Please be safe and warm

While I am very excited to get an early start on my holiday vacation, I am just as worried about some of the children and their families in my classroom. Did they have places to be this past weekend to wait out the harsh weather? Were those places warm and safe? Did they have and will they continue to have plenty of food? I know some of the families will be okay. But there are a few that I worry about. The worrying doesn't change their situations or improve the weather conditions. I do not have decision making power in my district and I personally did not choose to call of school Friday, today and tomorrow.

I am a little sad that I did not have the opportunity to give them their holiday presents. I also have a special something for the most awesome para educator ever, Miss A and presents from the Sunshine fund to the administrators in our building that I was in charge of passing out. I guess this year, many people will be receiving happy new year/welcome back presents. Additionally the kids had been working hard to prepare for the winter concert for their parents.
We had a non-holiday themed set of songs, complete with costumes. Hopefully, we can put something together in January.

For those of you not from around this part of the country, it basically snowed from Friday midday through Sunday afternoon. Then it rained briefly and the temperature dropped rapidly. Voila- ice, everywhere! My district called off school for today due to all of the ice on the roads and the safety concern of getting such alarge number of children to school. They then decided that tomorrow would be a "waste of resources" to go to school for one day since Wednesday is when Christmas vacation was supposed to begin. I'm thinking about this "waste of resources" idea and I am not sure that I agree completely. Even if the days before vacation are stereotyped as "light" academic days, students still receive breakfast and lunch at school. Students are still in a warm building. Students have an opportunity to share holiday traditions with one another. Teachers usually have the opportunity during these days to provide extra one-on-one attention to students because other students travel during the break. So that is all "not worth it?" I have a hard time coming to terms with the idea that providing two meals to students and a wamr space and extra attention is not worth it.

From the district's point of view, many of the buildings are old and cost a fortune to heat, especially with the heat being off since Thursday night. It be very expensive to heat them for just tomorrow. That is in addition to clearing off all the roads in front of the schools so students can board and unboard the buses safely and clearing off all the ice from all those buses so that they are safe to operate. Well I don't know what the "right" answer is, but I am grateful that I don't have to make that decision. It seems no matter what the decision is, some people are not happy.

Be safe and warm K1 children and families and enjoy the vacation and time together.

Block Area Creations

Two of my students have been especially interested in the block area over the last few weeks. One of them has access to blocks at home and reports using them frequently with a parent. His structures are often intricate and intriguing. The other is very interested in 2D and 3D shapes. He has also recently begun to explore symmetry in design. He tends to build the same 2 structures repeatedly, but labels them differently each time. So when these two wanted to play together in the block area the other day, I was excited to see what ideas would develop.



After several discussion with each other, a few questions posed to me, the assistance of another student, and the majority of wooden unit blocks in the block area, the students had constructed a rather elaborate track that included tunnels and bridges. They took out the toy cars to test it out. After several minutes and laps around the track, one of the students declared that he needed "a tire change." The other student said "Oh, it is almost winter. You need snow tires." The second student went on to explain how snow tires would help him drive in the snow by keeping his car from slipping. Is this knowledge from a conversation he had with his parent, an observation he made when someone was talking to his parent or a commercial? I do not know, but their conversation continued and I was too intrigued to ask.

The first student said that he did not want snow tires but wanted fire tires. Now I was intrigued enough to interrupt. "What are fire tires?" I asked. By the tone of his voice, it was obvious that I should have known that "fire tires get real hot, like fire. When you drive in snow ice, they melt it." With a wintry mess upon us this weekend and into the school week tomorrow, "fire tires" don't sound like such a bad idea.

Random notes and the evil Jingle Bells

The classroom smells delicious, thanks to using Gingerbread playdough all week. I think I may use the snow day tomorrow to make my house smell as just as delicious. Except instead of playdough, I may make actual cookie dough but I need a good vegan soy- free recipe. So if you have one, please leave a comment. If Mr K1 teacher's class is also canceled tomorrow night, then we will decorate these little bits of yumminess.

One of the parents in the classroom does not celebrate Christmas. That's fine and doesn't bother me. We have talked about some of the holidays celebrated during December but most of our discussion around the holidays has been initiated by the other students in the class. The mother came to me all frazzled becasue she was watching TV with her child and he heard "jingle Bells". He told her he learned it at school Yes, the kids have been singing it to each other and no, I havent asked them to stop because it is rather joyous. Ok so I talk to her and explain this to her she seems ok, but still a little perterbed.

