare a Christmas craft for the children and families to make that come to the room.  I had forgotten what makes this night special and tonight for some reason it came home to me and I wanted to share this part of teaching and call it connections through time rather than literacy.  I think this came home to me tonight because I am new at the other school that I work at and I had forgotten what it was like to have an evening like this one and see the return of all the children up to grade six as families and parents revisit the kindergarten classroom.  This experience cannot occur yet at my new school.    I get hugs from my older parents and we visit and talk about things a kind of catch up time.  The children are catching up to, they make their craft and then check out the classroom.  I hear the stories of remember when etc.  and they tell me things like I still hang up my stocking too.  Oh, I remember the rocks that we polished, etc.  There is indeed something special about kindergarten.  Maybe it is that parents have always been so welcome there, as it is set up for parent involvement. They too notice new things, talk about how they appreciated what happened here, I seem to get such nice compliments from them, or they tease me for not having the craft samples because they know how I feel about samples.  It is a comfortable, homey feeling, of going backward and forward in time at the same instance.  You must share yourself with the new and the old and it seems to help strengthen the bonds with your new families too. 
    We had a short program in the gym first of classes singing.  I went and sat on the floor with last years kindergarten girls.  They immediately welcomed me.  They pointed out their older brothers and sisters, we sang the song they played Old Toy Trains when they showed slides to the music because we learned that song in kindergarten.  We were joined by some of the boys and then by some of this years class.  It was like having a private reunion on the floor, as we visited and listened to the singing.  We were all a part
of the kindergarten club.  Once a member, always a member, always welcome, always sharing the changes, the teeth that fell out, the growing etc.  It is such a memorable year and perhaps that is why it is so important, that it be a great one.  It makes me want to work harder and make sure that I do not forget to make this year a memorable one too. 

December 12

 We practiced our song today in small groups, in lieu of writer's workshop, reviewed counting by 10's and the words we could read, etc.  Other than projects I had the children meet in groups of 4 and 5 and figure out working together how to make the light, light.  Then I had them draw their circuit.  They had to draw what was actually there and show the connections.  Many forgot the actual connectors but added them in when questioned.  They also had to show what was going through the wires from the battery that made
the light go on.  They will explain their theories next.  I also started the angel pictures and they are going to do angel stories, telling me what they know and think about angels.  We talked about and read about Hanukah today.  I showed them the menorah as well.  

December 11

I have many projects on the go of late and between two classes I am finding it a bit stressful.  I have mulled over the reason why I like to incorporate Hanukkah or the Posada into our Christmas traditions, I am trying to get to the differences, in all of our celebrations.  I want to stress the ways we differ in celebrating our Christmas traditions as well as looking at other ways to celebrate the season that are different.  I do not
mean different ways to celebrate but the differences that exist in celebrating the same holiday.  So we talk about when we open presents, have a big meal, what it might consist of, those differences.  Then we look at the others. 

We are reviewing words letters, numbers to 10, counting by 10 right now. Our last letters P, C, and  a review of R and M are all that I will be doing for now.  I am after mastery of what has gone before. We have done Reader's Theater with our poems and are now learning songs for a concert in one school and other songs in the other school.  The children do not know a great many songs any more like they used to so we sing many of them. 

Our toy workshop and look at animals is continuing with a small talk and many stories about angels in the one class.  We are making angels too. There are stories that go with these projects and the children are creating theories on how to make a light, light now.  

My PM class is checking out readers that go home each night as well. Cards are being made and sent to children so the idea of messages continues to grow.  This is what is happening generally in the classroom to date.