March - May Literacy Events

1st group time:

• did a review of a complete set of phonemic awareness skills, from rhyming to blending to telling me the word, to changing the word by adding a sound, or taking a sound away, and telling me what letter the word began with or ended with. We went through these very quickly 

• read Nice Bugs, children read together their I Like Bugs sheets and added their own line 

• we talked about our field trip tomorrow to the Children's Festival

Center Time:

• 
  loose today as I worked with groups to finish and start new things finished the drawings of the insect in PM, finished first set in AM  began group work on metamorphosis strips. Children talk over metamorphosis, choose an insect or amphibian and then they create the 4 stages in junk. They also have to label the stages and the animal. I got one group done, with photographs but because I was alone today, I could not record the conversations, as I was interrupted.

2nd Group Time:

• showed the strips, shared requested book on Whales, and we did a story version of the song Three Billy Goats Gruff. We did not sing this yet (more of a rap). We just learned and acted out the troll's part. Interesting version. field trip tomorrow

Fri, May 25, 2001

Thurs/Fri combined a bit

1st group period

• counting by 2's etc., and letters and words

• re- reading Bugs and reading it in poem form-everyone following with their fingers- after filling in missing words like bugs, I like bugs and fat from the poem.  The children then drew pictures, this will be added to their binders of stories and poems.

• PM did a story on Moses and a Biblical passage from it.

Center Time:

• insect pictures continue and the flow is around bugs and all.  I noticed again how the children will take things they have learned or thought about
  before and when given time to contemplate about them will suddenly come up with their own ideas about them.  Shadows show up again as the children start to play with them as we walk outside.  Faces are another thing that comes up now in their drawings.  Dinosaurs are easy now as well as ducks.  I can't wait until I see the insects they come up with.  

• the children are also designing pictures that will become a part of their
  T-shirts.  I mention all this because there is always some writing associated with their pictures.  The story with the picture will now be a
  part of their T-shirt too.  Gradually the support for the phonetic writing
  is being turned over to the children.  They are becoming more independent and are very confident about their writing. 

• watching, observing, discussing and drawing the ducks 

• one group starts their mural

2nd group time:

• metamorphosis song, Six Little Ducks, Hattie and the Fox

• PM class does swimming stories we share and act out, they had their first swimming lesson on Friday 

• We have been busy with swimming Country Fair and Carnival nights and the smoke and weather

Wed, May 23, 2001

 I put the water table, ducks, and  paint outside today as it was such a beautiful morning.  When we got outside the wind came up and the sun disappeared.  Our ducks got some time outside and a quick bit of water time before we had to bring them back inside.  These animals and outings require lots of work and even more when we have to clean up everything before I leave for the other school. Ducks and ponds require time and energy! 

First Group Time:

• song metamorphosis and poem  I Like Bugs

• talk about watching and observing the ducks

Center Time:

• color their duck pictures and stories

• write new duck pictures and stories after watching the ducks outside and
  watching them swim, eat, walk, etc.

• draw and color ducks with paint on large paper, discuss how the use of too many colors as a background takes away from the ducks or what ever is on the picture.  How it makes any object disappear

• AM draw and label insect with small group of children PM put duck pictures and written stories up.

Reggio:

• continued observation, documentation of insect drawings and duck interests 

• AM continue talk about what we notice about shadows

Second Group Time:

• AM celebrated a birthday and ended with Jump Frog Jump

• PM Wow It's Great Being A Duck and the sharing of plus and minus stories for both classes.

Tues, May 22, 2001

My focus has changed a bit.  In order to fine tune what we learned this year and add new words, etc. we are writing every day and reading books in groups each week.  Add to this our new focus especially for my morning class of group work and that about takes my day.  Small group projects are the focus.  Children are working in the same group for a week or more on some interest of theirs. Right now the children are creating group murals using paint, on some topic we covered this year.  Also the children are learning to draw an insect.  They are actually producing detailed pictures of a drawing of an insect.  Again we are doing this in small groups.  During this time we are talking about perspective and breaking the task into drawing shapes and body parts from the head to the abdomen.  Then the children are labeling the parts and coloring them.

First Group Time:

• review of letters, counting, sounds

• talk of our new ducklings, we have two in the AM and four in the PM

• talk about caring for them, overnight stays with them, and just looking at
  them and comparing them to our chicks.

• talk about thinning the tadpoles out and returning them safely to their
  environment 

• talk about what we did on the holiday

• first drawing of our ducks with a short observation

Center Time:

• mural group created for dinosaur part, one boy put with a group of girls,
  so that he could learn more about actually playing or working with our
  girls.

• swimming for AM

• play continues all through the classroom

• children are making long ropes and lines with manipulatives especially the chain toys

Reggio:

• detailed drawings of insects continue

• small group work and recording of the process of this

2nd group time

• singing and practice of saying, clapping etc. of metamorphosis

• finishing our metamorphosis sheet with the mosquito mystery bug

• Jump Frog Jump twice by request, the children like to read this, they read
  the title right away and they read the chorus and the whisper part

Wed, May 16, 2001

Dailies:

I am wanting to do so much right now I seem as restless as the children.  I want to start a mural that will involve group work that the children have been wanting to start, I want to talk about insects in small groups and record these discussions and then have the children begin to draw and record insects.  I want to start a lady bug habitat.  We have a plant in the classroom that is covered in aphids.  We are going to add as many ladybugs as we can find and watch them go to work.  I want to order in a whole 3 pails full of different sized stones and simply play with them through the month of June on a huge tarp, creating stone pictures and sculptures with them.  I want to work out the actual size of a dinosaur and spray paint the creature on the grass in the playground so that we can come to terms with size. I want to go outside and collect flowers for out bug pictures so that we can look at them and draw them, I want to go outside and trace shadows, and I want to add hoses and funnels to the water table to really splash in. These are some of the things the children are interested in.  I do not know how to do even  some of this with the Children's Festival, swimming, Father's day, Country Fair, and Carnival nights. 

First group time:

• usual review counting by 2's etc, letters, sounds

• reading of message  I like frogs, I like eggs,  I like shadows... and We
  are going to get duck eggs on Friday

• children reconstructed My Shadow independently

• children drew bug and or any story they wanted to with writing PM  AM did faces and stories again

Center Time:

• reading group again same stories and recordings in key tab books

• hospital play 

• dinosaur play and discussion

• mystery bug drawings come up and pictures of ladybugs

Reggio:

above dreams only, the discussion groups and small  project work.  Our
ladybug home and beginning the mural will make me feel like I am getting
somewhere.