Later that same day her sun is using some of the yummy-smelling gingerbread playdough during center time. He has made several gingerbread cut-outs and then beigns using the letter shaped playdough cutters. He arranges three certain letters and then proceeds to name the letters and say the word that those letters make. On one hand, he correctly identified the letters and knew the word. On the other hand, HOW DOES HE KNOW THAT? He is four years old and can barely manage to write his name independently and follow well-established classroom routines! That is certainly not in our curriculum nor have any of the other students started discussing it.

Sometimes, I have to just scratch my head in wonder and amazement.

Eyes

They stare at me always

sometimes wide and eager

other times with sad and vacant ones

sometimes still its hard for them

those tired heavy eyes want to close

but still they stare

They take it all in

facial expressions, print, illustrations

hand gestures weather, classroom changes,

nonverbal cues, routines and directions

They convey to me joy and sadness

hunger and fright

anger confusion and comprehension

amazing depth already

Their eyes bore deeply on my soul

always looking, looking and needing,

needing and searching, noticing and hoping

brown and dark

Their eyes

The beginnings of division

I recently read The Doorbell Rang to my class and it introduced the concept of dividing a fixed amount by various numbers of people so that each person can have the same number of cookies. During small groups this week, the students worked with paper cookies and bananas and needed to share them with the hungry monkeys. I reminded the students that each monkey needed to have the same number of treats, that they needed to do a "fair share". All 11 of the students were able to divide an even number of cookies or bananas between the two monkeys. Some needed me to hold the cookies while they passed out on at a time, but all were able to do it. When I asked how they knew it was a "fair share", many of them counted the cookies that were distributed to each monkey and commented that each one had the same number. Some of the less verbal children lined up the cookies that each monkey had and pointed to each line, saying "they same size".

Wanting to push them further and challenge their thinking, I gave some children an odd number of cookies to divide between the same two monkeys. I wanted to know what they would do with the remainder. I had modeled sharing one thing between two people by cutting the paper in half earlier in the week and was curious to see if they would apply that strategy or what other ideas they might generate. The students divided the cookies evenly until they got to the remainder.

One student gave the cookie to one of the monkeys, thus creating unequal piles. When I asked her about, she said she was going to eat the extra.

Another student said that he needed to go to the store to buy another cookie.

One student moved the remainder cookie back and forth between the two monkeys several times and then put it in the middle.

The final student in the group suggested breaking it so each monkey could have a piece. We talked about the concept of half and how we would break the cookie so it was fair.

Then on Friday, we acted out the book with real cookies and a real bell. After shopping in the wee hours of the morning, I found the package of cookies at the store with the closest number of cookies to the number of students in my class. There was one cookie left over after everyone had one. The students noticed and asked what they were going to do with. I was just thinking I would put it back in the package and nibble it after school, but since they had noticed, I had to do something. So I asked them what I should do with it. Almost instantly, they told me "cut it to same size pieces". It take them a while to determine how many "same size" pieces I needed to cut it into, but they got it and i successfully cut the cookie into twelve approximately equal pieces to share with each of them.

Overall, they got the basic concept that when you divide something, you breaking it into equal parts. I was impressed by and proud of them. Some of them struggled with the vocabulary but they were still were able to express a fairly complex idea for their age. Go K1

Students' solutions to an annoying problem

Yesterday, I did one of the things I always tell my students not to. I put a cap on a dry erase marker and went to snap it shut. Having my hands full, I pressed the cap against my body to close it that way. Well the cap went one way and the marker made a nice black dot on my lovely white sweater. I tried to smile and tell the kids that's why I tell them not to do it. Being the super wonderful class that they are they offered me the following suggestions as to how to "fix the problem":
"put white glue on it"
" Cut out a piece of paper and tape it on. then draw lines"
" Spray hairspray on it. That's what my mom does to get dirt out of clothes"
"Turn your shirt inside out then it wont be dirty no more"
I tried to blot the stain with a wet paper towel, which had no effect. A few of the students said " That's because you used a brown paper towel, you need to use the white tissue.

I love to hear the ideas and their thinking about a topic or, in this case, a small problem that turned into a whole class discussion on the best way remove a stain.