PURPLE CUBBIES

Building community among our students is a major focus at the beginning of each Kindergarten year.  We do this in a number of different ways, ranging from cooperation games played each day during our morning meeting to spontaneous class meetings held on our grey rug to reading stories to the students which highlight the importance of taking care of one another.  In addition to helping the children feel comfortable and safe among themselves, we are also making efforts to help the children feel secure in their new environment.  One of the ways that we do that is to take a tour of Penn Charter and have the students meet some very important people early on in the school year.  The Penn Charter tour includes stops to the school nurse Deb Foley, the Head of the Lower School, Janet Chance and the Head of School, Darryl Ford.  Each stop is different, some of the "special visitors" chose to read a story to the students, some field questions from the kids about the specifics of their jobs, and some pass along some of Penn Charter's rich history to the new Kindergarten class.  Before the Purple Cubbies visit to Janet Chance we informed the students of Janet's job title and gave them some information about the many different responsibilities she has.  After our stop by her office we revisited our conversation and asked the students what they would do if they were the Head of the Lower School.  As you can imagine we received a range of responses, some are listed below for your enjoyment.  After our conversation the students illustrated a page with their idea of what they would do as Head of Lower School written at the bottom.  The pages were bound together, a front and back cover were added and then two representatives of the Purple Cubbies presented the creation to Janet.  A copy of the book now resides on the tall bookshelf by our door.  You are welcome to take a look through it the next time you are in our classroom!     

Some of our Purple Cubbie responses:

If I were Head of Lower School I would “let the kids swim in the pool all day”.

If I were Head of Lower School I would “eat sandwiches and sleep all day”.

If I were Head of Lower School I would “help someone when they get hurt”.

If I were Head of Lower School I would “have rest with the kids”.

GREEN CUBBIES

The first six weeks of school are exciting and challenging. The Green Cubbies classroom has spent much time getting to know each other and learning daily routines. Each day the students are challenged to make decisions about their contributions to the classroom community. As teachers, part of our job is to help them understand that there are consequences for the decisions they make. Last week we engaged in a lesson that demonstrated cause and effect. We began with a read aloud, "Lily's Purple Plastic Purse" by Kevin Henkes. The students identified the choices made by the main character that resulted in both positive and negative consequences. We then demonstrated the cause-effect relationship in a more concrete way. We attempted to break 19 eggs into bowls without making a mess.  We carefully toasted "Cheers!" with each other to avoid spilling our water and we used a lit candle to light another candle to demonstrate that "what I do effects you." We discussed whether or not we have choices about how we behave. Students then role modeled, in pairs with puppets, real life situations and then decided in teams whether the decisions the puppets made had positive or negative consequences. For example:

Someone cuts in line in front of you.

You help clean up the classroom.

Someone tells you to do something that you know is wrong.

You throw wood chips at a friend.

Our goal is to help students learn to make good choices in the hopes of building community and understanding that they can assert themselves in a healthy way. Establishing these ground rules early on ensures that students learn to respect themselves, each other and the classroom.

RED CUBBIES

We read a book called, The Greedy Triangle by Marilyn Burns which is about a triangle who grows bored with having only three sides and goes to the “shape shifter” to add another side and another angle.  Throughout the book he shifts his shape by adding more and more sides and points until he finally realizes that being a triangle was not all that bad to begin with.

 After reading this wonderful story we did an active engagement with the pattern blocks where they had to begin with the triangle and add a second shape to shift it to a new shape.  The children loved discovering different ways to shift their shapes to make shapes with more sides and eventually to make images.  They used triangles, diamonds and trapezoids to make hexagons, squares to make triangles and many, many more!

By having the opportunity to explore, experiment with and manipulate the different shapes the children used mathematical language as well as their knowledge of the attributes of shapes to become shape shifters themselves!