2nd group time:

• children had to say something nice to one another and read the above
  sentence before they left

• read I love Bugs by Margaret Wise Brown this we have in reader form for the children.  I have 5  copies

• sang Six Little Ducks many times

Thu, May 17, 2001

 This was a rather mixed up day for us.  Very different things happening in
each of the two classrooms. 

AM

• sang Six Little Ducks, Humpty Dumpty rap, Slimy the Slug, and Metamorphosis before we went swimming.

• After swimming we ate and then we out in two large groups, too large but I only had one parent.  The children went out with chalk and we sketched shadows of all kinds of interesting things.  On the way outside we stopped and looked at our drawings.  We noticed and were quite fascinated by how the shadows had moved.  Also by how they shrunk.  We will take another look at them tomorrow morning and draw those in very small groups.  Discussion and exploration a small one will continue.  Hopefully we won't loose the sun for the month of June like last year. I was disappointed in how my group worked on this.  The children who were focused had partners that were not cooperating.  They took so long to realize that one partner cannot form a shadow over the one drawing and actually move.  Others would butt in, or wander a bit.  We talked about working as a group again and I will make sure they do small group work of some kind even shared reading or Reader's Theater to help the five children who have such problems with this.

PM

• read 10 Lady bug and wrote numbers in the air

• read I Like Bugs by Margaret Wise Brown

• pulled out a bin of bugs with snakes, mice, and alligators

• had children reduce this group to just the bugs

• opened up a bag of new bugs, I told them that these bugs actually made a new group we called insects.  Had the children look at this group

• insects were really big, from Toys R Us for $1.00 each.  They talked about legs, we looked at body parts, wings, came up and antenna.

• then we looked at the first group of bugs and we pulled out what we thought were the insects.  Most used the six leg rule then we got to one we were not sure of.  That is where the 3 body parts came in.  I used the terms head thorax and abdomen.  We studied the insects and noted where the legs were attached and how many were on each side 

• we then got our recordings of our mystery bug out , and I announced that
  the adult had emerged in our special container.  I then passed it around.
  The children did not recognize it at first.  This surprised me as our
  mystery insect was a mosquito.  This they recorded in the last box on their sheet and labeled it.

Centers:

• children in a group of two, made a home for the four ladybugs the children
  brought in.  I have an infested plant, full of aphids, they love it.  We covered the plant with netting.  We are trying to get more.

• children were using all kinds of manipulatives that the morning class had
  out to make patterns with, in making up + and - stories.  They used these
  for their story and then wrote the number sentence down

Reggio

• insect discussion

• recording of mosquito

2nd group time

• Humpty Dumpty Rap

• we shared number stories

• read the number sentences I recorded from their work

• left early and went to look for ladybugs, we did not find any.
  

Tue, May 15, 2001

A sort of combo of Monday and Tuesday:

My mission of late is to provide some sort of reading and writing adventure daily now for the class.  I am not sure I can sell the children on this idea yet as they seem restless, but they have not clued in to what I am asking of them.  They seem to be able to write their ideas so that it is not really a struggle.  My AM class goes swimming twice a week.  This really cuts into our literacy time as well. 

For this week, and more, we are using and working with ?, this, you, have,
look, are, bug, swim.

First group time:

• sing alphabet by letters and sounds, review letters and sounds and sentences from literacy board 

• Write a sentence that the children will read, Today we are going swimming. 

• AM  Today we are looking at bugs (PM). 

• reading of The Grouchy Lady Bug by Eric Carle and the beautiful book Have You Seen Bugs? We talked again about the ? and what kind of sentence that made, I asked silly questions of them as an example and connected this to their reader and song Who fed the chickens, and Did You Feed My Cow? 

• put up sentence strip Have you seen bugs? on literacy board. 

• had the children draw a face picture.  This time I did the example on the
  board but they had to do all the parts, eyebrows, eyes, eye lashes, ears,
  nose mouth, hair.  These were great, all so unique but everything placed
  well.  We added a story to these.  They were funny.  My face is going to
  Quebec, My face is going to play soccer.  My face is screaming.  My face is crying.  My face is flying and is going to a ball game.  I really enjoyed
  these stories from the children, they liked writing them.  Face was usually
  spelled fas, ing's were on the words that needed them, 'is' was spelled
  correctly today no reversals , 'going' was spelled correctly. 

• am, did this yesterday they put together cut up words to form the poem The Shadow.  I asked them how many words, how many letters, how many spaces? 

Centers:

• loose centers and PM is glazing their Father's Day plaques. 

• meet with one group to read What IF? again and The Log Hotel  wrote in
  their keytabs from this story, I see a __________.  I took running records
  of the re-reading of this story of each of the five students in this group.
  This will continue through out the week. 

• make a word and other spelling type activities are available plus a felt
  alphabet book where you must add pictures of objects according to their
  beginning sounds.  Not much activity here as the children are too restless
  for this. 

Reggio:

• begin mural of dinosaurs AM and bugs in PM.  Discussion groups first on
  plans for mural and then individuals will begin to paint their ideas.

• recordings of tadpoles and their growth, introduction to metamorphosis,
  egg, larva, pupa, adult stages

•  (PM) recording of the above four  stages of our mystery bug - mosquito - as we have observed so far.  We have recorded the egg, larva/ wiggler, pupa stages so far.  All stages are recorded.  This is done like a story.  One day an adult mystery bug flew along the water and landed on top of it. Here she created an egg boat.  She laid many eggs in this floating boat.  The children drew the water level and the floating egg boat.  In a few days the eggs hatched and they went into the water.  We drew our mystery bug at this stage and labeled it larva or wiggler.  Then we drew the water level in box three and recorded our changed bug at the pupa stage.  We are waiting for the adult to appear.

2nd group time

• read 10 Little Ladybugs from scholastic a counting book, it is a good one.

