Creating an Environment that Teaches: New Beginnings

I get very excited in August to create a beautiful, homey and inspiring new environment for me and my new kindergartners. Each year I look at my room as a blank slate and wonder, "How can I create an environment that inspire kids to explore, look closer, wonder and learn because they want to. How can I create an environment where they will want to take risks and try something new?" Then I get to work! The creative side of me loves this process! 

Literacy, Math, Science and Social Studies will naturally happen in every area of the room, but this year I have divided the room into specific areas. 

Here is the Art Studio area of our room. Creative Thinking is one of the 21st Century Skills that people need to be successful. This is one of many areas that fosters this along with Critical Thinking, Problem Solving and Collaboration skills! We have easels for painting and other art media such as oil/chalk pastels, charcoal, markers, liquid water color, etc. 

These shelves store materials often used in our art studio. They are easily accessible to both students and me!  As of now they are off limits. I will slowly introduce them to each material and set them out for art provocations at one of our tables or the easel. If kids want to use materials like glitter, feathers, pom poms, and pipe cleaners they can bring me a plan to show me what they need the materials for to get permission to use them. 

Our rolling cart has tempura paint in ketchup/mustard bottles I found at Sam's club on the top. These squeeze the paint out more slowly than the bottles the paint comes in so they can squeeze out only what they need. This will foster independence in the art area. As of now they are off limits until I model and we practice how to squeeze out an appropriate amount. The second shelf has been changed to only have everything they need for watercolor painting including black Sharpie markers, water color pallets brushes and jars for water. 

An area for sculptres is also part of our art studio. Right now we have clay available. Other materials that may be used for sculptures may be wire, playdough, pipe cleaners, or recyclables. The shelves are for displaying their sculptures. Creating sculptures is also a great way to work those finger muscles to develop the fine motor skills needed for writing.

A loom is also available to create art. We will be working those fingers muscles as we weave items from nature and materials we find in our room to create something beautiful!

Extra easels that can be moved to a table top if needed for a provocation or observational drawings/paintings. 

Here is the science area of our room. Right now I have loose parts on one side but as kids bring things to our room from outside or home for us to explore and look closer at. This table will be dedicated to those interests. 

On the other side I have an invitation for kids to look closer and explore. Since I do not know their interests yet, I set out rocks and crystals since they usually love all things colorful and sparkly! If they show major interest and start wondering about this, then we will dig deeper and start an inquiry. If not, I will set out something else to see if it will grab their interest. 

Here is our Literacy Area. We have materials for reading, writing and exploring literacy concepts. 

In the library they will be able to explore stories and non fiction. Writing materials, paper and clip boards are available if they want to write about their favorite parts of stories, their own stories, or something they thought was interesting from an informational book! Later writing paper and blank booklets will be added. 

This table is for exploring literacy concepts. Right now it is set up to explore alphabet books, letters and the lines that create letters. After letters this could change to exploring names, or sight words, word families, etc.  This is taking the place of my old literacy trays.

Here is our building/engineering area. On this side of the shelves we have building blocks and loose parts.  Clipboards with paper for plans are available to incorporate writing or stories about their creations. Many, many math and science concepts are explored in this area!

Books about building and Archetecture are also here for inspiration.

Here are skills they use in our building area that I posted on he wall.

On the other side of our shelves is where our engineers like to hang out. Right now it only has Legos. As they get better at working together, getting along, problem solving, and handling disappointment as a friend has something they want or need, other materials will be added such as K'Nex, Magnetix, and marble runs. 

Books about engineering and creating are also here for inspiration. 

Here are some skills they learn in the Engineering Area that I posted on the wall.

Here is our Math Area.

These shelves hold our math manipulatives and some loose parts such as shells, buttons and glass beads. This was purposely put by our meeting area so kids could have plenty of floor space when exploring these materials. 

This table will have math provocations for kids to explore different math concepts. Right now it has materials to explore measurement.  

