Thankful Hearts

In our classroom we attempt to integrate meaningful literacy and numeracy experiences into every centre including snack. This video explains how.

Virtual Classroom Tour

We have been so excited by our recent classroom changes. Here is a virtual photo tour for those of you who haven't visited in a while. 

Our art area has many interesting materials for the children to use. We believe that there is beauty in the materials so the way we present our art artifacts also helps to decorate the centre. Children's work is on display in frames and documentation of recent experiences is presented in annotated photo collages and learning stories on a clipboard, accessible to both classroom visitors and the children.

Our snack centre is a free flow, open space where children can visit during a playblock when they are hungry and would like to socialize over a snack. There is always a survey or writing component on the easel for children to read and respond to, and needed materials (napkins, spoons, etc.) are housed on a shelf nearby to encourage independence and responsibility.

Our science area has accessible tools (magnifying glasses, tweezers, etc.) and artifacts (shells, feathers, etc.) nearby for the children to explore. We love our light table and use it regularly and try and incorporate our current inquiry (in this photo the planting along the window) into the centre. We weave literacy and numeracy into all centres and there is much student writing on display.

Literacy has a wealth of spaces and materials to support our children's emergent reading, writing and oral language interests and abilities. The co-created alphabet was made from paper mache and our children use math/sorting skills when keeping the writing materials neat and organized. A bin of journals is available anytime a child wants to do some drawing and writing.

There are cozy corners in the room to sit and chat with a friend, read a book, draw in a journal, or play with a quiet bin.

Our math area has open-ended tools available for both focused table top activities and also integration into other experiences (e.g., measuring tapes to see how tall our plants have grown at science). Because we have focused so deeply on math we have woven much documentation of student work as well as the pedagogical and philosophical frameworks behind our activities into the display. The documentation offered at every centre is available for both children's and visitor's use.

Our drama centre changes based on children's interest and is currently set up as a mini house. The children help us co-construct the environment by gathering materials from our room and creating what we don't have.

Our cubby area celebrates each child with a recent framed photo and a self-portrait painted by each child.

Voting for our Favourite Weather

We love having a survey at the snack centre. We find it inspires children to engage in discussions with one another regarding the posted question as the question is often written by a child which embeds literacy into the centre, and it's a great way to infuse regular math and math talk into our day.

The children have noticed the weather changing as winter fades into spring. Our snack question asked children to vote for their favourite type of weather. Rather than have children write their names under their choices, we encouraged them instead to indicate their vote with a stick. This way a visual representation of the votes could easily be seen in the clear pockets placed underneath the pictures. 

The children figured out the process of how to vote instantly. They understood that one vote equalled one stick and that to use more than one wouldn't be an accurate representation of our collective favourite type of weather. 

As children took turns voting we overheard rich math discussions; the children discussed the most popular weather type and how many votes they estimated it had. They also noticed that the two least favourite had equal votes.

This was an incredibly popular activity that was left out for a few days. Children would revisit it throughout the day to see if the votes had changed and to observe which was the favourite.

We wanted to capitalize on the children's interest in weather so we modified the activity with some new weather cards for our whole group circle time. We offered three weather choices again and this time encouraged children to place their popsicle sticks in jars next to the picture. Unlike the snack survey, this vote took place at circle with every child voting one at a time.

Unlike the first vote, the results for these weather types seemed to be more difficult to assess upon just examining the jars and we encouraged the children to suggest accurate and efficient ways to calculate the votes.

One child suggested organizing the sticks into groups of 5, because 5 was a 'friendly number' (easy to work with because we can skip count by 5s). He suggested organizing the sticks into tallies to make it clear to see how many votes each weather type had. What a fun way to infuse number sense activities (one to one correspondence, subitizing, skip counting, comparing numbers) into an area of interest the children!

Lunch Box Project

Families, we have been thinking of ways to help our children connect with home while they are at school. As a mom I know how meaningful it is to my daughter when I send her a note in her lunch. I was surprised this year to find she was writing back to me on the note - I would find it at the end of the day when cleaning out her lunch box. As a way for your child to connect with home during the day and engage in meaningful reading (and perhaps writing) why don't you consider sending a note in your child's lunch in order to surprise him or her at school? You can use a combination or words and picture symbols to convey your message! If you ask a question he or she might be more motivated to write back. Let us know what you think!

Snack Survey

At our snack center we have a question that the children are invited to answer each day. It's one way to embed some literacy and numeracy into our snack area. The children author the questions for their peers to answer and we tabulate the results. 

Snack Survey!

Snack Question

Each day at snack our children can create their own question.  Children who visit snack are encouraged to read and respond to the question. Eventually we will leave the paper blank and children can independently write the whole question. 

Environmental Print Alphabet Book

My son has been expressing an interest in alphabet letters lately so I thought it might be fun to create an environmental print alphabet book to keep near the kitchen. Anytime we have labels from our favourite products, I encourage him and his sister to glue them in the alphabet book (which is simply a notebook I purchased at the dollarstore and wrote each letter of the alphabet on a separate page). Not only is Caleb learning his alphabet letters in a fun way, he is also reading the names of his favourite foods and familiar products, encouraging him as an independent reader and building his confidence. 

Our goal is to fill the book as quickly as we can - the kids have been scanning products in the cupboard anticipating what page they will go on in the book once we are done with the food packaging.

This book is kept on our kitchen counter so that we can add to it as needed. I think it would also be a great activity to keep at a snack centre in a classroom so the children could add labels from their lunches to the book whenever possible!