• introduced and looked through my Andy Goldsworthy book with the children. I got this for my birthday.  It is an absolute must for children.  It
  encourages nature art and is so stimulating, so full of ideas for the
  children.  I have A Collaboration of Nature something like that.  I want
  Stones.  Then I want to bring in all kinds of stones and work with them on a huge canvas through the remaining months.  They were so into this book we just oohed and awhed are way through it until the end.  We seem to have a very short group time of late.  Longer center time.
  

 May 13, 2001

I have written before about the metaphor that Loris Malaguzzi made in regards to education.  When we define our learning field too specifically, creating a curriculum that is more like a cook book, then we are teaching in the narrowest part of the funnel.  Taking into account children's interests, doing projects about subjects that mean something to the children etc., help keep the learning field wider. Staying out of the narrow part at least and if you are lucky even outside of the funnel.  

Accountability and the creation of education into a business has placed us again, in the narrowest part of the funnel.  We get programs and teach them.  We get skills and topics to teach at certain grade levels that have nothing to do with the particular class that we may be teaching.  That is where the art of teaching comes in.   

The irony is that in keeping the learning field as wide as possible in my kindergarten classes, my own personal life is being lived in the narrowest part of the funnel. I have not filled my jar with the proper rocks.   T.

Dailies:

I have spent the last two weeks with the children putting together a Mother's Day Tea with the children.  It took much time and there were many projects that we did for it, including putting together a poem/song program which ran for 20 minutes.  It was double the work this year as I had two teas but in different libraries, which meant double the set- up etc.     Often I have questioned the spending of time on holidays and gift projects for Christmas, Easter etc.  Usually, I try to incorporate some interest that the children are into in their gifts.  I am writing a kind of summary of the work we did last week in the area of Language Arts around the Tea.  Our tea is a big deal because it is really a volunteer appreciation tea for kindergarten. 

• cards for mom - writing Happy Mother's Day and writing a story for the
  water color mother/child pictures they drew.  Writing a dinosaur story with
  illustration for their placemats, and writing a thank you prayer, and introduction for the parent program

• creation of clay dinosaur stories from their clay dinosaurs with nests and
  other dinosaurs

• learning of two new songs and one poem that went into our chosen 15
  poem/song program.  They also relearned or revisited the old ones that they wanted.  The new ones were Slimy the Slug, The Chick, and Lucky Streak. 

• the studying of our faces in the mirrors talking about placement of eyes,
  eyebrows, noses, mouths, ears, hair etc.  as the children drew their
  self-portraits.  The talk about how the face changes expressions when
  exhibiting different emotions. 

• the planting of our seeds which grew into plants that we put into pots we
  designed.  We will take a look at our developing seed/plant ideas later.

• the recording of our hatching chick, our growing tadpoles and the drawing
  of our mystery bug.

• the observation and recording of our mayfly nymph, our ponds will be
  developed into plasticine pictures now.

• the creation of antenna for our Slimy The Slug that the children wanted to make (their idea) for the song.

• the cooking of our deserts, cookies and marshmallow stick delights

• the copying of the poem I Love You Little

• the reading of Are You Afraid?, and Who Fed The Chickens? creating question sentences 

• looking at this, is and I like

• the planning of the actual day. 

• I took the weeks off of dailies and this weekend to sleep.  It was a lot of
  work, but worth it in the end. The children handle the day all on their own.  I am a helper/servant on this day who conducts the singing program. 
  

Thu, May 3, 2001

1st group time:

• we do our chick poem

• each child is given a photograph of themselves with a partner holding a
  chick.  We talk about our chicks and we share write words about the chicks

• we look at pictures of the chick in the egg at 5 days, 13 days and 19 days, pecking out of its shell, just out of its shell and then hours later when it is fluffed up.

• writer's workshop -given a page with our chick story and divided into four
  squares, the children are to draw our chick in the egg, then the line of holes around the egg, the chick just out, and then the chick they held in
  the picture.  This chick they are to write about.  The pictures were drawn in small black felts then colored with the bigger felts.  They did a very good job of recording their observations of the chick's journey.  They worked in the groups of two in the photograph.  All this went up on the  board.

Center Time:

• busy with Mother's Day stuff and cooking today.

• children set up a  pond in the water table and started to play with the frogs

• children cleaned out the sand table and wanted the bugs in it (plastic ones, and ant families).  One child is very excited about the bugs

• magnifying glasses were used at the pond today.  We are looking for our
  predators that need to be removed as our frog spawn went in the AM class today.  PM observed the changing embryo, it is no longer a circle shape.  We will draw these later. 

• we planted the pots we started during castle days in our pots for our moms. They really enjoyed seeing how well the seeds grew.  We will come back to this later

Reggio:

• really the observations and recordings of the pond and chick 

2nd group time:

• Bugs in Boxes and The Ladybird books, I do not have authors for, the
  Ladybird book is the same series as the egg, earth, frog, with the cellophane pages

• practiced singing our songs for Mother's Day Tea

1st group time:

• review of th sh ch and and and ing words, blending the sounds together

• wordless book  Chicken To Egg I'll have to get the correct title and Emma's egg

• Peek at the Week sheet (writing plus picture) plus an independent reading of Animal Stretches and a guided reading of "Who Fed The Chickens?"

Center Time:

• we looked at the pond

• much clay work is being attempted now.  I am not keeping these stories and explorations as they are very big and the children are using clay much more freely

• PM had an assembly so that cut our afternoon short

2nd group time:

• none in the PM

• Chicken to Egg in AM and outdoor time.

Thu, Apr 26, 2001

1st group time:

• review of letters and review of cards with initial letters

• introduced the blend letters, like br, bl, st, str, sound units or chunks
  introduced more 'and' words, brand, strand, stand bland, sand, hand, band

• these were connected to stories we have read or talked about etc.

• read Baby Chick, talked about how does a chick know what to do when they get out?  How does a turtle know to head for the sea instead of stay on the sand?

Center Time:

• groups reread independently The Tree Stump, read Animal Stretches.  The word animal was in both so we figured that one out by using the other book, wrote in their key tab notebooks something from one of the books they have read  AM and in a separate center they filled in missing letters and drew pictures for the poem Baby Chick. 

• PM observed and drew chick pictures today, instead of doing the poems.

• worked on portraits

2nd group time:

• read book A Snail's Life by Himmelman or something like that

• sang Slimy the Slug

• number problem

Wednesday, April 23, 2001

1st group period:

• review numbers, letters, sounds

• talk about how important language is, that it is difficult, that writing is
  hard work, that they are doing really well with it, etc. 

