A Promise is a Promise

I've been struggling to find a good way to teach about promises in my kindergarten room.

DRK.1 Explore examples of promises made through actions and words, and why it is important to keep promises.

So, after brainstorming with a few colleagues, I came up with a few ideas to try.  It ended up working well and improved classroom beahviour as a result.

We started by reading A Promise is a Promise by Robert Munch.  We discussed the promises that Allashua made and the results.  We talked about why it is important to keep promises that you make.  We also talked about when it is ok to break a promise (I wanted them to know that if someone made them promise something that made them uncomfortable that they should tell a trusted adult).

After our discussion, we decided to come up with a class promise that we could all commit to.  We decided our promise would be

We promise to be respectful to the people in our class.

I typed this up on large paper and we all signed it.  We then put this on our hallway bulletin board.  I will now be watching for examples of students fullfilling our promise and take pictures of them to add to the bulletin board.  In addition, we are also making small promises and taking pictures of us doing it to add to the bulletin board (We promise to work quietly, we promise to take back the recycling, etc).

Patterning using Multiple Intelligences

We did a patterning activity today.  Our outcome is to  deomonstrate an understanding of repeating patterns by: identifying, reproducing, extending and creating patterns using manipulatives, sounds, and actions.

We have been working on patterning for a while, and the students have gotten quite good at it.  So, today I challenged them by setting out centers for them to create patterns at using different multiple intelligences.  I sent 3 kids to each center, and then left them to create their patterns.  I walked around with the ipad taking pictures and videos to post to our blog.  After a few minutes, I had them rotate until they had gone to all the centers.  At the end we gathered together and watched the video.  We then talked about which way each child prefered to create patterns.

Kinesthetic - make patterns with your body (eg jump, kick)
Natural - use a pile of rocks to make patterns (this was a tough one, but they were able to do it based on size and colour.  If it wasn't soooooo cold and snowy out, I would have liked to have brought in some leaves, branches, etc).
Logical - use the blocks to create a pattern.
Musical - use the instruments to create sound patterns.
Visual - draw a pattern on the white board.

The kids were quite creative. One of the musical groups even made a pattern all together - one would beat the drum, then the next would hit the tambourine and then the last would hit the stick and then they would repeat. They all really enjoyed the centers!

Self Control

Each month a class is in charge of introducing a new value.  We are in charge of self control and have our assembly coming up in the middle of February.  In the past, I've created vidoes and picture presentations and tried to involve the students in the examples that we use and the brainstorming before hand.  This time, with report cards just being finished, I wanted to do something simpler.  So, we will be singing this self control song (I got it off itunes for $0.99) and doing a line dance (it took a lot of self control to learn it!).  The song is very simple, and the kids love it.  As we are singing it, we move around for the fast parts and then put up a hand to Stop!  It is a lot of fun.  Just hoping that we can use self control when we are in the assembly!

Self Control by David Kisor

 

Cherry Blossoms

With all this cold weather, I thought we needed to do something to try to warm us up!  I found this activity on pinterest (http://www.duitang.com/blogs/tag/%E6%89%8B%E5%B7%A5/?from_blog=20618614) for making cherry blossoms.

I cut some 11X17 paper in half the long way.  We then used black paint to paint a long stem down the paper.  Next, we mixed red and white to make different shades of pink.  We took plastic pop bottles (full ones work best) and used them to stamp "flowers" along our stems. 

They turned out sooooo nice!

incredibox

Today we were working on creating sound compositions for the music component of fine arts.  I had all the students log on to incredibox.  I showed them how the different features worked and then gave them a chance to experiment with the sound.  When they were done, I had them each record a piece of music.  I helped them name it and dedicate it.  We then emailed it to their families so that they could listen at home.  The students really loved this activity!
Incredibox#/application

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Today we were working on retelling stories.  We had read The Very Hungry Caterpillar earlier in the year, but I thought that we could revisit it.  Last year I made felt pieces to go with the story.  We used them to retell the story.  Each child picked a piece or two.  When we got to their spot in the story, I had them put their piece into the middle.  The students all helped saying the words in the story that were repeated over and over.

I loved all the details that this boy put into his work!

After we were done telling the story, I had them respond to the story through pictures or words.  Each student got a blank piece of paper and retold the story on it.
The students did a very good job at remembering lots of details.  I was very impressed!  Here are a couple of samples of their work.





I loved how this girl organized all her thoughts!



Similarities and Differences

Today we were looking at physical similarities and differences amount the students in our class.  We had worked with this outcome before and we came up with hand signals to show same (clasping hands together and then pressing inside out) and different (one hand in a fist and the other open). We use these hand signals as visual clues when we talk about same and different. So, today we just began with a short review. The kids did a good job of remembering and were able to give me examples of how they could sort the kids in the class ( boys/girls, glasses/no glasses, etc). Every student got a picture of themselves, plus they picked a picture of a classmate. They then glued them on a paper and they wrote one way that they were the same and one way they were different from their classmate. They did a great job of finding a similarity and a difference!