Another wonderful week in Kindergarten! We explored many things, worked on attitudes of respect in our classroom - how do we act in a way that honours God and respects eachother - and started to get more used to all the different parts of our day.
It is becoming increasingly apparent in our world that it is important to not just teach students what to learn, but how to learn! Are we excited about finding out new things? Can we ask good questions? Do we inquire about things we don't know? Are we passionate about finding our places in God's story?
One way to grow a student into a life long learner is through inquiry. In this model, I as the teacher and the guide watch for what students are naturally showing curiosity about, and direct the curriculum that way. Sometimes I may introduce topics by laying out materials for them to explore, and sometimes it comes out through their play during explore time.
They have been quite fascinated with trucks in their play, so we set up a centre. There were books and models to answer their first question: "I wonder about different kinds of trucks." This centre also incorporates math (attributes of an object: same/different) and literacy as they draw/write what they've discovered. Next week we have decided to narrow in on how trucks are used for building.
We also explored the use of technology. We have started literacy centres, in which students are split into three groups to work on focused parts of literacy. This could be alphabet work, phonics, reading skills, writing skills, or something else depending on our focus. An example day would be as follows: Centre 1: shared/independent reading - students gain stamina and skills as they look through books to find clues based on pictures, and can often find letters or words they know. Centre 2: iPads. The iPads allow us to practice skills specific to our needs and learning journey. For example, Senior K JE is working on building words, while Junior K AY is practicing her letters. Centre 3 is the guided centre, meaning I or a volunteer is there. We may work on the letter of the day, or a skill like cutting or pencil grip (this week we learned cutting and gluing). We may also take extra time to practice writing our name. Students are at these centres for approximately 10 minutes each, which allows them time to learn, do together, and do independently, but also have a reason to get up and stretch and move and shift focuses, which their bodies need right now.
In math, we inquired about where math is! What a great question to jump start our year. We started finding numbers everywhere, and found out you can count anything! We also talked about how sorting and describing is math, and how you can find patterns that God made in time (we do this during our morning meeting).
In this picture OW is using our "tickle feathers" to count the letters in the morning message.
Lastly, our other major wondering this week was how should we be as a class? It's a big question for our youngest students. We talked about how just like in a book we read, crayons are each special but can work together to make a picture that is more beautiful than what they made on their own, our class is best when all of the "wonderful me's" in our class work together to learn and to love God.
The first thing we needed to think about what what our job was - our mission. This is what they came up with: We will GO learn, GO pray (our class loves to pray - what a wonderful thing!), GO grow, GO enjoy creation, GO love people, GO love God, and GO have fun!
Next, we needed to agree on some guidelines for action in our class. What does this look like day-to-day. Our devotions this week included things like manners, how to respond if someone does something you don't like, and making win-wins (Habit 4). This was all framed around the idea that God created us to be community-builders. How will we do that? Some things we talked about - use kind words. be careful with your body, respect each other and listen (we will unpack this further on Monday).
So, that's what we were up to this week! Have a wonderful weekend with your families!
In Him,
SK
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