• did cards with pictures Can you tell me the first letter for these words?
  They could see how easy this was now 

• asked for harder words and we modeled the clapping of the syllables and
  then spelling by syllables, we spelled words like Edmonton Oilers,  Toronto Maple leafs,  alligator, etc.  I wanted them to see that the could do this too now.

Center Time:

• group work with readers, reread Going UP? introduced the book The Tree Stump.  This was a good book for words like in and went.  We really talked about the ch in ouch and then the ow. Good review for ch.  More a guided reading lesson.  They read Going Up? independently.

• study chicks, observe and feed them

• work on self portraits and stories about them

• early initiative continues, children work through a kind of reading
  intervention format

2nd group time:

• reading of Too Many Chickens by Paulette Bourgeois

• the egg number story problem
  

Tue, Apr 24, 2001

I have begun to think of ways I need to add a component for observing/and recording the children during their play as well as during the times they work on the tasks.  I have not organized my day for this and I am presently looking at ways to include this vital piece of information collecting into the program so that it is not quite so random, as it is now.

1st group time:

• reread My Shadow , reviewed numbers and share wrote or spelled Yesterday, I saw a chick hatch in my hand.  We talked about words like yesterday.  We clapped out the syllables and then spelled this word by those sound groups. I talked about how this might be easier than saying the whole word.  To break it down into chunks first helps to get each part.  First and last sounds are a possible way of handling these words, do not be afraid to use them.  You can put down letters for bigger words too. Also connections to and, sand and hand were made.  We had worked on and sand yesterday in our little reader and today hand came up in the above sentence. 

• AM interrupted with a hatching of a chick

•  writer's workshop done in groups of 5, each group reread, yesterday's book plus a new Celebrations book Two in the PM and Whose List Is This? and Going UP? in the AM.  The children then wrote about the chick hatching. 

• early reading initiative started in the morning class

Center Time:

• group work on the above stories.  Home reading program must be doing
  something as the children can point to the words, recognize many and use letter clues and pictures to help with the words.  These are repetitive
  books but they can figure out things like two frogs,  two turtles sitting on
  a log. I like reading the old one first, I can see them working on the hard
  words on their own.  The writing and picture works well too.  I will have them record the stories in their key tab notebooks.

• set up pond in PM also clay work in both classes being much more independent now and more on their own ideas.  I have been waiting for so long to see this confidence with clay.

• AM library time with other teacher, PM and AM chick watching and writing of their stories.

• PM set up pond, they are very excited about the animals

Reggio:

• the pond group and discussion around the animals

• clay work

2nd group time

• number stories 

• Small, Small, Pond by Fleming, A Freshwater Pond - children are getting
  very good at picking out rhymes.

• Time with the chicks, they ran around in the middle of the circle when they
  came to the children they could pet them with one finger, etc.

Tue, Apr 24, 2001

1st group time:

• usual review of the numbers, letters, sounds, new sentences ch, th, sh, and vowel groups

• spelling of my experience of gathering pond water, I would tell the story and the children would spell the words for me, this was oral not written

• read Spilt Milk by Charles Shaw 

• reading of our new poem My Shadow  running, jumping, skipping, hopping, dancing, walking are the words we talked about 

• gave numbers from 10 to 20 as they went to centers

Center Time:

• we rearranged the house corner and put in our pond in the AM 

• we had a chick hatching in the PM which was very exciting and the children kept watching it until I could finally put the egg in my hand and we could watch the chick peck it's way out of the last 3 cm of the egg and push its way out.  We studied it for awhile looking for the egg tooth and noticing how wet it was before I had to put it back in the incubator to dry and keep warm. 

• vocabulary words incubator, ch for chick and hatch, membrane, oviparous, etc.

• looking at all kinds of bugs

• read The Nest in AM Little Celebration readers

2nd group time:

• number problem stories  "17 animals were walking in the woods.  Two meat eaters came and ate 5 of the elephants.  17 - 5 = 12."

• read a scholastic book on Shadows  and observed chick in PM I had teachers come in and see the chick.  The main comment was don't you
  find the children get so (too) excited.  I never thought of that as being a
  problem, or something to be avoided.  Yes, they do get very excited, and yes they do run to you and kind of shout, "Come see, there is another crack and the eggs are moving", etc.  They need to handle excitement both its ups and downs I think.  It is harder I guess but not so, if we do not feel the need to control it so much.  

Fri, Apr 20, 2001

I have been feeling a bit resentful of late about how much time our job really takes.  It is hard to do all the planning, paper work, projects, etc. and be able just to have time to just spend with other things that should also be important enough to spend time with.  Lately with all the open houses, celebration of learning, Easter concert and now the preparation for our egg things and Mother's Day I am realizing how ridiculous it is that I am still filling out referral forms, spending hours on newsletters, having to turn in bills and fill out all the paper work for that just to get my money back.  There are book orders and phone calls to make just to coordinate the swimming program or other fieldtrips. And still our programs must run as usual as if all this paper work can be done at school.   It really is exhausting.  This week I get to plan for egg stories and books and I have to do up bills and orders for school, clean both rooms, get caught up on scrapbooks, put in the plastic and try to find pond water although there isn't any in my usual spot, plan for the early literacy initiative and much more!

1st group time:

• usual review  of numbers 10 - 20 today and sounds and letters

• spell word to go to centers

• spent time talking about swimming lessons

• work on ch, th, sh

Center Time:

• shadow poem is up great for ing and is
  My shadow is running, My shadow in dancing, My shadow is jumping, etc.  By Helen Depree I will introduce Spilt Milk with this next week

• literacy board Oviparous animals lay eggs and Will our chick and duck eggs hatch?  for ch, d, eggs and question mark 

• dinosaur books being finished

• small groups with Peek at the Week sheet, I did the children in groups of 5 and this way we could read a Little Celebrations book with our drawing and writing.  It worked out very well and this way I can make sure I get to at least one book a week.  This one was called The Nest.  It was an excellent book for us right now with the work we have done with oviparous animals. They could read it as they knew, is the in on My and they had been using words like grass,  tree etc.  mud gave them problems but we sounded that out, feet they could figure out and sand because of the and.  Good stuff, good story.

