Kindergarten Construction/Engineering and Classroom Happenings

In the middle of each table is a lazy susan with all of the students' materials. In the center there are 3 containers: pencils, scissors, and glue sticks. Along the edges are jars of crayons organized by color. I think that by organizing the materials this way, the students are much more respectful toward the materials and intentional with their color choices. 

Recently, the students kept commenting about how different the colors the crayons were--for instance, a blue crayon might actually look more purple when they used it to color or a what looked like a green crayon colored yellow. This led me to set up exploring colors at our We Wonder area during rotations. I started out with just 2 colors--blue and red--and they loved seeing all the different shades! Then I added yellow and the possibilities became endless! It was fun to overhear as students offered to show others how they got certain shades--"I used a lot of red and just a little blue."

The Construction/Engineering area is a very popular area as well. These students used the planning pages that are on clipboards in the construction area to plan before they began building with Legos. 

Look at this student using the Lego piece to help him draw his plans.

(They have really taken to the concept that you should 'make a plan' before you start. Even when they read their ABC books I will hear them say, "okay, what's our plan?" with regards to how they will read it together.) 

Here are the plans one student made to create a lawnmower with the Legos...

And the finished product! 

I love the teamwork happening with this pair (Also, could those construction hats be any more adorable on kindergartners?)

Also in our construction area is a stack of laminated photos hung on the board. The photos are of various buildings, roadways, bridges, and monuments to offer inspiration to our kindergarten engineers and construction workers. At the bottom of each, it says "Can you build it?" Well, one group turned to the page with a photo of downtown Dayton skyline and decided that, yes, they could build that! ...But since it was clean-up time, they decided to wait until the next day ;)

Therefore, today, as soon as Rotations began, they set to work on downtown, referring to the photo as well as using their own experiences to guide them. They spent a few minutes drawing some plans and then got to building.

The cardboard corners just recycled packing materials that I'd brought into school from a package I received in the mail. They make perfect roadways! "I'm putting a lot of cars because there is always a lot of traffic downtown."

She is creating a tunnel over the road.

From the left: 

Top left: "This one is the hotel"

The building with the triangle on the top: "This is Mendelson's"

At the end of the roadway, there is a long tunnel to which they added a ramp on top for cars.

And the blue straw structure in the bottom left?: Water and the downtown fountain. And after this photo was taken, they added a block in the water because "we forgot the block in the water!" (which they could see in the photo of downtown).

(They placed an additional blue straw structure on top of the water. Any idea what it could be? The sky :) The attention to detail is amazing.)

There was plenty of opportunity for potential arguments as the students each had their own ideas in mind, however, they worked extremely well together and realized that collaborating also meant compromise. I was absolutely blown away by their enthusiasm to create it, consideration of so many different factors, and that they used their imaginations to figure out solutions (for instance, using blue straws to create the water.)

And to make it even better, when I said it was time to clean up (after they'd shared their creation with the class) they didn't get upset about taking their masterpiece apart--instead, they said, "tomorrow we can build an even cooler downtown!" And they were already thinking of ways to improve it: "Maybe we could use the table as the bridge next time??" I love it :)

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Here are some of the things we are doing at stations:

Using letter stamps to practice our names, friends' names, and popcorn words,

and practicing putting letters in order with this ABC puzzle,

Using pointers to help us read in the library,

Writing letters or stories in Writing--kids at this station get to take their shoes off while they are writing. How fun ;)

She chose to write a card for her mom, who is out of town.

And math...which, it seems I haven't photographed in a while. My apologies. Rest assured, they love working with shapes, practicing writing their numbers, counting objects, and working with ten frames. I will be sure to snap a few photos for my next post ;)

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During Reader's Workshop, we learn about a letter each day. We go through the letter book on the interactive whiteboard, highlighting the letter and putting boxes around the popcorn words 'is' and 'for.' Then the students return to their seats with a paper version of the book, which they 'Level 1 whisper read' with a partner. They go through and highlight/box the letters and popcorn words and then the partners trade books to check that all of them were found. 

Later in the morning, we have ABCs in which we practice the correct formation of the uppercase and lowercase and then come up with a list of words that start with that letter. The students choose which one they want to draw and return to their seats. Those pictures are cut out and arranged on construction paper for our ABC big book (though, currently each completed page is proudly displayed on the wall in the classroom.)

(They found a little word inside a bigger word! The word 'is' is inside of Harris!)

Top: hide-out

Middle: heavy

Bottom: hole

Here is close-up of the picture of heavy:

He does not look happy about carrying that heavy object ;)

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The students got all their gems in the jar again and they voted for Pajama Day! 

For the record, this was not a "smile at the camera because today is Pajama Day" type of photo but since our day was so busy, we didn't have a chance to get that shot before a couple students had already left for the day. Thus, a photo with some pretty hilarious facial expressions.

And, here is most of the class for a "smile at the camera" shot...(which, admittedly, still has some pretty funny expressions happening.)

In the morning, Rabbi Karen came to read a 'bedtime' story about Naamah, Noah's wife, singing to sleep the animals and humans as the ark was tossed about in the water.

Later that day, we watched Good Night Moon being read.

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In Art, the students created pumpkins out of clay! I can't wait to see how they turn out after they are fired and glazed!