We also have a Dramatic Play Area. Right now it is a kitchen, but this is an area that encourages some pretty great projects! 21st Century Skills, along with writing, reading,many math skills are often used as we change this space into something else. It has been a bakery, space station, beauty shop, Docters office, animal hospital and a haunted house! I can't wait to see what hey turn this area into! 

Here are skills they learn and use in this area that I posted. 

Our last area of our room is our Craft/Engineering Area. This used to be a writing area but all they have ever wanted to do here were crafts and engineering style creations. If you can't beat them, join them, right? Here they will use writing to create plans to get approval to use certain materials like paper tubes, feathers, pipe cleaners, tooth picks, cotton, cotton swabs, boxes, construction paper and any other recyclables that come our way! The materials are all visable and easily accessible. 

Here is the room as a whole!

Tools are at each of the tables also. At some point, the different areas of our room will grow to include these tables for invitations to learn and explore!

Now that the room is finished, we will see how the students respond to it! That will be in the next post about how we begin our year. Stay tuned!

Tortoises, Feathers, Sound and Farewells: Our Last Days

The last two weeks were filled with fun mini inquiries and projects during their play. 

I told the class that I would bring my tortoise Steven to class for a visit, but first they would need to create a safe and fun area to keep him in! This would be our last project. The kids worked in teams to draw and label plans and we took the elements from their plans to create this fun habitat for Steven!

We had a maze team, nature maze team and Lego maze team. We also had a wall team to create the enclosure, a ramp team, a quiet place team, and a beautification committee.

The wall team made sure that the area was totally enclosed so that Steven could not get out. All the maze teams worked hard to create mazes that Steven could travel through. They were careful to make them wide enough for him to fit through them. 

The beautification committee did a great job of making his habitat beautiful! They choose to use colorful glass beads. 

Can you see all the math happening here!? Measuring, patterning, grouping, symmetry. It is amazing how much math there is in art!

This stuffed turtle was close to Steven's size so they used him as a model to make sure the maze walls and cave were all tall and wide enough.

I put out materials for the kids to document what they noticed about tortoises. Paints at the easels, oil and chalk pastels...

and clay for my sculptures. 

Their attention to detail amazed me!

When we researched Russian Tortoises we found out they are vegetarians. They were curious what his favorite food would be. 

It ended up being the apple, which most of them predicted!

We did observational drawings of Steven as he crawled around visiting them.

Writing was also used to predict and record what his favorite food was.

Of coarse he spent a lot of time in the special area they created for him!

The measurements for his "quiet area" we're perfect!

Steven had a lovely time interacting with all of the kids! They are more social than you would imagine! He is a really great pet!

Another interest evolved in the last week with creating sound again! They started using recyclables to create instruments.

We had a ton of performances. Each band had to write down who was in it, what instruments they needed, and the name of their band! They were all very good! They loved watching the group STOMP for inspiration!

One STOMP video created a new interest in our sound exploration area created for our outdoor area by one of my previous classes. 

I had set out this provocation. I thought they would enjoy drawing these peacock feathers but they grabbed our microscope and took it in another direction so I added some other feathers. They became very good at focusing the microscope. This had been difficult for them before!

The loved using my iPhone to take pictures through the microscope and became quite good at it! We would display their pictures on the promethium board and the class would guess which feather it was.

I added some giant feathers to use as quills and liquid watercolor to our writing area and was amazed at the writing that happened here!

This friend is creating a program listing all the songs his band is going to play.

We also created these math beads as a gift for next years Kindergartners, along with a book of what they can expect in Kindergarten!

We had a Field Day that the kids LOVED! It was so much fun!

These kids hold such a special place in my heart! I really had a hard time on the last day knowing they would all be leaving to start their new journey at their new elementary schools. I know they are well prepared with 21st Century Skills that they have learned and that they will be able to apply them in all of their subjects, but I always wish their early childhood journey could last a bit longer!

Here is our final journey out to the busses on our last day! We had a hug/cry fest in our room just before so we could leave with smiles and happy memories!  Good luck my little friends on your new grade school adventure. Don't ever stop playing, wondering, creating and looking closer! Don't let go of your childhood so easily! I will miss you all always!