2nd group time:

• singing of old and new songs

• story Is That My Egg? again and I forgot the number stories, we were
  talking about all the mistakes in this book again.  The turtle does not lay eggs in water, the platypus would not be born with fur on but be pink etc. the birds would not come out of the egg all fluffy.  We can't wait to see what they are like next week when they come in. 
  

Wed, Apr 18, 2001

1st group time:

• review of poems and sentences on board and reading words and sounds and letters

• helpers write the x problems 

• exit to centers is to spell the word I give them "How would you write goat?"  etc.  I did plane, ears, nose and harder ones as well.  They did very, very well.

Center Time:

• stories of mom and child, dinosaur stories in two formats were worked on 

• new language game out, cards with picture words and colored letter tiles. The children try to spell the word, each card has letters and a color code for the tiles.  The spelling is standard.  They cannot put the wrong tile in the space as the holes will not allow this.  IT is challenging for them, but they seem to like to play with this.  So far my readers are.

• ice cream graphing game, children with a game construct and read the graph 

Reggio:

• working on dinosaur stories in their dinosaur books and their theories of extinction, clay animals continue 

• I am trying to document the number story growth and tales

2nd. group time:

• songs , many old ones plus Slimy the Slug and Lucky Streak from Charlotte Diamond

• story Leo Lionni  The Biggest House In The World I think it is called about the snail that wanted a big shell

• discussion of Easter for the PM too

Tue, Apr 17, 2001

1st group time:

• review x stuff

• sounds and vowel groups introduced,  is, at, on en, un words with pictures for the last two

• story Is This My Egg?  which we will turn into a booklet by the same title, as we record the various stages of our eggs for next week

• writer's workshop long, because the children drew and colored in dinosaur pictures using colored pencils

Center Time:

• various dinosaur theme parks were built

• children were working nicely together with some of the stuffed toys they got at Easter

2nd group time:

• dinosaur book about flyers or flying reptiles

• share stories we did not get a chance to act these out

• Hawaiian song

Sun, Apr 15, 2001

Entry for Thursday, which was completely taken over by a 'party' day event:

Group time:

• did quick x counting and read through some statements

• read green eggs and ham by Dr. Seuss

Centers:

• made green eggs in ham in small groups

• wrote stories for journals with pictures on any topic

• did projects cards, and stories for placemats

Scavenger Hunt:

• children looked at picture and word clues to find cards through the school, that had clues on them to lead them to the treasure.  They did this so well, reading words like Mrs. K, library, kitchen, Pepsi, boys.  They found treasure in both classes, egg candy, a wrapped real watermelon 'egg' and paska.  The PM also got a party.  AM ended with library after we shared the treasure. 

It is a time to reset and replan for literacy events in the classroom. I am adding the sentence,  Looking at oviparous, egg laying, animals.  That should work for some hard letters.  Our frog pond in excellent, a rather dumb sentence but it covers the last of our letters.  Also the word 'is' is going up along with on and at for the vowel sounds, in clouds across the top.  Our shadow poem with ing words is going up as well for the children to start copying down.  They have really mastered ing now.  We are still working with 's' to mean more than one.
    I would like groups to start again and maybe I can get those in now that
the big projects are finishing off.  At least two days can be spent on group times.  Once our swimming program starts I will have to rearrange things or we lose the month of May to swimming altogether.  It is really just a different emphasis when a swim program takes two days a week for one month. I usually do this in June but they did not give it to me this year.

We will also do more Reader's Theater as well I hope.  Right now we have
been writing an enormous amount.  They find this a much easier task now, I
almost forget it is a big deal.  Terry.

Wed, Apr 11, 2001

1st group meeting:

• run through of alphabet, sounds and work to continue, talk about open house last night 

• Counting by numbers, children record the number sentence, one student (AM) points out that he has counted by 10's 10 times and the answer is 100.  "I just figured it out", he says, and demonstrates how he has done this.  What is it about this counting by numbers/multiplication stuff that is so fascinating to them?

Center Time:

• project oriented, eggs plates were completed, I am not working with groups

• I worked with clay today and again with the dinosaurs and their stories

2nd group time:

• story Raising Dragons read with an accent

• Dicky Dicky Dinosaur 

• PM had an Easter Concert today and it took most of the time.  They went to gym and library with my prep teacher.   They will perform two short programs but stay on risers for the whole time.  One show this afternoon and one tonight.  They sang their song Fish Tales very well.

Tue, Apr 10, 2001

!st group time;

• introduce oviparous activity as we discuss the oviparous animal we want to draw and put into an egg

• run through of our counting routine this time I add x 2  and then x 5 and then x 10.  We count by these numbers and another two questions were explored by the children. 
  They wanted to know what happens when you count by a number one time.  So we did this.  And each time we got that number so I began a game.  Count by 60 one time and we get?  Count by 30 and we get?  One child said, "Count by 100 one time and we get 100".  They had discovered the x1 rule.  Then another child asks what happens if we count 0 times.  Well we did this too.  And then they began the game.  Count by 1000  0 times and we get 0.  They had such fun with this.  They had the x 0 rule.  They do not even know they are doing multiplication.  We will connect it to reading the number sentence, so
  again I include this with Language Arts as well.  It is the oral vocabulary they are learning too, that I think is so important.   The count by _ 3 TIMES   They will be able to read the sentence as we are going to count by 2's  x 2,  3 times and we say 3 times 2 equals 6.  They will be reading 3X2 =6.  It is just a base, an idea of counting in groups that they will later use. It is a barrier that removes the fear in things that may appear hard. I still can't believe they came up with this in my AM class.  The PM class
  also picked this up, though it came from an experiment by me.  The AM class really 'owns' this.

• Centers:
  Writer's workshop occurred in centers with the drawing and writing of their dinosaur stories for their Mother's placemats.

  • Oviparous center; the children drew and cut out an oviparous animal.  They then  labeled a plate cut into an egg shape with the name of their animal and pasted it on.  They wrote the word oviparous by shared writing and these pop up egg layers will go up onto the board.  It is not great art but it does show the extreme variety of egg layers that we have.  Also this is the comment one of the AM children made "and if we need to write the name of our animal we will just sound it out and write it."  They are getting so confident. 

• Early Literacy initiative continues with PM as well.

