We’re off to a great start in 2017 in the Ranch! We laugh, we play, we create and of course we
make the best of friends. This week we
brought out the “Doctors and Nurses” dramatic play bin and set up our own
little urgent care! The students took
turns being both doctor and patient to each other. (And yes, they pretended to cry with each and
every shot!) They showed such care and
compassion for each other-what a joy to see!
Landon and Anya are writing letters to their friends and mailing
them during “free play” in the morning.
Some of our greatest lessons come our of this creative playtime each
morning. I love to see the fun ideas
they come up with-like mailing letters to Santa, or creating their own grocery
lists. The are starting to create words
by sounding them out and spelling them on their paper. It is a super impressive kindergarten skill
that I love to see!
Another important aspect of “free play” is the carpet area where
we play with our train tracks, cars, people and animals. Our students love to build intricate train
tracks and play with the animals. The
shark is always one of our favorites! It typically leads to the kiddos
squirming around on the rug like sharks and minnows!
On the day before winter break we enjoyed a relaxed day watching
the Polar Express and having hot chocolate.
The students each brought a book to share for our book exchange and we
all talked about the fun things we hoped to do over the break.
I am so impressed with the academic progress of our students this
year. We have an incredible amount of
students that are already reading and spelling words. Many of them are reading our small early
reading books too! Wednesdays are the
kids’ favorite day of the week because we play “Wacky Word Wednesday”. We toss a ball around that has a bunch of
consonants written on it. They pick a
consonant, then someone picks a vowel, and then they toss the ball to a friend
to get another consonant. Once we have
all 3 letters we sound them out as a class, segmenting each sound, and then
blending them all together. Then we
decide if we made a real word or a wacky word…it’s usually wacky! Just yesterday we tried to make as many real
words as we could, and we did! We made 8
real words and only 4 wacky words. Lucky
for them, either way, they are practicing the foundational skills of reading. EVERY student is participating actively and
reading the CVC words!
Snack is our social time and we love to share all about our
family and favorite things. During snack
we also practice our table manners, taking turns and being respectful. The are quite the little citizens! Overall, class time flies by because we are
always having so much fun together.
