Sleepover, 2015

One of the things I love the most about our annual First Grade Sleepover is the way that family's get involved in the event.  This year our theme is "...lions and tiger and bears. Oh my!" to go with our Wizard of Oz school theme.  One of the things that families are asked to do with their child is to make a lion, tiger or bear - stuffed animal for Sleepover.  The directions are emphatic that you don't have to sew and that the idea is simply to have fun with your child.  The week before they are due, we make stuffed animals/pillows with the children that come from the large mobile home community.  These children are mostly second language students and so we incorporate making the animals/ pillows during the day that we tutor after school in their community.  Parents are invited in to help stuff and make the creations but we supply all the "stuff."   The picture on the right below with the big bear show the pillows that the students made together after school at the MARC. 

A parent in the classroom volunteered to make four extra pillows, just in case another student showed up without one, and of course, they did, but for the parents that are actually able to work with their children to make something special, this becomes  a wonderful shared experience.  The pillows and animals come in the week before the event to they can be displayed in the lobby on the evening of Parent's Night.

On Parent's Night students come with their family to make a keepsake pillowcase.  Each student sends in a pillowcase (and we ask that parents that are able, to please send in an extra), so that we make sure to have a pillowcase for every student that shows up.  We had over 100 children show up with their families to make pillowcases!   The first grade teachers have plenty of stamps set out with acrylic paint so each child can work with his family to make a pillowcase.  As they leave, the students are given a little bag of Teddy Grahams.

It's just such a nice tradition!  Teachers who now have grown children talk about still having the pillowcase that their child made in first grade.

The actual day of Sleepover began with a parade filled with first graders in pajamas, dark halls, flashlights and glow-in-the-dark bracelets.  The students ended in the Dinning Room watching and meeting the Wizard of OZ characters while they ate breakfast and the Principal (in her red sock puppet pajamas... with footies!) lead a dance party where first grade teachers danced on the stage and students danced to all the popular kid songs.  

Then it's off to Center about literature run by the Resource Team.  The music teacher reads a children book about a party under the moon that includes singing and dancing, of course.

Coach provides an active outside game that included a read aloud!

Art read the popular Paddington Bear that ended with a painting art project.

And Mrs, KK, our Media Specialist ended our day with a shadow puppet show of one of our favorite books, Ira Sleeps Over complete with popcorn and dancing with a disco ball!

What an amazing day!

Pow WOW 2013

The day was all that I anticipated.  We dressed our little natives as they came in this morning.  Each of the kindergarten classes represented a different tribe from a different region of the country and the dress they wore was as authentic as possible to that tribe.  As the tribes gathered in circles between the soccer goals, you could smell the fire as the brilliant colors from the costumes flashed in the sun.
The Iroquois

The Inuit

The Nez Perce

The Sioux

The Seminole

The Lenape

We each danced a tribal dance and then sang two songs that we had learned with our music teachers.  One actually has verses in a native tongue.

One of the PE teachers, dressed at Chief Chets Creek, danced between the tribes.  Our Principal and Assistant Principal host the event and Chief Jumping Frog (Susan Phillips) tells the children of a day long ago when the very land the children stand on was trampled by Timucan children.  The performance ended with the children lined up in front their flags (held by their fifth grade patrols) so that parents could snap pictures to their heart's content.







But that was just the beginning of the day.  Our tribe started with tribal games outside.  The children divided into teams and went on a scavenger hunt to find berries and beans and bark and even black bear fur around the grounds! Parents helped each group count the things they had found from their list.

We ate bag lunches from home together, inviting parents to join in the fun.

Then it was food tasting.  We tasted some of the foods that the natives might have had, like fresh and dried fruit, dried meat, and foods made from corn like corn chips, corn muffins and popcorn.  As the children ate, they heard the beautiful story of the Rainbow Raven, another legend to add to the many that the children have loved these last few weeks.

The music teachers had an engaging center and taught us a new song.  The children had  a chance to experience beating drums!  What child does not love to beat the drums!

The art teachers prepared individual pieces of clay for the children to mold into medallions and then stamp with a Native symbol.  These will be fired.  Many of these will be dated and hung on Christmas trees as a reminder of this great experience.

