Traditions are so important in establishing our school culture. In Kindergarten we have many traditions and routines that the kids get to know and reminisce about for years to come! Here are just a few!
We learn right away about how to stay healthy and avoid sharing germs. We had so much fun "sneezing" on each other with a spray bottle, and then practicing using our elbow or a tissue to block the sneeze. Then we made sneezy pictures to help us remember! We also talked about how germs are too small to see, and got out the microscope to see other things that are too small to see! We will do our unit on our amazing bodies in October, culminating with a visit from our school skeleton, who likes to dress up for Halloween!!!
We are getting the routines down for our classroom! Here the kids are in the reading jungle, and they know how to use the listening center to listen to a book on iPods.
This the Choosing of the Pillow Pets - always a BIG event. We have pillow pet time every day after lunch, to lay down on our pillow pets and have a read aloud/rest time. The pillow pets live in the kids' desks and only come out for Pillow Pet time. We draw sticks to see who gets to choose first!
Popcorn words! You should be seeing these red popcorn word folders come home every day, and hopefully you can take about 2 minutes each night to practice popcorn words with your kinder! These are sight words, and we have a goal of 100 to get through this year! We also practice them at reading time. We call them "popcorn words" because when the kids really know their sight words they should be able to "pop" them out of their mouth fast! (We also have popcorn parties at school every time we finish another row on our popcorn word board!)
Another fun routine is earning pennies for various things in the classroom. Then Prize Card Store opens and the kids get to buy prize cards for privileges in the classroom! The kids also go to the "bank" to exchange their pennies for nickels, since the Prize Card Store only accepts nickels. :). They are learning about math and money, and don't even realize it!
Something else that the kids look forward to is that every morning they get to answer the Morning Message. They really enjoy being able to share and read, and circle the popcorn words!!!
An essential tradition that we have in Kindergarten is partnering up with an older class to have Book Buddies parties once a month! This year we are Buddies with the third graders! This program lets the kids build relationships with older readers, and it has just been a wonderful thing for both grades in the past, allowing the third graders to have an appreciative audience for their reading, and allowing the kinders to have a story read to them by someone that becomes a special buddy all throughout the year!
This month we read in our classroom for a while, read a group story about fall, and then went outside to collect fall leaves and make leaf pictures, and have a bonfire and s'mores! We try to have the kids keep the same Buddy each time!
Each year in Kindergarten things come together a little bit differently, always something new and exciting. But we balance that out with old time-tested traditions that allow for all of our Tok School students to have a wonderful foundation for the rest of their school careers! We are off to a great start this year already!
