Kitchen Kindergarten – Distance Learning with Young Children

I haven’t met any early childhood teacher who loves teaching virtually. Perhaps there are some out there, but overwhelmingly teachers want to be in classrooms – playing, hugging, learning and wondering with their students. We were plunged into distance crisis teaching last March, and we will be continuing this type of teaching for some time, I’m afraid. Embracing virtual or distance learning and looking for ways to make it work, and work well, is important, while acknowledging that this is temporary.

Carla Rinaldi, the President of Reggio said, “a digital experience is among the 100 languages – 100 possibilities – 100 ways of approaching reality – of the children. Digital is not an enemy – it’s a new possibility.”

How can we make distance learning the best it can possibly be – a new possibility for our children?

I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on what worked and what didn’t work in virtual or distance learning for my kindergartners. I’m continuing to learn, think, explore and collaborate as I do Kitchen Kindergarten Summer Version – my district’s “continuity of learning” sessions. I will share a few things that I found are working quite well for whole group learning. I will tell you, I’m pretty “low-tech”. I start with what I know works well in the classroom and think about how I can adapt it to virtual teaching. I’m learning a lot more “high-tech” options this summer, but most of these ideas are in the “low-tech” category. I’m planning future posts on whole group, small group, 1:1 and play dates, as well as thoughts for how it might look starting with a new class of kindergartners.

Kitchen Kindergarten – two laptops were KEY – I could see what the kids were seeing when I was sharing my screen.

A few ideas for whole group distance/virtual learning:

Langston’s drawing after a whole group song where kids created a character in each verse.

Have a predictable starting and ending routine. We start each Google Meet with a hello drum song, greeting each child by name. We end each Meet with a favorite class song, “Skinnamarinkydink” and then send each other hearts with our hands as we say good-bye to each child on the Meet. Singing virtually is messy, but fun – and so worth the joy of coming together with a song.
Plan activities that actively engage the children, rather than have them passively sitting in front of the screen. My kids all have white boards and this is a great way to have them be actively learning. They can write words, numbers, draw, etc.. I found this worked better than the chat box for kindergarten. We practiced letter formation, sight words, number formation, math stories, drawing, names, and played games with our white boards. Have the kids get up to dance, move, find things to share, etc. – just like in the classroom. We wouldn’t have kids sitting passively for 30 minutes in a classroom – it’s important to have lots of opportunities for active learning and movement while on a screen, too.
Give children time to talk and engage with each other. We have time each Meet to share stories and show our pets, apartments, toys, backyards and family members. I share my dog, my garden and tell stories of my life at home. Kids share books they made, art they created, and the stories of their lives that we love to hear. Our time virtually is much less than a school day, but we still need to make time to share all those stories that would normally be shared during our school day. It’s how we stay connected and feel like a community. I start each Meet with share time and invite kids to stay on after our scheduled class time ends if they have more stories to share. We often go well beyond the scheduled 30 minutes, but it’s important to hear what they have to say.
Hidden Pictures are a huge hit and a wonderful way to work on vocabulary, oral language and directional words and they are highly engaging. Highlights for Kids (remember the magazines in the doctor’s office when you were a kid?!) has them for free on their website. My kids LOVE them.
Puppets! I worked with a teaching artist from Wolf Trap Performing Arts Center this past year and learned so much about puppetry, so it was natural to continue this into our virtual classroom. The children engaged so well with puppets and it is definitely a strategy I will continue to use. Stuffed animals of our favorite book characters, well-known class puppets and some new friends helped me teach new concepts like why we need to wear a mask, and also helped us with navigating big feelings we had, social-emotional learning, retelling stories and engaging with number talks and math stories.
Read lots and lots of books and talk about them – just like we do in the classroom! I brought home a ton of books, but I found it was frustrating for the kids to watch me reading a book. They had trouble seeing the pictures, and if their Meets setting wasn’t right, if anyone else talked, their image would replace me. I made the switch over to reading books on a shared screen with a variety of tools. Open Library K-12 Student Library is where I look for titles of books I want to read first – they have so many books available for free. I also use Kindle for their many free digital books, and I’ve purchased some of my all-time favorites. I’m exploring Loom and using a document camera, too.
Continue focusing on inquiry and play. Mystery Doug and SciShow Kids are two of my favorite YouTube video sites for exploring questions that kids ask. They are short (3-5 minute) videos that focus on a question and encourage kids to talk and wonder. I found them to be great introductions to a topic. I will show the video and then stop and have a conversation with kids. Then we will do some type of active learning and invitation for kids to try something at home. We explored how airplanes fly and then made our own paper airplanes. We measured how far they could fly with our shoes/steps and then read a book about how to make paper airplanes to give them more ideas. Finally, the kids revised their airplane to see if they could make it fly even further. One day we learned about trees and wondered “what is the biggest tree?” – Mystery Doug pointed out that “biggest” could mean lots of different things and showed us several really cool BIG trees. Then I cut an avocado and showed the kids how they could grow their own avocado tree with an avocado pit, a jar and toothpicks. I leave links and invitations on our Google Classroom after each session for kids to revisit what we did and extend the learning if they choose. It’s also nice for children who didn’t attend the Meet to see what they missed and engage in the learning on their own.
Teach the kids how to mute and unmute because of background noise, but don’t control their voices. My friend Christy Thompson wrote a wonderful blog post about this here. Being able to use a tool like Zoom or Meets, where you can see all the kids is SO important. It’s easier for them to slide their voices into a conversation or raise their hands and it’s more like being in the classroom. It’s also so important to be able to see each other, show each other things and feel that sense of community that we all need. They want to see their friends. We have to let the kids see each other, talk and continue creating community in virtual learning.

