Red Group Garden View Visit: January 29, 2014

Once again we did our Sound Connection artwork during our visit. First we read "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" by Eric Carle, then made our own caterpillars out of egg cartons and pipe cleaners.

 

Elsie is making her own caterpillar

 

Thelma and Shelly are listening

to Luke's explanation         

 

 Diane got to hear about the

caterpillars at this table

 

 

Afterwards, we took our caterpillars downstairs with us to join our senior friends for coffee time conversation.

The whole group did a really good job of explaining their artwork to their friends.

 

Sports Fan Day and Garden View Village visit (Blue Group)

Sports Fans in the blue group!

 

 

Showing off our patterning skills at GVV!

 

 

Working on our snowman directed drawings! We did a great job listening and then went downstairs to show all of our Senior Friends our pictures while they were having coffee!

Sport Fan Day

Friday's enthusiastic Sports Fans from the Red Group!

Howard B Wigglebottom: Ways to be Cool

The past couple of weeks we did a SMART sequence on the book "Howard B. Wigglebottom Listens to His Heart." In Kindergarten, SMART learning focuses on helping students think more about the stories we read, making predictions and making connections with everyday life. It ties in really well with our No Putdowns program and we have selected a book for each No Putdowns skill.
This book tells the story of a young rabbit that loves to dance and dancing helps him to wiggle away his blues until the fateful day when the other kids at school laugh at his dancing. Howard vows to never dance again and he believes he must find a way to "be cool."
We stopped at this point in the story to discuss what cool is and why it is important. One student wisely stated that "being cool is being yourself even if other people don't like it." Another said "it is cool to be nice to others." Then we made predictions about Howard could become cool. The photos below show their predictions.

Ultimately, Howard's Grandpa Sammy helps Howard realize that he loves to dance and he teaches Howard some new dance moves. Howard tries out his new dance moves at a school dance and .... everyone loves it! Howard learned it is best to be himself no matter what anyone else says.
Ask your child how to be cool and how to listen to their heart. I would love to hear what they share with you at home!

Ms. Scott

Survey

One of our goals this year is to improve communication with parents by a variety of different means. We are looking for feedback on our attempts to increase parent communication, so a survey went out this week via email to be completed by parents. We would really appreciate it if you would take a moment to answer the questions!

Red Group Gardenview Visit: January 15, 2014

Doris was waiting for us when we arrived at Gardenview and Thelma joined us shortly after we finished our snacks. We did a classroom activity for Sound Connections. Every student was given the same shapes to cut out: a large rectangle, a triangle, 2 circles and a long, skinny triangle. I asked them to try to make an object that started with the letter D. After trying for a while, some students were able to come up with a dump truck.

Shelly (one of our mom volunteers) is shown here checking in on a table.

Doris helped out a couple of boys at one table.

Thelma did her own Davey Dumper art puzzle. One of our students helped Thelma with some of the gluing.

We had  a discussion about how we can start conversations with the residents when we visit them at coffee time. Some conversation starters that they came up with were "Hello", "How are you?" and "How was your Christmas?". We were greeted by happy clapping when we entered the coffee room as the residents were so happy to see us! The kids put their new conversation skills to work.
We are looking forward to our next visit!

Ms. Scott

Winter Art!

Our students have been working hard on some beautiful art projects!

Patterned snowflakes

Snow globes!

Lemon Squeezy!

This will bring a smile to your face, guaranteed!
While taste testing, we tried cocoa, chocolate chips, salt, sugar, nacho chips, crackers and of course, LEMONS! :)

Loving Listening!

This week, at Garden View Village, students worked on creating beautiful snow globe art!

 

 

 

We have been talking so much about our Five Senses and focused this week on things that we can see with our eyes and things that we can hear with our ears. The students had so much fun experimenting with various instruments, as well as participating in a Listening Walk over to a "new" park!