Here’s a peek into our week:

Our robot project continued this week with many kindergarten robotic engineers moving onto the recording and labeling, or painting, stages(metallic paint adds just the right ‘oomph’). This careful recording work ticks so many boxes in a high interest way – strengthening pencil grips, careful observation, spatial planning; it’s fascinating to watch it develop. Next steps: labeling the background, then choosing one feature to write about. We’ve included some fiction robot stories, one of which I read when I visited the ECC last year (We had a sweet conversation about that time together), into our snack time story rotation. We especially loved Clink, and were fascinated (but also puzzled) by Robo-Sauce. We’ve enjoyed talking about robots in real life and the different ways the they can help humans and are starting to think that maybe not all robots are actually helpful. One of the criteria in our designing was that our robots would help solve a problem for animals, humans, or the planet; or it would bring joy in some way, so it is an interesting thought that the opposite could be true – that there could be something that is made to a job without thinking about how it will affect the earth or living things. These ideas bring out the strong moral outcry from the 5 and 6 year old set.

Here’s a bit of literacy in action:

• Everyone has a name strip with their first and last name/s with capitals where they go and lowercase ‘in their place.’ We’ll be focusing on breaking those all capital habits. And knowing how to write your last name is a good skill to have!
• Weekly News is progressing well! Many people in many different places with different writing goals.
• New routine: Reading Roundup
• Fundations focus on ‘magic c’ – if you can write the lowercase c, you can write these other commonly used letters. Fundations work is handwriting, letter formation, dictation, and ‘muscle building’ coloring; trying to fill the white spaces and trying to stay in the lines. You you do you with colors, but with the other we’re trying to strengthen small muscle development.
• Introduction to ‘Sneaky Y.’ It is so tired of not getting to say its sound, /y/, very often, usually only when it gets be the first letter in the word. It wants to be in more words, so it sneaks onto the end and nabs a vowel sound, /e/ or /i/. You know how we all just learned, ‘..and sometimes y’? Well, this is one of those sometimes! We took turns reading and sorting those words into categories; being able to isolate sounds is an important skill for readers and writers. Now we’ll add words beginning or ending with y into our morning messages and be able to puzzle through the word with a new story to help us remember ‘sneaky y’ in our reading tool boxes.
  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

Happy Birthday, Dr. King!

This isn’t the first or last time the we’ll talk about or think back on Dr. King, but his birthday and holiday with the call to service, deserves a focus this week. We read, My Brother Martin: A Sister Remembers Growing Up With the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. This portrait of the King family tells the story of Dr. King’s early years and influences from the perspective of his sister, Christine. Although the King family believed in equality for all, and they worked hard to instill a sense of pride and agency in their children, they could not protect them from the racist laws and attitudes of segregation that surrounded them. We talked about the world that Dr. King and his siblings were growing up in, and how his early experiences of segregation and racism gave him a sense of urgency to “turn the world upside down.”  This book is important because it shows Dr. King as a regular child – one who was sometimes naughty and enjoyed playing pranks with his siblings. We want to to instill in the children that heroes, heroines, and big thinkers are everyday people who make the courageous decision to do extraordinary things! As with all changemakers (ordinary people doing extraordinary things, we talk about the power of one, in terms of the ability of one person to notice and react to injustice and the power of that ripple effect. We have started talking about the Civil Rights Movement, and in our continued conversations will learn about those that drew strength from Dr. King and those from whom he drew strength with the idea that we all belong to each other.

The story of Dr. King and segregation brought up many questions. In our conversations we talked about how changemakers like Dr. King ignited movements that did make change in the world, and that the work is far from finished. We talked about the fact that even today, there are still people in the world that have hate in their hearts, who do not believe that all people should be treated equally – because of skin color, sex, age, body size, how their body works, how they learn, their religion, or who they love. As we celebrated with the cake we made this morning, we thought about the ways in which each of us can continue to be part of the work that Dr. King started. And also had a mini dance party to Stevie Wonder’s Happy Birthday, written to advocate for Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday to become a holiday. We love a good dance party, and this song and a cake decorated with some of our favorite images of Dr. King were a great way to end our week.

We were able to watch and listen to a bit of of Dr. King’s I Have a Dream speech and were struck by his powerful delivery.

• ‘He sounds like a mayor or a president’
• ‘Does he have to have a microphone to sound like that?’
• ‘I wonder if everyone could hear even in the back?’
• ‘I wonder if he always has that that voice?’
• ‘I think it is loud in a way so people know.’

Many of us also had questions and wonderings about the concept of “blackness” and “whiteness.” It is very natural for kindergartners to notice differences and similarities, and to want to understand them. Earlier in the year, we read a book entitled All the Colors We Are: The Story of How We Get Our Skin Color, which provides a clear explanation of the science behind skin tones. We learned that, in fact, we are all different shades of brown, and that the darkness, or fairness, of our skin depends on three primary factors: our parents and ancestors (and where on the planet they are/were from), the sun, and melanin. Depending on where our ancestors are from and how much sun we are exposed to, the melanin in our skin is more active, resulting in a darker shade of brown, or less active, resulting in a paler shade of brown. We discussed how identifying one’s own color is a personal decision, and how a person chooses to name and describe their color is up to them. We also read the book Our Skin: A First Conversation about Race. This work is all part of the Social Justice-Anti Bias Framework used at TBS.

Next week, we’ll dive into color mixing to try and find a tone that comes close to our own. We’ll use poetic language to name our shade of own unique shade of brown. We’ll label them and keep the in the project studio for painting projects.

All this and we welcomed the newest member into the 6 year old club! We all got a kick out of Pugtato Finds a Thing and learned that Henrik has always loved wearing hats!

Next up for birthdays? Maya! Who wanted me to capture this moment, ‘Danette! This is the first time I balanced a book on my head and I always wanted to!’ Dreams come true, folks!

That’s a sneak peak and I’ll see you next week. Questions? Comments? Concerns? Please let me know – be well,

Danette