Newessssst member of our community

Hello families!

We are long overdue to introduce you to Finn, the newest member of kindergarten. He is an adult corn snake, adopted from Sean Casey Animal Shelter in Brooklyn. To gear up to our pet's arrival, we researched corn snakes at choice time in books and on our class iPad. (Our favorite question: "Where is a corn snake's bottom?")

Once they met our snake, every child in the class had a hand in naming him. Each student shared her or his own idea for a name for Finn; then we voted on those names in a primary election and held another election for the final candidates. We hope to have Finn for many years, and this class will always have a special connection to him since they were his first EVCS family.

The kids then lovingly set up a tank for Finn. He was comfortable upon his arrival, but as he was about to shed, we left him alone for a while.

Now Finn comes out to play during choice time. He is a very popular playmate. We all just love him!

A snowy March walk to our elm tree

Dear families,

After walking through a show-stoppingly silent and beautiful Tompkins Square Park at lunchtime yesterday, we agreed that we just HAD to drop everything and take the kids there in the afternoon. Before the park was pounced on by snow ball throwers and rowdy crowds in the after school hours, we wanted our class to witness this familiar place perfectly still and coated in inches of fresh snow. We had been missing our beloved elm tree that we visit every Friday throughout the year (in warmer temperatures) so we set out to go visit our tree. The snow was really coming down!

As usual we circled our tree and sang our song to it ("This is my trunk. I'm a tall tall tree . . .") and this time also had a "mindful minute," a completely silent 60 second moment of mindfulness. We do this in school to help focus our minds and bodies. Yesterday we used that time to take in the look of our tree in the snow storm, feel the cold air in our lungs and listen to the sounds of the park. It was so quiet we could hear shovels scraping the sidewalk outside of the park's gates.

Tiffany took photos of us around our tree, and as she did a man approached her, showing her a beautiful black and white photo he had just snapped of our class. He came over to us to introduce himself and tell us (just the teachers) that he was there visiting the elm because it was the sight of his partner's memorial  three years ago. He told us how happy it made him to see life and love in this spot that was so special to him and his family. We exchanged email addresses and he sent us these beautiful photos:

This morning we were inspired to respond to our experience yesterday with art. The children studied these black and white photos, then worked collaboratively in teams of three or four to create these black and white collages. You'll find them now hanging outside our classroom.

Yesterday at the park and today in our classroom were truly special moments for us and will always be a reminder of why we are so fortunate to teach kindergarten.

love,

Clara & David

100th Day of School

Dear families,

Sorry this post is so late, but we wanted to share anyway about our 100th day of school work in kindergarten. February 13th was the 100th day of the school year. That means that kindergarten is more than halfway over! All morning that day we worked with the number 100: counting from 1 to 100 (by ones, then by tens), making 100 drawings organized on 10 frames, measuring 100 steps in the hallway, arranging collections of 100 counting bears, and counting 100 unifix cubes. 100 is a big number for kindergarteners to wrap their minds around, and the learning standards for kindergarten only state that a child should be able to count by ones and tens, but it's fun to explore such a big number. Most of our work that day focused on organizing groups of ten, which is more their pace.
You can support your child's understanding of numbers within ten by organizing things at home by ten or posing questions about ten: "Pair ten socks from this laundry basket to get a check on your chore chart!" or "There are ten days until your birthday. Let's check them off every day on a calendar."

You may notice a new face in the photos. Whitney is our student teacher from Columbia Teacher's College. The kids love her and so do we!

David & Clara

February's Drama Share

Dear Families,

Thank you for coming last week to our drama program & project share! Every single child in our class had a family member present, which really meant a lot to them. The kindergarteners had so much fun working with Kevin on their "process drama" program, and were sad to say goodbye. Next year they will work with him as first graders. We just loved seeing the photos and videos from both kindergarten classes in Kevin's slide show. Your children were also so excited to share their model with you, of the fantasy playground they dreamed up during their drama study. Can you believe they built that model in just a few days? Your children sure love to create!

We thought you might like to see photos of the building of the model.  There was so much problem solving, persistence, creativity and collaboration evident in what the class worked together to make.  With Kevin, they planned what could be in an ideal playground, one which had something for children, animals and trees, and drew maps of their playgrounds in small groups. Then we looked at the maps and found what ideas the groups had in common. After the drama program had wrapped up, we got to work on the model: the class looked at a map of a real park, created the ground surfaces, signed up for who would build what parts of the playground, and finally found the materials in the classroom that were well matched to their building challenge.

When we return our class will put lots of time and effort into turning the block building apartments into their apartments, complete with furniture, toys, food and appliances. We just love doing this kind of project work with kindergartens, and your children clearly love it. After our playground building project, one of our students (Suni) was even inspired to make her own park model at home with clay, Q-tips and other materials from around home. Over the vacation we hope all of our students have time for creative projects at home, and hopefully good weather to play in a REAL park!

love,

David & Clara