Another art teacher prepared a center of native dyes.  The children painted with blueberries, cranberries, beets and spices.  They were so interested in how the Natives made colors when they couldn't go to the store and just buy them.

The day ended with our tribe gathered in the great tepee with Peaceful Waters.  We heard calming legends and then she passed the talking stick, asking each child what he or she was thankful for.  The children were thoughtful and gave heartfelt answers, but it's when she passed the stick to the parents, that tears welled up in their eyes.  They realized that they have just experienced something so very special. 

When I think of all that has happened in this unit and all the people in our school that go over and above to make it happen,  I am so very thankful... so VERY thankful...

Happy Valentine Day

One of my favorite things to do with children is to let them create something from their own imaginations.  So today, we gave the children a folded white sheet of card stock - a blank canvas - to make a Valentine card.  We also put several pieces of colored construction paper cut into different sizes, some heart patterned paper, and some pink, red, and white foam hearts out for the students to use.  The only instruction was on how to make a heart - fold a piece of paper in half, draw the number 2 starting on the folded edge and then returning to the folded edge before the straight bottom line.  Then cut out the heart - A few students even figured out how to make a heart within a heart.  Moms and Dads and Grandmas and Grandpas got really special Valentines today!

Fall Celebration Ideas

We start our fall celebration each year with a Literacy Parade.  Some children use their Halloween costumes and just find a book to match and others actually design a costume around a favorite book. As they arrive so full of excitement, we ooooh and ahhhh over the selections before we parade around the downstairs.

 We spend the rest of the day celebrating with fun activities that have a wee bit of academics.

We love "cooking" this year with our "Recipe for Success" theme so our first activity was making a ghost cookie.  The idea actually came from one of our mothers, that has her own cookie blog, that sent the teachers a few ghost cookies as a treat.  We simplified the cookie and the children loved this easy ghost - a Nutter Butter cookie covered with white icing and then two small chocolate chips for eyes and a larger one for the mouth.

When we did our Math Diagnostic earlier this year, we noticed that the students were really struggling with interpreting graphs so we took this opportunity to add some work with graphs. We looked for individually wrapped themed candies.  This year we found colored skulls and bones.  After each child graphed his candies and colored in his graph, we showcased different graphs, asking questions such as. How many more green bones than black skulls?  Which candies have equal amounts.  Make an equation using the red bones and green skulls.  Love that Math practice!

Also from our Math work, we put 10 candy corns and 10 candy pumpkins in a Ziploc for each child and then asked the children to make combinations of ten.  This is a play on our Math Investigations "peas and carrots" activity.  The children used these fun manipulatives to make the combinations and then shared their work in a typical math closing activity.

It seems like one of the things that often gets cut in our curriculum is art.  So... today we did our own version of pumpkin making.  Each pumpkin had its own personality!

After lunch we cut the traditional jack-o-lantern.  I am always amazed at the number of children who say they have never cut a jack-o-lantern. Every single child had a chance to stick a hand inside the pumpkin and pull out some "gunk".  Then we reviewed geometric shapes as we made a group decision on the shapes of the eyes, nose and mouth.  We lit the jack-o-lantern with a flashlight to shine tonight as the children came back to trick-or-treat during our annual school wide Fall Festival.  We saved the seeds to count and cook another day.

This year we also cut the top off one of the smaller pumpkins, cleaned it out, and replanted a few of the seeds inside the pumpkin.  The idea is to let the seeds sprout in the window and then replant the pumpkin (shell, soil and sprout) in a larger pot before the shell rots!  Will let you know how it goes.

Celebrating Eric Carle in 2012

In Kindergarten Author Studies are all about retelling books.  At Chets Creek we chose the beloved early childhood author and illustrator Eric Carle to focus our first author study.  All through this unit the children have worked on ways to retell each story.  They have used pre-made props and made some of their own props.  They have drawn sequences of events and have played games to reinforce the events in each story.  They have completed story maps and have answered literal and inferred questions as they have gotten to know each book better and better.  More than the retelling, an author study is about looking across a body of work.  The children have compared and contrasted stories and of course, Eric Carle's art as they have gotten to know him and his body of work.  Many of our retelling activities are kept on our grade level wiki.

