Winter Party!

Our last week of class before the holiday break is our Fun Club Winter Party, which the kids greatly anticipate and look forward to.

Students came in and went straight up to Mrs. Ramsay and Miss Julie to paint their Cinnamon Dough Snowmen with fabulous sparkling-snow glitter paint…

They then made beautiful decoupage collages of tissue paper snowflakes on aluminum foil squares…

We topped it all off with a discussion of two-dimensional (circle) and three-dimensional (sphere)objects as we rolled little spheres of cookie dough and baked snowball cookies. 2D is explained as flat, like a movie that we can’t reach into and grab, or a flat circle on the chalkboard…3D being like a 3D movie, or objects in space that we can actually hold, like the small ball I use to illustrate. We then discuss what is the same and what is different about a circle and a sphere. During our cooking time, we discussed other objects that were spheres as well…our list included: oranges, soccer balls, basket balls, hot air balloons, apples, snowballs, snowmen (as they are assembled), Earth, and the planets, to name a few.

Remember, any activity can become a rich learning activity if you just open your eyes and ears and look for teachable moments. Even passing the cooking bowl to stir (everyone does 1-2-3-pass it on!) can be done in French, German, Spanish, Japanese, and Mandarin. Senior Kindergarten practices skip counting by tens and counting backwards during cooking as well–something to do while the mixer is mixing.

The rest of our Winter Party was spent in playtime and a special movie with lollipops. (We watched “The Snowy Day”, “Click Clack Moo, Cows That Type”, and “The Day Jimmy’s Boa Ate the Wash”, each about ten minutes long…all from an excellent Scholastic dvd series which I highly recommend. dvd book series)

All our little friends were sent home with their snowmen, snowflake pictures, and snowball cookies–and that is the way to end a Winter Party and begin a long holiday!

…answering “a call to action”…

so, as the whole teacher blog is still super-new to me, i am just starting to feel my way into the whole “blogosphere”-hey-nonny-nonny.

with the edublog nominations came a killer list of people who are fierce, committed educators, striving daily for excellence–not for monetary purpose or even an administrative nod–just doing the right thing because it’s the right thing to do (and not settling for the culture of mediocrity we seem to find ourselves drowning in academically, culturally, politically, and otherwise). consider these folks the philosopher-kings of the classroom. if your children are lucky enough to experience education at the hands of people like this, then they are blessed. personally, i feel the best educators have, well, think of the kiss of Glinda the Good Witch…a call, a sign, a seal, an unction…whatever, my point is that (i’ve found) many of the best educators are those who feel it in their bones, in the bones of their bones. it is what they do. it is who they are. it is the role they were meant to play.

among other topics that i’ve read lately was one that cried out for “a call to action“–basically the idea that we are all sitting on truly excellent ideas and game plans and solutions and answers, but for whatever reason, we aren’t showing our cards, so to speak.

as i primarily (right now) work with jk-kindergarten, i am limited as to what is of the most value to others. i mean, i can tell you it is my experience that you model everything, no matter how small, that you never confuse procedures with rules, that you make time for each child individually each day, that you remember ultimately it is about creating life-long learners who feel good about school, and always always always it is about THEM not about YOU. but i have a feeling i’d be preaching to the choir.

whether my preschool musings transcend from pint-sized learners to high schoolers is rather unknown to me. so let me offer something else, something a little more mid-range.

i have worked with other grades, so i’m throwing down a fifth grade (at least here, in chicago, in public school) introduction to ratio, percentage, and proportion. (intro to proportional reasoning) the students i taught this to LOVED it and produced some pretty great results…i think the challenge and temptation with math sometimes tends to be, “well, it’s math, they either know the answer or they don’t. it’s either right or wrong. just give ‘em some rote, some worksheets, some flashcards, hey, maybe even a little hands on with the ‘ol unifix cubes (ooh, progressive, non?)…” again, everything we do, i think, needs to service what students are thinking and why…hopefully it is employing more than one modality (are you just lecturing up there? only one modality being served…boo. lecture with pictures, words, colors, sounds, engage students to move around and participate–you must get as many little fishies in your net as possible with one swoop!)

