What's Happening in the Classrooms? A Day in Kendra's Stage I Classroom

Kendra's classroom is in the room and all over the place! Notice that the children's interests and questions often lead to the next experience provided by their teacher. Playing outside whenever possible, they get exercise and enjoy the fresh air. There is a lot of spontaneity on the Hill. Here is her narrative about a recent day:

This morning our group got right into things, building towers with magnatiles, playing in the dollhouse, and making up stories with the animals at the farm. Now that we are starting things off indoors, the kids find their picture/name magnet and move it to the dry erase board where they write their name. Depending on their skill level, they are writing their names, their initial, or just making a mark or scribble. We will keep working on this skill through the end of the year.

A few of them made a big meal with the wooden play food and plastic bears, while others got out their art caddies and drew pictures or painted. There was also lots of building with the small wooden blocks and playing with the garage and cars in the other room. After clean up and hand washing we had snack. As the kids finished they went in the other room to chase the rainbows on the floor and wall made by the prisms in the windows.

When everyone was finished, we gathered to sing and have meeting. Today we talked about classification (a FOURTEEN letter word, we counted) and continued to come up with examples of the five types of vertebrate animals- reptiles, amphibians, birds, mammals, and fish. We read the book Penguin in Love by Salina Yoon and added the animal characters in that book to our classification chart.

We also read Not Quite Snow White by Ashley Franklin and Ebony Glenn and learned about Misty Copland, the first African-American principal dancer at the American Ballet Theater. Of course we couldn’t just read about Misty, we needed to see her dance! We watched a short clip of her dancing to Swan Lake (classified swan’s as birds) and a compilation of videos and photos from her life as a ballerina. Then the kids tried some of her ballet moves themselves! It is very hard to stay up your tip-toes and balance on one foot!

Next we geared up and headed outside. With today’s sun and light wind, we thought we could venture away from the Hill House again and get back to the woods! The kids were elated to see the frozen creek, climb through the woods, and dig in the snow. On our way out of the woods today, we found a spot where the creek was completely frozen and we could step out on the ice!! The kids slipped and slid and laughed as we learned about how slick ice can be! We all made it out on the ice and back. By then it was time to head back to the hill where we played out on the playground for  little while before saying goodbye to half-day kids and going in for lunch. After a quiet lunch for this hungry bunch, the kids built for a while and then we settled in for rest.