Happy New Year!
There was much anticipation around the change of the calendar from December 2019 to January 2020. It is difficult to develop a sense of time. Recess is 15 minutes, which is really long if you are missing it but is not long when you are playing and having fun. A day is from the time we wake up to the time we go to bed but the school day sure is long when you are waiting for a birthday party afterschool. A week waiting for Christmas went by slowly, it took 7 sleeps, which are 7 of the "takes forever" days. Like Christmas we talk about a year in terms of your next birthday, Halloween, Easter, Valentine's Day and of coarse New Year's Eve. I wonder if they will remember when it turned twenty-twenty?
My apologies, some of the New Year's pictures were lost in cyber space.Kindergarten students continue to learn through Play and Exploration, games, activities and direct instruction. It is so much fun to see their pride as they grow in knowledge and skill.
Representing ideas through pictures, letters, numbers and words has become a favorite part of the day. Each morning students tell the story they have created on their white boards. A long list of learning objectives addressed during this 15 minute activity and the students feel like they are "just playing."
Interest Based Projects we followed this month were About Mexico and Melting Ice.
We are wrapping up the Mexico Project with a booklet and we will continue to have the Mexican Hat Dance and the Limbo available as IN MOTION choices.
Students kept finding ice on the playground so we watched them melt and tried to guess (predict) how long it would take for the ice to melt. One day Liam brought in a large chunk of ice. It was too big for our plastic plates so it went into a metal bowl. The students noticed that even though it was larger than our previous pieces of ice, it melted very quickly. We will be analyzing the data from experiment last week which involved heat (thermal) conduction of metal and plastic bowls and the students will decide if we they are satisfied and finished this line of inquiry or if they have more questions to explore.