5th-grade-proportion-ratio-intro-transparencies.doc

5th-grade-proportion-ratio-worksheet.doc

(i should mention this can be done in the urban school, you know, the one with an overhead that you borrowed from the teacher down the hall and projected onto the bedsheet you’ve tacked on the wall where a projection screen would go…)

personally, i always have been and always will be more interested in HOW my students are thinking and WHY they are thinking that way. i give a lot of leeway for those who can justify their conjecture–you may not have the “right” answer, but if you can explain and defend and justify the one you do have, then there is validity in the higher-level thinking taking place. ultimately, i’m interested in students who think for themselves and are rewarded intrinsically with the virtue of understanding, understanding both academia and themselves.

“Arnie the Doughnut”

First off, I selfishly chose this book because I find it completely hilarious. I cracked up more than the kids did, although they rather liked it as well.

If you haven’t had the opportunity, check it out: Arnie is a doughnut, born with chocolate icing and sprinkles. He eagerly looks forward to being purchased and going out into the wide world, which is exactly what happens. To Arnie’s great consternation, the man that purchases him, Mr. Bing, decides to eat him, at which point hilarious surprise and confusion erupts from both parties. Can a little doughnut create a different course of destiny for himself other than that of being eaten?

You’ll have to read it to see…interesting to ponder with preschoolers.

This week, we strung the beads that we made last week from our Sculpy clay. We also worked with Cinnamon dough to create little snowmen (our take-home gift for the upcoming holidays)…Senior Kindergarten handpainted glass vases instead. (Thank you, Robin, for the generous donations each year!) Lots of good fine-motor activities and also multi-step, multi-week projects which develop those listening skills, memory, and patience. Also, again, think of cooking as science…combining ingredients to form something new…using our senses to understand the properties of the materials we are using better…using our logic to determine why we wouldn’t be interested in eating these…

CINNAMON DOUGH:

1 cup ground cinnamon (I recommend purchasing this in bulk at a restaurant supply store–MUCH more economical if you have over a hundred to make as we did)

2 tablespoons of Elmer’s glue mixed well with 1/2 to 1 whole cup of applesauce

Combine wet with dry…you are looking for a dough consistency…too loose, add cinnamon, too dry, add more glue and sauce. Sprinkle work area with cinnamon before rolling out…dough rolls out better if kneaded thoroughly first. Cut to shape with cookie cutters. Don’t forget to make a hole with a straw if you are planning to hang these…they make AMAZING air fresheners or ornaments! Let them air dry on a cookie sheet, turning daily to prevent curling…takes about two days if you are in a dry, winter climate like Chi-town.

Also in preparation for next week’s Winter Party, we designed our own gift bags and cards as well…we emphasize a WINTER theme as opposed to a holiday theme. Our population tends to be pretty diverse, and I leave it for parents to determine what they want to teach their children about holidays, religions, and the lot.

“The Cat in the Hat Comes Back”

If you check the archives, you’ll see “The Cat in the Hat” was one of our first books of the year.

Needless to say, when the Cat comes back, it is quite the event.

The glorious Chicago weather cooperated beautifully and dumped about four inches of snow just in time to coincide with the book…which is about the kids having to shovel snow, and that crazy Cat in the Hat making all sorts of mischief, the least of which are “snow spots”. We all helped read at story time, especially the ABC review near the end of the book. (oh, and ‘Voom’…must’nt forget the ‘Voom’!)

In honor of this story, we do all manner of crazy things, including our own “snowspot snowflakes”:

coffee filters, crayola marker, eyedroppers, water…let ‘em dry, cut ‘em up. The more color they use, the more dramatic the effect–they end up looking pretty tie-dyed and cool.

We also introduce the key word CIRCUMFERENCE this week…dripping water around the circumference of our coffee filters, measuring the circumference of our heads for our hats, discussing what else could have a circumference (snowballs, etc.) You get the point.

Color mixing, which preschoolers LOVE LOVE LOVE to do, came in the form of Sculpy clay–also, great fine motor development as students pinch, pull, roll, smash, twist, and stretch their clay to mix colors and create “crazy Cat beads”…they cook at a low temp and get sent home the following week:

Last, but not least, our crazy “Cat Hats” which let us all look like our fabulously fun antagonist.

“So you see!” laughed the Cat,
“Now your snow is all white!
Now your work is all done!
Now your house is all right!
And you know where my little cats are?”
Said the cat.
“That Voom blew my little cats
Back in my hat.
And so, if you ever
Have spots, now and then,
I will be very happy to come here again…”