Kindergarten written by Francesca Violich

Most kindergarteners have a pretty relaxed morning. They come to school by means of school bus, train, walking or driving. “My momma drives me to school every day”, says Anna May. When the children arrive at JQS, they are escorted by a teacher to the school’s cafeteria to have an optional breakfast and a chance to go to the bathroom before school starts. The students are then taken up to the classrooms where their day will begin. The day starts by the children doing their morning jobs independently without any help form the teachers. These jobs include using the class log, and placing their attendance tag from At Home to At School. Predicting the weather, answering the question of the day, signing themselves in

The classroom is divided up into sections, called centers. Each center is different and provides a different skill that the kindergartener can practice. They work in groups at the centers. Some of the centers are working with Words, Interactive Reading and Writing, the Discovery Zone, and The Community, plus the Library and the Meeting Corner.

-Meeting corner: the place where the children gather to have morning meeting and read aloud

-Working with words: the center where children play with magnetic letters, arranging them. First, they draw a card from the Word Box. Next, they practice wring it. Then they copy it into their Word Books and draw a picture of the object to help them remember what it is. Finally they make the word on a magnetic board with the magnetic letters, and show the teacher.

-Interactive reading and writing: this center does simple sharing. The kids will pick some words and try to make a sentence. Then they copy the sentence and read it to a classmate. This helps develop social skills as well as verbal and writing ones. When they are finished with that they get these small books with pictures. The sentences in the books have spaces where the children can write in words.

-Discovery center; this is the space where the kindergartener’s discover new things, normally related to the class to the things they do in class. This might take form in a box with covered flaps or a puzzle or maybe a bin with fake snow or sand.

-Library: this is essentially a reading corner. Each time a group goes there. They listen to a book on tape, and then follow along with the story as they listen. After that’s finished, they do a word puzzle and or read a picture book.

-Community Center: this is the place where kindergarteners interact with things around them. The community corner is a themed section of the class, where the kids can play with the objects provided. For example if the theme was bakery, the kids would shape cookies out of dough, and bake them. Then they would try to write out a list to sell their goods. Finally the bakery opens and they “sell” their goods. When I was observing the community center, the theme was the bakery. I made a fake pie, and they even “baked” it for me! The community helps the kids practice all the skills they are learning in the classroom in a fun, constructive way.

-Art: the art center gives kids to take a break from school and paint or work on an art project.

The kids have lunch and recess. Recess is for about fifteen minutes. The kids are taken upstairs to the penthouse playground or to the small playground on the kindergarten floor. The lunch period is about a half hour, and it takes place in the school cafeteria. Lunch is provided to students for a small fee, paid at the end of each month. At some point of time, the students them downstairs, where they separate into three groups; after school (Red Oak), school bus, or Walker . The walkers wait in the main lobby, the bus students wait in the will have a specialty class. Swimming is not a specialty for kindergarten students, but they do have music, mandarin, and computers. After lunch, the students have Investigations, which is the simplest form of math. They each have a folder, with their own Counting and Measuring Books. They fill them up and count objects. They also do simple measuring with paper clips, dominoes and colored snap cubes.

Dismissal time is simple. The kids get all their things and line up. The teacher escorts them to the auditorium. Each bus has its own assigned seats. Red Oak students go with the Red Oak teachers.

The kindergarteners love their classrooms and I do too. I’m a fifth grader, and if I like the kindergarten grade, I’m positive your child will, too.