Today all seven kindergarten classes celebrated by revisiting some of their favorite books.  They began the day by donning shirts they made of the very hungry caterpillar.  First up was eating Pancakes to reinforce Eric Carle's Pancakes, Pancakes. They watched a video of the movie as they ate.

Next the children visited a center where they made necklaces threading green and red construction paper circles, spaced apart with cut green straws.  The Very Hungry Caterpillar is absolutely a favorite book and the children enjoyed retelling as they threaded their necklaces.

Of course every celebration needs a hat!  So it was on to the hat center where the children made ladybug bands to celebrate The Grouchy Ladybug.  The children talked about a ladybug being an insect and having six legs. They enjoyed listening to the story once again..

Our final center was a study of Eric Carle's art,  The children took a pattern of a seahorse and covered it with tissue paper just like Eric Carle does with the animals in his books.  Mister Seahorse never looked so good!

Thank you Eric Carle!  We have thoroughly enjoyed our study!  Can't you tell?!!

Pow Wow 2011

Today was the culmination of our month long study of the great Native American Nations.  When Chets Creek opened, Chief Jumping Frog was a Kindergarten teacher and she brought the tradition of a Native American Powwow around the Thanksgiving holiday with her from another local elementary school.  Today Chief Jumping Frog Principal Susan Phillips and that tradition have evolved from one of teaching our children that Native Americans use bows and arrows to hunt buffalo and all live in tepees to an in-depth study of First Americantribes across this country.  As the years passed we became dissatisfied with our simple ceremony and began to delve into all of the differences among the First Americans that inhabited our land.  We learned that the Sioux really did live in tepees but the the great Iroquois Nation were people of the longhouses and the peaceful Lenape built wigwams and Inuits actually lived in igloos...  As each tribe researched the clothes that their tribes wore they found that many of the Natives used the skins and feathers of the animals that they hunted in their area and that the Seminoles of our native Florida used shells which were abundant along the shore and that each tribe had different traditional garb so the costumes of the Powwow took on different colors and shapes.

It was not long before we knew that we wanted to involve parents more heavily into our study so homework for the month became family projects.  Families were asked to tell their children stories of their own childhood and their child's early days and to make knots in a counting rope as they told each story just like the beautiful Iroquois story of a Grandfather who tells the story of the birth and childhood to his blind grandson in the beautifully written and former Book-of-the-Month Knots on a Counting Rope. Children bring their ropes back to school and share one of their favorite stories with the class. 

A cardboard gingerbread shape is sent home and families are asked to decorate the native child after researching how their child's tribe might dress.  These colorful First Americans hang in our hallways.

Parents are invited in Tuesday before Powwow for a night of fun as each tribe gathers their families to make replicas of the types of houses that their tribe might have lived in and then these are also displayed in the hallways.  You can walk through the halls and see Seminole  chickees,  Hopi adobe homes, and plank houses with totem poles from the Nootkas...

Several years ago we decided to keep all the information together on a Native American wiki.  Not only is there space for each of the tribes to upload information but on the home page there is a copy of every letter sent to parents, lists of materials to gather for the many projects, invitation sent to first graders, and a million of the other little details that help to keep us all organized!  What a gift each year as we recreate this tradition at our school.  This is a HUGE project and is only accomplished because the work stands on the shoulders of the teachers who came before.

It wasn't long before we began to worry that we were sending our children from Chets Creek with many stereotypes about Native Americans because we were only talking about how Native Americans used to be, but we knew that our five years olds were too young to take on the rich, but sometimes difficult histories, of our tribes, so we decided to bring the tribes alive again in Social Studies in fifth grade.  Our older students do projects that include "compare and contrast" and then do models and PowerPoint's and include many different kinds of technology.  They join us on the night that we have kindergarten parents in for "Make 'n' Take" and make their presentations to the kindergarten children and their families.  Each child gets a "passport" at the beginning of the night and has it stamped at each stop.  When they fill their passport, they can collect a Native American bracelet from Chief Jumping Frog as they leave for the night.  This addition to our curriculum brings our study full circle.