2nd group time:

• PM practice for concert most of the PM was here today, although we did do the above centers for the first while.

• read April the month poem from Chicken Soup With Rice finally and Dinosaur Dinner several times.  

• shared some of the above 'plates' / egg layers with the children.

Mon, Apr 9, 2001

1st group time:

• Monday morning news, I had to include this story of number connections and how children  teach themselves: B holds up an 8 by 11 1/2 sheet of paper covered in number sentences she had written.  This is her story. "I made muffins with my mom yesterday.  I helped her.  When I finished and the pan was out I saw this number sentence.  We made 12 muffins and they had 6 on each side.  So I wrote 6 + 6 =12  Then I wrote the crow story.  3 - 1= 2  2-1=1 and 1-1 = 0 (From the song 3 crows sat upon a wall, and one flew away...)  and I wrote the elephant story.  1 +1 =2,  2+1 = 3 ..."
   Number sentences from making muffins.  Who would have thought. 

• x practice and centers, we want to work on eggs

• What's Hatching From This Egg  I forgot the author

Centers:

• eggs and eggs and eggs words like Kiska, pysanky, saving white, yellow, etc. 

• continue Mother's Day stuff

• The children are busy visiting as they work on various projects.  Our
  placemats are a continuation of our look at dinosaurs.  The children are readily drawing these pictures and writing a variety of stories to go with them.

• Dinosaur play continues in the block corner with habitats

• The PM plays with playmobile trucks

2nd group time:

• short due to a longer center time, we share magic tricks, sing Dicky Dicky Dinosaur and in the PM practice for our concert.  

Sat, Apr 7, 2001

Okay so I was still on a little vacation.  I had many meetings last week and
this week to come to think of it.  But will try to give at least an overview.  I have taken a step back to let things just percolate for awhile. But I am seeing some interesting things.

Stories:

My one student who has not picked up letters yet and has trouble writing his name knows some sounds.  Also he is saying things like up a mountain, down a mountain for the letter M.  " Is that the up a mountain down a mountain letter?" he asks.  Now he is into writing mom because of the O , as that is one letter in his name.  With mother's day coming this is a great word and one that he is very motivated to learn.  Interesting that it is in the physical movement of the letters and the song in phrasing that he
is starting to pick some of this up.

One of my accomplished students has started writing barely a sentence.
She is spelling more words correctly and doing something else.  I am not
sure what so I will wait to see what is happening. 

The children are automatically including stories with their pictures
and now I am getting two sentences from them and harder words from others. We did pictures of our favorite part of the Joseph stories in one of the classes and they wrote the stories for these with words like faro for pharaoh and ejpt for Egypt etc.  I also got Josf wz peing in jal.  Joseph was peeing in jail.  Unfortunately, if I can read this so well I am sure the parents can too.  I actually accepted it as it was meant as a joke for me, you see this child is writing so well now I can read it.  I will come back to have him think of another story too.  A kind of revisit, revision without the punishment aspect.  There is a down side to having the children spell better now?

Center Time:

• We have extended our center time to accommodate our egg dyeing activities.
  Two fabulous books  both by Ruth Heller. 
  1. Chickens aren't the only ones
  2. Animals Born Alive and Well
  What wonderful words to clap to and rhyme with and talk about and act out now -living in an egg- oviparous and viviparous.  One of the children brought in pictures of a calf being born. I got to use the word birth canal. I like that term, the children seem comfortable with that term as well. 
  

• Our look at dinosaurs continues with books now, as the children ask to hear these.  They are designing clay dinosaurs with nests in clay.  The conversations around these are great, so I will hold to this and still try to work through Easter and the concert and mother's day presents etc.
  

• Early Literacy Initiative has started with my PM class.  4 children and possibly some others will be reviewing letters sounds, etc.  Two will be given intensive games, activities etc. to help them learn in many modes. The other two are great in skills just, building risk taking factors. 
  

• Language Connections to Math: More math language being introduced orally.  We are now into counting by 2's, 5's, 10's for the language of multiplication.  I introduce the x 'count by' sign.  We are going to count by 5's three times.  I hold up three fingers now, or 3 cards with three dots on each.  Get it going zero... 5, 10, 15.  When we count by 5's three times our answer is 15.  We do sets of these.  They love them and are not finding these at all hard as we have counted by these numbers for a long time.  Everyone in the class can count by 2's and 10's so this is something that they all get.
       My second language math connection is the number stories the children are now creating and telling the children at 2nd group time.  They have a pond sheet and manipulatives, children, fish, shells, etc.  They make up a plus or minus story and then they record it in number sentence form.  They then tell the class and we decide if the number sentence represents their story.
     The story for Friday was "  4 fish were swimming in the sea.  They were having fun.  But two sharks came and ate all 4 fish.  They wrote 4 - 4 = 0. We agreed with the sentence representing the story.
  

• Those were the highlights of my week.  We wrote 3 times this week.

Tue, Apr 3, 2001

1st group time:

• lots of time for exchanging books and talking to each other about our vacation

• children share hockey trophies and medals

• reviewed counting and alphabet

Center time:

• finish off dinosaur stories in bones

• various work throughout, the children were playing well with one another today, much going on, conversations about volcanoes, yard sales, and a dinosaur valley story in the sand table

Reggio:

• Stories in clay.  Students were working in the clay, creating nesting
  sites.  Maya was made our good mother dinosaur from the book  Mayasaur.  One is a bigger plate in that the student also created an egg stealer.

2nd group time:

• shortened version, everyone was working so well, I extended it

• worked on our dinosaur book as we talked and drew pictures of a dinosaur nesting site, I asked questions like, what does a mayasaur do after she lays the eggs to keep them warm, how does she know when the eggs are hatching? etc.  Children began stories and I finished them as I wanted the extended version.

