The Great Wall of China

The children are fascinated with the Chinese culture. The idea that adults ride their bicycles to work and to get around the cities. The children attend school on Saturdays to learn calligraphy. The calligraphy is used to create characters. Each character represents a phrase or word instead of the way we string letters of our alphabet together to create a word (we practice daily). They use chopsticks instead of knives, forks and spoons. WOW! China is the only place Panda bears can be found living naturally.

And then there's that Great Wall of China. This is aways what facinates young children the most. It is hard to imagine the time, energy and cooperation it took to build this amazing sturcture. So the children always use a variety of building materials to try and duplicate this sturcture.

The 100th Day of School

It's certainly hard to believe that we have finally completed 100 days of school, especially after all our snow days. Anyway, the 100th day was filled with lots of excitement. We read several books about the 100th day but, Miss Bindergatren Celebrates 100 Days was the favorite. After reading that the children had to write about collecting or eating 100 things. Interesting ideas! The children also shared their wonderful collections with their classmates. We all enjoyed that very much! We had guessing games using white stones, seaglass and Jingle shells. We had to guess which jars had 100 items in it. We even stumped the other adult teachers. Estimation can be very tricky. Then we had a very fun and interesting scavenger hunt that included finding 100 buttons (each individually numbered) that were hidden around our classroom. Each child was sent out to find around six buttons and then they had to match the numbered button on our 100 number grid. We had a great day celebrating to number 100. How fun!!

Happy Valentine's Day

Field Trip to Audubon Center in Bristol RI

Bird tracks

Listening to Stranger in the Woods

Great Egret

Monarch butterfly and caterpillar

Milksnake

Viewing the tidal pool.

The infamous blue Lobster

We all gather for a photo in front of the Right Whale

The trip to the Audubon was filled with new discoveries both indoors and outdoors. Nature galore! We started the trip with a scavenger hunt in the museum. The children found all kinds of wonderful birds, amphibians, sea life in the tidal pool and different mammals native to Rhode Island. Then we headed outdoors to find tracks in the snow. This was met with some success after finding rabbit, mice, fox and bird tracks. After that, we listened and paricipated in the wonderful story, Stranger in the Woods (a favorite of mine). This book has a fabulous storyline and gorgeous photographs. A must, if you do not already own it. Then we took a break for lunch, went back into the museum and then headed back outdoors for a short hike. It was a beautiful day and extremely educational. It supported and extended a lot of the science we have been discussing in the classroom.

December Was a Busy Month

We hosted the Native American culminating event by inviting all kindergarteners from K-2 and K-3 to sing, chant, play our drums and do the 'feather dance' . This dance was taught to us by a Narragansett tribal member, Loren Spears and her students, from the school Neweetooun School. Miss Jeana demonstrated the dance and many of the children succesfully captured the feather. Excellent job everyone!

In December, the monthly language is Swedish. K-1 learns to greet each other in Swedish (God morgan!), learns to count to ten, and sings and dances to a Swedish favorite called Sma Grodorna ( a song about a little frog). As part of our monthly study, we were treated to a visit by Santa Lucia ; ). On December 13th, in Sweden, the youngest girl dresses in a tradtional outfit, which includes a long white dress with a red sash and a green wreath with glowing white candles. The girl wakes early that morning and delivers coffee, Lussekatter, and Pepperkakor to all the members of her family. This celebration is to observe the longest night of the year (under the Gregorian calendar this was actually Winter Solstice) Well, every St. Lucia day, I, Ms. Mitchell, dress in my traditional outfit and deliver a small white candle to all the children to help celebrate St. Lucia. During rest time, when the lights are out, I visit each classroom and teach the children how to say thank you (tack sa mycket) in Swedish. They were delighted to see me arrive with a full set of candles on top of my HEAD (battery operated). Such Magic! = )

Creating Our Pumpkin Fairy House

Look what we collected on our fall nature walk. Lots of wonderful goodies!

Look how excited he is to share some of his ideas that he found in a book. We are off to a great start!

Our 'Great Pumpkin' and fall nature items await us.

Scooping out our "Great Pumpkin'.

"Ewwww! This is really slimy!

Working together to find the perfect location to put the pumpkin fairy house.

These two are putting the finishing touches on our fairy house.

A close up of our pumpkin fairy house.

What pumpkin fairy house wouldn't be complete without a few Monarch fairies?

Ella created the sign on a colorful Sugar Maple leaf that reads the Fairy House.

What fairy wouldn't feel welcomed here?

Andrew created the beautiful fairy angel "to guard the house" with a pinecone for the body, dried milkweed pods for the wings and an acorn cap for the head.

Chris painted the wooden figures black like "the Monarch's body", attached feather wings and bittersweet for a "crown". Aren't they lovely?

Our pumpkin fairy house is finally completed. We do hope the fall and Halloween fairies will come for a visit.

Welcome and Happy Halloween!

Telling Spooky Stories in the Woods!

After putting the finishing touches on our pumpkin fairy house some of the children decided they wanted to tell spooky Halloween stories so we gathered together and...

...listened intently as our friends shared their versions of some offbeat and very creative 'spooky' stories. We have learned to respect our friends and we do oa great job paying close attention and enjoy their wonderful and creative storytelling.

We begin our 'spooky' stories with a "BOO" and a shriek. This seems to set the stage for the following 'spooky'' storytelling.

These two children share a story about a scary witch and a pet ghost who become very friendly to all the children in the neighborhood.
He begins with a tale of a ghost living in a haunted house and then...

The story continues when the ghost goes down a street screaming, "boo".

This last storyteller tells us of a ' bony skeleton' who got "so scared that all his bones came apart and fell to the ground." HOW SPOOKY!