Week 11: Still Learnin'

Monday, March 18

Every year in kindergarten around St. Patrick’s Day, the “leprechaun” visits the classes and messes everything up! When the kids came in today, they were quite surprised to find so many things disarrayed. Christy and I changed the calendar to October with a picture of Santa Clause; we hung ghosts and pumpkins on the chalkboard; and Christy even made tiny green footprints going out of the log cabin in our class, up the bookcase, and on the window because the leprechaun escaped our trap. He was able to leave, but he forgot his shoes which were caught in a net in the log cabin!

It was not much, but it was definitely something the kids absolutely loved. The majority of our calendar time was discussing what things were wrong in the classroom and how the leprechaun escaped. In all my younger years I don’t think I ever had a teacher make such a big deal out of St. Patrick’s Day but here at Beecher, the teachers absolutely take advantage of it. The fourth graders needed to construct a leprechaun trap using one of the simple machines (inclined plane, pulley, lever, wheel and axel, wedge or screw). There were many artsy projects hanging around the school too. It is definitely a largely celebrated holiday!

Tuesday, March 19

As I am taking over more and more of the class, I have come face to face with the two biggest problems of half-day kindergarten. Christy has talked about both of these since Day 1, but I have definitely experienced them myself now. The first problem is simply keeping the morning and afternoon classes on the same page for all the lessons. Sometimes one class gets something quicker so we can go through it faster, allowing us more time for something else, but then the other class might be the exact opposite. It’s hard keeping both classes together, but definitely something I aim to do when I take over full-time after spring break.

The second trouble I’ve become more aware of is just getting everything in each day. Because it is a half-day program, we have the kids for 3 hours. They still have snack time, recess and all the specials—art, music, gym, computers and library—so by the time all those things are said and done, we only have about two hours each day for actual teaching. It makes it really hard to teach the academics, but still incorporate the fun kindergarten projects. Christy has said how much she hates the time crunch, and how she knows giving up the cute projects would give more time for academics, but she’s not willing to give those up. I agree with that; I think kindergarten is a time for learning academically, but it’s also just a year where the kids get used to being in school and all the cute projects are something they love doing, and parents love seeing. In her nine years of teaching kindergarten, Christy has seen a huge change in what the students are required to know. Before they just needed to know their basic shapes; now they need to know 3-dimensional shapes. Their required sight words are increasing, as are the required math skills. As kindergarteners keep being required to know more and more before entering first grade, I feel like the half-day program will have to become obsolete. It is so incredibly hard getting everything in each day!

Wednesday, March 20

To celebrate Easter, the teachers did a potluck brunch-eon. Sign-up sheets were put last week for who would bring what, and today we got to relish each others’ dishes. It was really fun to bring in food and also to eat lunch with those who normally do not eat in the teacher’s lounge. It was fun too because I got to share my recipe, and got recipes from others for their delicious food. It was really fun having the brunch-eon because it just gave another fun topic for us to all talk about while eating.

Thursday, March 21

My lunches have been extremely awesome this week—today Christy, our afternoon aide (Mindy) and I went out to eat at Subway! Christy said sometimes it’s really nice to just leave school for lunch and it definitely was. We really enjoyed just sitting together and talking about whatever. We talked a lot about our plans for the upcoming spring break, when I take over the classroom full-throttle, and just life outside of school. I really feel blessed to be working with such awesome people that I not only look up to as teachers, but also as individual people.

Another person who helps A LOT in our classes is Mrs. Bunte. She is around 75 but is at school every day to help with whatever needs to be done. She puts the homework and graded papers into the students’ mailboxes each morning; she does all the copying that we need; and she helps get ready whatever we need for projects. For example, we did a project where the kindergarteners needed to glue two duck feet onto their picture. The duck feet were kind of odd-shaped and they would have been a little hard for the students to cut out so Mrs. Bunte cut out the 90 duck feet for us. She is such a huge help with whatever needs to get done in all the grades!

Friday, March 22

Today we had a popcorn party because the students earned it by having enough chain-links on their wall. The reward system that Christy uses is that the students earn links when the class does really well with something or is quiet the whole time when getting ready to go home. When they have a certain number of links, they are able to have a popcorn party. They actually earned their party last week, but because I was teaching on the five senses this week, I suggested we have the party today so I could use it as a science lesson also.

It worked out awesome. We started by reviewing our five senses, and then I asked the students how we would use those five senses during our popcorn party. While the popcorn was popping, we talked about what it sounded like, and then when we started to smell it, we talked about what we smelled. They got so excited when they started to see the popcorn coming up the popcorn popper, and of course loved using their hands to grab the popcorn and tongues to taste it. It was a fun lesson that the students didn’t even realize was a lesson, which I loved!