Today was the great Powwow celebration.  Fifth graders joined us by helping to give out programs, holding authentic Native American flags, dressing with colorful tribe-related sashes and roping off the Powwow area and performing a million different chores.  Kindergartners performed Native dances and songs in Native tongues, dressed in their Native costumes.  Chief Chets Creek performed a traditional grass dance that is actually performed to stomp the grass flat before a Powwow.  He had researched, not only the dance and specific dance steps, but the costume, which was replicated by a parent. Parents and children enjoyed the entire Powwow presentation, led by Chief Jumping Frog, of course, and snapped a gazillion pictures.

But that is just the start of the day.  The kindergarten children visit centers throughout the day, led by our Resource Team and each one teaches something important about the tribes.  A real tepee is erected around the flagpole (amazing to behold).  The children enter in disbelief and look up at the beautiful paintings on the inside wall of the tepee.  This is one of the most anticipated and meaningful stops of the day.   Peaceful Waters (Media Specialist KK Cherney) tells stories about the "three sisters."  Each child leaves with seeds of corn, beans, and squash to plant at home.  As she tells the stories Drawing Hands paints a picture.  Peaceful Waters then tells of the native tradition of a talking stick and as she passes the stick to each child and adult, she asks them to tell of one thing they are thankful.  Many of the children are thankful for family and friends - Daddy coming home from Iraq, a grandmother that has been sick, a new baby brother.  A few are thankful for their teachers (thank goodness) and a few are also thankful for dinosaurs and videogames and toys!  The adults always seemed surprised when Peaceful Waters asks each of them to name the thing they are most thankful, but it is not unusual to sometimes see grown men cry.

Next the children visit Colorful Wind (Art Teacher Jen Snead) and she teaches them about the natural dyes used to paint and communicate.  Children are surprised to learn that the Native Americans so long ago could not run to Walmart for paint and brushes!  Then the children experiment by painting with such things as beets and blueberries and spices.  At another art center the children mold clay into balls and then discs and use shapes of native designs to make a keepsake that will be fired and returned. Some of these will be used on necklaces and some will find their way onto Christmas trees commemorating the child's first Powwow.  At that same center each child is given a piece of animal hide (or crumpled brown paper bag) and encouraged to use some of the Native American designs from a chart to write a story. 

Chief Sing um Song invited the children in and taught them a Native song.  They got to beat the steady beat on drums and then used paddles pretending to row boats to the beat of the paddle song.  Today my class visited this center as the last one of the day and Music teacher, DeeDee Tamburrino, was just as upbeat and excited to teach this last group as she had been to teach that first group so much earlier in the day. 

The children always need a break to run and play so the PE teachers divide the tribe into groups and let them compete, much like the Native American kids did.  They have a list of things that they can find in the elements on a picture list and have to find each of the items in the wooded area of our property.  Some of the items are planted such as bird eggs and nests and animal fur and others are found in the natural surroundings such as rocks, sticks, bark, and pine cones.  As they come with their treasures, the teachers discuss how the Native American's used each of these items from their environment. Today, because it was a little blustery, the children gathered around the natural fire heat, much like children must have done in days gone by.

The tasting center is always a fun break.  The children get to taste carrots, dried fruit and apple slices.  They enjoy corn muffins and popcorn and even a taste of beef jerky.  Our Speech Teacher, Moe Dygan, a true hunter, also prepares venison from one of his catches, pork from a wild bore and turkey.  Many of the children make their first connections to the game that the Natives hunted and our own food supply.  Moe also brings in many artifacts of his hunting days for the children to see.  He shows the children real horns and hooves, reinforcing vocabulary we learned during The Three Billy Goats Gruff.  The children, and parents, sit spell bound as he speaks.

I don't even know how to explain how I feel about this day or this entire unit.  It has evolved over time, but there is just so much to be proud of as we complete this unit.  I am so proud of my colleagues and our parents who give and give and give - all who really put out the extra effort to make it such a rich learning experience for our children. Am I tired? EXHAUSTED!  But it is so worth it... The learning, the fun, the collegiality...  It just makes me proud to be a Creeker!

P.S-  Oh, and did I mention that my daughter-in-law helped lead the great Iroquois Nation and my granddaughter was with the peaceful Lenape tribe?  Yes, Kallyn I know that is is Lena-PAY and not Lena-PEE!  So-o-o-o proud to be a Creeker and have the opportunity to watch this tradition pass through the generations of my own family!