Starting the Year by Creating a Community of Young Learners

The classroom environment that I set up is very thought-out to create a calm, safe environment that the kids will learn from no matter where in the room they go. Sometimes I may be there to participate with and guide them, but many times they will be exploring materials, looking closer, discovering, creating, problem solving, and practicing skills we are learning about independently and with friends! Everything that is put out for them in the beginning has no directions or preconceived end results. It is purely exploring the materials, learning to take care of the materials and building relationships as they explore together! Here are some of the materials they explored in the beginning.

In our Building Area they were only allowed to play with the blocks on the bottom. If they did a good job of being safe, respectful and responsible, I would add another cubby of blocks. This continues until the whole area is open! I have everything out so that they can see what they are working toward.

The baskets on the top are open to build with also. The white baskets are what I call Loose Parts that are open ended materials that encourage creativity as they have no set purpose…their imaginations are the limit! They like to use these along with the blocks! When the all of the blocks are open to them, they will get to start getting to use the loose parts as well. 



This is our Dramatic Play Area! Here is where they role play and build vocabulary and language skills. A lot of stories happen here and a lot of writing as they see how many of the careers they are role playing use writing for many reasons and want to do the same! It can be a kitchen, restaurant, vet clinic, doctors office, space stations, toy factory….whatever they are interested in, we will create it here!



This is our Art Studio! Here they started out with only red paint and will work up to all of the colors! All of the materials we use for art, we also use to show what we notice in science so this area mixes science and art a lot!



We call this Transient Art! They create with more open ended loose parts.



Clay is wonderful for strengthening their finger muscles and creative thinking! 



This is our Literacy Area! Here they will enjoy stories, write stories and practice literacy skills that we learn together!











Here is our Math Area. They know that when they are here, they are mathematicians! Right now they are freely exploring math manipulatives that we will use later as we practice math skills.









Here is an area to explore cause and effect as they paint a rock with water! I put out some line cards if they are interested in creating any of the different lines!



This is our science area. It is starting out with a focus on stories but using items from nature and familiar creatures they may want to explore for science! As they learn about science tools and informative writing, they will use this area to look closer and show what they notice using writing and the different art materials available to them.



They have done a great job taking care of the materials and getting along with each other as they explore each area! They are very quickly becoming good friends and a wonderful community of learners!















I am excited to see what this incredible group of kids will choose to explore as we grow as learners together! In my next post, I will explain how I use the Mystery Box to introduce new materials!

Turning a Fear of Bugs into a Fascination of Bugs

This group did not like bugs!! They didn’t even like to see pictures of bugs! But we started discussing Cicadas and it all started to change! Every 13 years, the Brood X Cicadas come and take over! When they do, there are thousands of them, all coming out of the ground at the exact same time! Since this group was terrified of bugs, I thought I had better prepare them! I showed them videos and pictures of the cicadas and emphasized that they were very friendly and never ever would bite! They are just very big, friendly, noisy insects! Every day we checked to see if they came and started to worry they wouldn’t come to our school, but they finally did! Boy did they change their minds about insects! They started collecting as many as they could to look closer at them! 

After a couple days, the male cicadas started making the noises they are famous for! The kids were so excited to hear them! Now they were interested in al, bugs! Unfortunately we only had a couple days of school left! They started looking for ants and observing them! Then, they fel in love with honeybees! 

We talked about how important honeybees are. To find out more, we read books and watched videos to learn all we could about them! We learned that they only sting because they are scared or protecting themselves, not because they are mean. All of the sudden, they felt empathy for these little bees! We also learned about all the delicious food we would not have if we didn’t have honeybees! Soon, they were searching for them so they could observe them taking the pollen from flower to flower! They were also protective of them making sure no one even thought of hurting them! 

We did a small honeybee project since we only had a couple days!

We ended by eating a honey filled honeycomb! Almost all of them tried it! 

On our last day of school we had field day! We all had so much fun!

And then we said our goodbyes. This group is very close to my heart! It was emotional for all of us. When you have only 15 kids, you have more time to build relationships with everyone together so we were an extra close-knit group this year! 

And so ends my 28th year of teaching kindergarten! 2020 was not easy and was not much fun as we learned online, but 2021, when were were all exploring together in the classroom, was wonderful and turned into an absolutely amazing year with an amazing bunch of little friends! I will miss them dearly! I’ll end this post with my traditional picture of my easel with a years worth of art on it! Have a wonderful summer everyone!

Spring in Room 201: Butterflies and Gardens

Our caterpillars came in while we were in the middle of our Space Inquiry! I made a space for them to look closer and learn more! 

They observed as the grew from tiny to big caterpillars! They looked through the books trying to figure out what they would turn into! A butterfly? A moth? What type?

After a week they crawled to the top and became chrysalises! I took them out so they could take a closer look at them!





They documented and researched some more!



Finally they came out! 



Now that they emerged, they debated on what kind of butterfly they were! This went on for about two days. Some thought they were monarchs and some thought they were painted lady. Both types have orange on their wings. It wasn’t until one mentioned that the color of their bodies were brown like the painted lady not black with white spots like the monarch that they came to their conclusion. We had Painted Lady butterflies!





They painted butterflies on the easel and using watercolor! Unfortunately I didn’t get a picture of their beautiful art from the easels but here are their watercolors!

One used a collage method to create a butterfly!

Some used the light table to create their butterflies!



After observing them in their cage, they noticed how their proboscis works by sucking the juice out of the oranges like a straw! After a observing them for a couple days, we freed them into the wild where they could fly, find flowers and continue the butterfly life cycle!

After we let them go, I set up an area for the kids to explore plants!  We started by planting an herb garden and lettuce seeds! We researched what they need to grow. Good soil, water and sunshine. We put them close to the window to get the most sun!

I wanted them to touch and explore and look closer to see what they noticed! This is kindergarten right here! Actively learning and trying to figure out their world and how it works!

Old pumpkin seeds were trying to take over our lettuce so we pulled them out to use for exploring! They liked this one that still had the seed connected showing the roots growing out of the bottom and the sprout from the top!

We read about the life cycle of flowers and they painted beautiful flowers at the easel!

Learning about flowers has grown into a lot of wondering about honey bees so we will start investigating them ASAP since we are running out of time!