Changing up the Environment

After summer enrichment was finished I realized my shelves were a little full to say the least! I am a student of the creative curriculum that says shelves shouldn't be too cluttered, I just wasn't abiding by it! So in an effort to shake up some things and keep the classroom interesting I decided to take out the majority of materials I'd placed on the shelves and commit to refreshing regularly. I am ashamed to say the shelves to still have quite a few things on them even after this!

Here are a few shots before and after.

I cannot believe that there is still lots of other stuff in my garage even with the shelves this full!

I also felt like the kids were having a hard time putting everything back in its place.

Sorry the before photos aren't as clear,

but you get the idea!

Almost finished reorganizing this one!

I think this is much more organized.

 

The kids are able to put the blocks and toys back on the shelf much easier now.

Our Day with The Coach!

Ever wondered what happens in our sessions? Well, here is a sneak peek at just a few of the skills and concepts we work on throughout our day with The Kindergarten Coach.


We begin our day with a short meet and greet followed by the Pledge of Allegiance, Hawai'i Pono'ī, calendar math activities, the weather and an introduction of the day's activities.

Most days there is a topic we focus on. This one is introducing turkeys!

After our topic is introduced and we move on to our activities for the day. We divide them up into three main areas: Language and Literacy:

We work on both uppercase

and lowercase letters!

We also ask lots of probing questions like:

and:

Math and Science 

There is always lots of counting! Here we are also measuring.

We learn about geometric shapes and how we can use them to build really cool things.

We love to experiment and make predictions. Do you know what color it will be after we mix them?

Sometimes we just observe ongoing projects and record them in our science journal.

Art and Fine Motor

We love to paint.  A real work of art!

Sometimes we make art with our names. This skill also helped with fine motor and math since we had to tear the paper and count the letters in our names!

Our art knows no bounds and here we were able to work on patterns with our rainbow fish.

By the end of the day we have a review of what we've learned and before you know it, it's time to go!

See you next time!