These are just a few things that I’ve found work well. I’ll continue to share my thinking here. I truly believe that the teachers who have experienced virtual teaching and learning with children are the experts. We need to share our ideas and experiences with each other so that we can be in the best position possible to continue distance learning or resume when necessary this fall. What ideas do you have for whole group virtual learning? Please share!

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Exploring Identity: How do I see myself? How do others see me?

Exploring identity, and beginning to understand who we are and who we are not as individuals and as a community, is a huge part of my teaching. I start this inquiry on day one and continue it throughout the year. One big project we do is with skin color.

When it started to come up in our conversations, I read a few books that explore skin color. The Colors of Us, Shades of People, The Skin You Live In, Chocolate Me and All the Colors We Are, are a few of our favorites. We learned about the science behind skin color and played around with mixing paints that match our skin color. Based on the beautiful language in The Colors of Us, we chose our words for what we would call our skin color. We made up colors like, “whipped cream peach” and “cocoa caramel mocha” and “honey gingerbread”. We mixed the paints and made our self-portraits.

Our big questions that guided this inquiry were:

Why is our skin different colors?

How do I see myself?

How do others see me?

Who am I? Who are we?

We read books, had lots of conversations, made art and played around with self-portraits in many different mediums – using paint chips, buttons, empty picture frames, ribbons and assorted loose parts. We interviewed our friends and asked them, Who am I to you? and How do you see me?. In our completed self-portrait paintings, we wrote the answers to these questions. We also created and drew a symbol that represented who we are in the world.

This exploration into skin color and self-identity was a celebration of who we are and who we are to our friends and to each other. It made our community even stronger and helped us explore, appreciate and celebrate the differences and the similarities that make us special. We will continue to go back and revisit our thinking, revise our thinking and celebrate who we are as a community this year.

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What Kind of Class Do We Want?

*Update: After presenting at the WLU conference in July 2018, several people tweeted out my “Who We Are” charts. I’ve revised this previous blog post with charts from the past 3 years and updated book recommendations. Enjoy!

I love the way winter break is like pushing the reset button. I’ve enjoyed relaxed days with friends, family, books and the mountains. It’s been fabulous. It’s recharged my mind, my body and my soul. I’ve allowed myself to step away from my classroom (physically and mentally) and now I feel a renewed sense of excitement, energy and possibility as I get ready to return in a few days.

My kids and I have enjoyed 17 days off. While it’s been wonderful, I know that January 3rd is going to be like starting all over again in many ways. Seventeen days to a five and six year old is an eternity. But I love the idea of a second “first day” of sorts. It’s a chance to re-establish our community, to get to know one another again, to reteach those things that were falling apart in December and to revisit what kind of class we are. It’s like a blank slate that we can create together again.

One thing I always do that first week back is to ask my kids, “what kind of class do we want to be? What kind of community do we want to have? Who are we?” Those are big questions, but my kindergarteners never fail to think deeply, to reflect on what was working and what wasn’t, and to create a promise of sorts that guides us for the rest of the year.

We start this conversation in our morning meeting on the first day back. I take notes on chart paper as we talk and start to determine what really matters to us. We read new books and revisit old favorites that first week back and talk about what makes characters kind and likable, or unkind and unlikable, and how that might look in our classroom. We talk about what makes us special and unique and about how we are different and alike. We talk a lot about how we treat each other when we agree and when we disagree. We read books like Grumpy Bird, Each Kindness, It’s Okay to Make Mistakes – and any Todd Parr book, Red, A Crayon’s Story, I Used to Be Afraid, Walter Was Worried, The OK Book, Elephants Cannot Dance, Ish, The Invisible Boy, Have You Filled a Bucket Today? and Last Stop on Market Street – just to name a few of our favorites. Some more favorites to add to this list are: Love, Love the World, Sparkle Boy, I Am Peace, Be Kind, The Big Umbrella, In My Heart: A Book of Feelings, Brave as Can Be: A Book of Courage, All My Treasures: A Book of Joy, The Skin You Live In, Julian is a Mermaid, Why Am I Me?, I Am Enough, She Persisted, Be Who You Are, Not Quite Narwhal, Chocolate Me!, and A Unicorn Named Sparkle. The main idea here is to determine what would make our classroom a wonderful place to be, how can we respect and celebrate each others differences, how can we live in a joyful place together, how can we make a difference – and how can we contribute to that.