  ---

  Friday, March 23

  1st group time:

  • reviewed number counting and alphabet sang by letter name and sound -talked about their ideas of the nests and eggs from yesterday and offered the chance to do dinosaur nests in clay, with the idea in mind that they could create the nesting site and nests on the table just to make not to keep

  • gave them cards again and had them put their name on it plus an animal they wanted as a pet, these we then graphed and they went to centers

  Centers:

  • clay nesting site; eggs, nests and dinosaurs, I had to make some clay plates so that they could stick the dinosaur on one to create a scene as some wanted to keep them 

  • bone dinosaurs and books are being worked on, the dinosaur dig site

  • worked in groups on Peek at the Week sheets 

  Reggio:

  • Clay dinosaur nests exploration, still not quite as free as I would like but I will spend time here to encourage others to experiment and tell the stories. I talked about the stories the clay dinosaurs were telling and one child said that the clay scene was not a story. I got a chance to really emphasize how many different ways we can tell stories that using words was only way.

  2nd group time

  • very short, dinosaur story, practice song Fish Tales, look over the clay dinosaur 'stories' pass out stuff and we were gone

  Thursday, March 22

  1st group time:

  • counting by 2's, 10's, 5's

  • singing the alphabet by letter names and sounds - we are using the short vowel sounds now and having lots of fun with this. We thought maybe we could do a recording for other teachers to buy.

  • read Dinosaur Babies a long factual book about dinosaurs eggs, nests, etc. 

  • talk about how we would write the word egg, a child answered so I told the children to see that person if they needed the spelling 

  • Writer's workshop the children can draw and write something that they know about dinosaurs or draw a picture showing themselves in an egg, or in a nest, or taking care of the babies, etc.

  • again we talk about carnivores, herbivores, predators, prey, the idea of the babies and eggs as prey comes up

  Center Time:

  • set up nesting site in the sand table

  • more dinosaurs were made with bones

  • Jurassic park is back with car track

  Reggio:

  • the children's magnet work and drawings are up with just an overall write up of events it is missing the children's voices or conversations as I was not able to get them. The narration is titled Making Connections With Magnets and covers the children's work with magnets, their drawing of the poles and how they attract and repel each other, and their connections to the Brio Train set we have.

  2nd group time:

  • read Dinosaurs Dinosaurs and Dinosaur Babies a Scholastic book

  • we had 'theater in the round' and acted out the dinosaur egg, nest stories. They were funny. The children had to show themselves as eggs and then hatching. There were stories about egg thieves, who come in and capture an
    egg or baby and go off to eat it, and parents guarding nests, covering the nest with leaves, and bringing and feeding the babies berries, and leaves. We went right into dismissal. I want to try nesting grounds in clay tomorrow on a big table for fun. 

   

  Wednesday, March 21

  1st group time: 

  • A Math/ Language Art Lesson 

    • count by 2's, 10's, 5's , we are having such fun with this 

    • connecting conversation about fighting dinosaurs from yesterday to today's math lesson (graph) 

    • revisit terms predator, prey, carnivore, herbivore, talk about these with food story (omnivore is brought up), revisit memories of our study of endangered animals when we talked about food chains

    • I write the words carnivore and herbivore getting them to recognize the first letters 

    • reading of morning message "We are going to make a dinosaur food chain." 

    • morning helpers come up to board, "what do we start with?" One helper draws the sun. Then helper two draws the arrow and the grass and trees. 

    • Back to one who draws an Apatosaurus/PM stegosaurus herbivore. Next comes T-Rex as our mean carnivore. We talk about this idea of theirs of the good guys/bad guy carnivore and realize that our carnivores are just trying to survive and fill their hungry tummies too. 

    • we make up a minus story about a baby apatosaurus who goes the wrong way from the herd because of an 'earth shake' and that is how the T-Rex got fed that day, this was our food chain.

    • we draw either a carnivore or herbivore on small rectangles of paper. 

    • they now have to label their pictures, only they have to figure out the word, they can help each other to get the right one we wrote on the chart paper. This took them time but I wanted them to work at it and not give them the right answer. My student tells me I have to work at coming up with something harder now as "this is cinchy, Mrs. Starko."

    • they came to me with their cards and placed them on a paper graph I had made up. They showed me where they were going to put it, told me why, and then I glued the back and they placed it on and went on their way. All the
      time we kept using the words carnivore, herbivore, predator, prey. They were right, it was cinchy Mrs. Starko. Try something harder next time!

  Centers:

  • carnivores/ herbivores made in bones and talked about in clay and acted out in the water and sand tables

  • habitats with volcanoes are made in the sand 

  • reading groups with I Like

  2nd group time:

  • AM read through Dicky Dicky dinosaur, sang this, then did fossil rock 

  • read Dinosaur Valley- to the end talked again about the battle between T-Rex and Triceratops and how the bones were found, could they have both died and What happened to their skin?

  • we looked at our graph, AM had more herbivores, PM the carnivores came in with one more.

   

  March 10, 2001

  Reggio:

  I am beginning here as this is where the most exciting work is coming from.  
  
  I am finding that the store in the dinosaur area has opened up another door to making connections.  I am including this here although the emphasis with the calculator, and cash register is math, language arts is also involved as they write the numbers and signs DG SIT  for dig site on each person's tickets.  The language used and setting up the materials and prices are also extending their language skills. 
       I am finding that the children's understanding about + and - and = is coming in very handy for our store.  It is this use of the signs that is extending these terms into a context that is very real to them.  They like
  the fact that they recognized the signs and can use them to add and subtract.  These signs have a real meaning for them. 
        They also know how to count by two's and 10's.  This also came in handy as they count out the $10.00 bills and the toonies.  We put out loonies and toonies and counted by one's and two's.  It makes more sense to them as they see how they can use their skills with something real, that they initiated.  I love seeing connections like these!  They now want to count by 5's for the $5.00 bills so we are learning that now. 

  
  1st group session:

  • clay demonstration talk about experimenting with clay

  • Dinosaur Valley talk about the coming dig site from book (Dinosaur Valley) 

  • review of letters and sounds, we do the helper names by sounds now 

  • recording of ideas for magnet sheets working with writing across and down with spaces and              punctuation

  • drawing pictures of castle with moat, drawbridge, portcullis and gluing photos onto their castle books

  Centers:

  • Continued work on setting up of the dig site and playing in it.  Also the addition of bones to dig out of plaster and the rock stuff that you can buy, already made that come with tools.  The children recognized that they found the spinal column (their words) of the animal and worked very carefully in digging that out. 

  • I made another discovery today.  I tested for counting by two's 10's etc. and the reading of a number sentence.  A few children are still working out the reading of 2 + 2 = 4  and 5 - 3 = 2.  They all know the names of + it is the - and = that needs to be sorted for a few.  That is happening now because of the store.  What got me was that all the children could do the counting, even my one child who still does not know the letters in his name. 

  • On a hunch I put the numbers out scrambled 2, 4, 6 and he was able to tell me what these numbers were when I pointed them out in random order.  He could use the sound pattern of counting by two's to help him.  Rhymes and songs are very helpful for children.  I am going back to the alphabet song
    for these children and I am going to sing the first phrase over and over and I am going to work on these strands and scramble them to see if this is perhaps a better way to teach my three children who are struggling with the letter names.  We sing the sounds too as they recognize the sounds better than the names.  One of these children wrote his name correctly today, yea! 

  2nd group time:

  • filling out more of the castle book

  • song Fossil Rock and in the PM Fish Tales song as well

  • also in the PM the helping children did a number sentence each for a dinosaur story, I need to start this in the AM

  Thursday, March 8

  I have recently begun another review of what I call my values in education.  I am currently trying to marry what I believe, with the organization of my room, and the way I structure the learning, my actions, the work I give to the children, it all has to match.  To help myself do this again, I have been working on what I call my Kindergarten handbook.  I actually have a document I can print off now.  It has not been finalized but
  it is closer to what I now want to be doing and am hopefully doing in the classroom.  It contains the literacy events that occur in the classroom so that is why I mention it here. 

  1st group session:

  A long session today.  One a demonstration on how to use clay to make a dinosaur

  • story on Dinosaur Valley - dig site
  • talk about magnets south and north poles, the children were going to show through their drawings the concept of north pole attracts the south pole and the north, north or south, south repel or push each other away 
  • a great variety of pictures of magnets with the idea of happy faces and sad faces, or hugs with arms and pushes away with arms.  They will add the stories tomorrow.  This forced the children to reconstruct or revisit the idea of N and N not liking one another and N and S liking each other as they had to label their pictures 

  Center Time:

  • we began to set up the dinosaur dig site and in the PM add a cash register with money so that they could purchase tickets to the dig site and also buy rocks etc.  They were very excited, noisy and most of the children were at the dig.  I let this go as I firmly believe that children do not always have
    to be at the same control level.  They should be able to experiment with excitement and waiting and then actually putting and setting up things  before playing with them.  It is hectic and chaotic to a degree but it is not wild and without limits either.  It goes with the values I hold and perhaps the trust I hold that it will settle back down into more focused play with time. 
  • we decided what furniture had to go and what stayed etc.  It was fun.

  Reggio:

  • magnet stories, and setting up and planning of the dig site.
  • dinosaurs in clay, I am disappointed in the reaction of the children I worked with in clay, they did not want to get dirty and they do not experiment or try things much, they need much more practice despite what they learned at the clay studios.

  2nd group time:

  • barely existed, part of Fossil Rock song and page of the scary day for Maia the dinosaur as the Tröodon came through the nesting grounds taking some of the babies to eat. 
    

  ---

  Tuesday, March 7

  1st Group Time:

  • Finally more interactive writing and morning message  We are going to make dinosaur prints

  • sounds/letter review 

  • poem The Dinosaur Dinner by Dennis Lee was read

  • writer's workshop, dinosaur pictures and a story with it.  I watched for lines and writing going top to bottom, DINO at least and is, the, ing spelled correctly.

  Center Time:

  • dinosaur prints took my time, I did not get to test much today. 2 people only

  • setting up house corner for the Dinosaur Dig site complete with tent and store that sells souvenirs and tickets to the dig site, costumes will be added later

  • I still missed much as I was with the 2 children testing or doing dinosaur prints

  2nd Group Time:

  • Fossil Rock song

  • Dinosaur Valley -only part was read -that's all we had time for

  • rest of Maia chapter
    

  ---

  March 6, 2001

  Another big move as we go into our Celebration of Learning. Amazing how these things seem to disturb the usual flow of the classroom.  I feel I need to rush things through to make the deadline but I am getting
  more stubborn and haven't pushed the dinosaur projects through because I want some learning to occur from them. My group sessions have suffered as well due to time to testing.

  1st group time:

  • counting by 2's, by 10's
  • 10 Fat sausages
  • quick review of letters/sounds/rhymes
  • 1st part of  chapter of Maia The Dinosaur  her birth from the egg

  Center Time:

  • table time, with computer and dinosaur picture
  • stories made up with dinosaurs and felt dinosaurs
  • making of a house and cats and other animal play in the block corner, I had to leave the structure up, dinosaurs a small part of this play
  • computer number sentences and letter and word play with Pooh, also Land Before Time CD

  Reggio:

  • drawing dinosaurs and trying to document but I am so busy with testing I am missing the beginnings
  • drawing will move to print making with the dinosaur habitat theme and clay dinosaurs

  2nd Group Time:

  • Fossil Rock song Chip chip, away those layers of clay. Knock, knock, knock, do the fossil rock.
    Break up those stones and find some more bones..... song.
  • What Is A Dinosaur
  • The 7 Chinese Brothers was read
    

  ---

  March 1, 2001

  Today was not a normal day in either class.  One class had library and the other an art class with the resident artist. 

  1st group time:

  • the usual review of letters and sounds, words from the board.
  • a more concentrated effort on sounding out and recording words on chart paper.  I did ing words dinosaur and other related things.
  • children were put into 4 groups each with a parent and one group with me, to draw dinosaur pictures.  I put them into groups like this and had the parents record their conversations as they worked.  I wanted them look and share their work with each other.
  • children then added a story to the picture.

  Center Time:

  • I had school tours going through today. 
  • usual centers but children were working with their word cards and being retested on their letters for an updated version.
  • a lot of dramatic play of various stories was happening today.  Some weddings, castle play, some dinosaur habitats, and some baby play.  Was quite  a mixture.

  Reggio:

  • discussion of dinosaurs, drawings.  We extended the pictures to a discussion of their ideas of dinosaurs.  What did they look like?  Where did they live?  What did they eat?  How were the babies born, were they cared for?  What was the weather like ? etc.  These questions were discussed and I
    wrote down their ideas.

  2nd group time

  • What Is a Dinosaur? 
  • PM Joseph's interpretation and practice of Fish Tales.
  • Library for the AM group and another teacher takes them there and takes them to the bus.