We revisit the chart daily, adding and revising our thinking. After a week or so, we create our own chart – through interactive writing – that reflects who we are in this classroom. We always display it in a prominent place so that, as one of my kids said last year, “everyone who comes in here knows that this is how they have to be. You can’t be mean and come in our room.”

Last year’s chart as a work in progress – adding things to it as we discuss. (2016)

This document serves as a class pledge or promise for the rest of the year. We read it and use it as a tool to solve problems, resolve issues and remind us of what kind of class we are. It’s a powerful tool to come back to when the inevitable problems arise.

Last year’s finished chart with photos! (2016)

How do you reset after a long winter break? Best wishes to everyone for a fantastic second “first day”!

Update: Here are the charts from 2017.

And here are the charts from 2018:

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January 19, 2015

katie

“The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.”

Martin Luther King, Jr.

How do you encourage and celebrate thinking in your classroom?

Something to think about…

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The Wonder of It All

“If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength.”

― Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder

Discovering magnets for the first time!

Kindergarteners come to school with a huge sense of wonder. They are constantly questioning, pondering, discovering, wondering, exploring – it’s just a natural part of who they are. I absolutely love this part of working with four and five year olds! I think it’s my job to keep that sense of wonder alive and to encourage it as a part of the learning experience. While most of us have a curriculum and/or state standards to follow, I find that the standards are simply a departure point. If I only teach the standards as they are written, in order to “cover” an objective, I miss many opportunities to get kids excited about learning. I once had an instructor tell me, “if you’re only going to cover something, you may as well bury it in the backyard.” This has stuck with me and I try very hard to create learning experiences that are ongoing, meaningful, deep and full of discoveries.

Setting up the baby beetle habitats – counting how many we have

Life cycles are a part of our curriculum. Our county provides us with an ant farm, which is a fun way to study life cycles, but I like to go beyond that by extending this study throughout the year. We start the year with monarch caterpillars in our classroom. We witness the amazing transformation to butterflies and then track their migration to Mexico. In the winter we bring “baby beetles”, commonly called mealworms, into our classroom. The children observe the tiny wormlike critters go through their transformation into large, black beetles. We count, record and observe the changes. We get them out of their habitat and look at them closely, feel them crawling on our hands and experience their life cycle firsthand. We get an incubator in the spring and learn about chickens – watching the baby chicks hatch in our classroom. Through these many experiences, students truly learn our required standard about the life cycles of living creatures. They also learn much, much more.

Playing with the dinosaur sensory box while making a book about dinosaurs

This year my class is extremely interested in dinosaurs. I started a dinosaur box the first week of school in order to appeal to this interest. I filled it with dinosaur books, toy dinosaurs, pictures of dinosaurs and fabrics, rocks & stones to create dinosaur habitats. We also have a dinosaur sensory box, an app on our ipads that teaches kids how to draw dinosaurs as well as an app that teaches kids information about dinosaurs. Out of this play area, many children have written books to teach others about dinosaurs. They have learned how to read nonfiction texts with graphs, labels, captions, and various nonfiction text features. They are continuously drawn to the dinosaur play because it is something that interests them. They want to learn more and they want to share their learning with others. Are dinosaurs in my curriculum? No, but through the dinosaur play many of my literacy standards are being met.

Our class “Wonder Wall”

Another way I try to keep wonder alive in our classroom is with our “Wonder Wall”. I first read about this idea in the fabulous book, A Place for Wonder by Georgia Heard and Jen McDonough. We have a special board in our room where we can put post-it notes about things we wonder about. This is a way to keep track of our thinking and to remind us about things we want to talk about, investigate, explore and learn more about. I keep a close eye on the Wonder Wall and use it as a launching place for classroom units of study, books we read, websites to visit and experts we might know that can come and share their knowledge with us. It’s a great way to keep track of the many wonders that kindergarteners have!

Playing with fake snow in a classroom sensory box

Deep learning and exploring happens when children are encouraged to follow passions, explore interests, inquire and wonder. Giving children time to explore and honoring their investigations, thoughts and discoveries allows for real learning that will stay with children forever. I try to not get caught up in the push to follow pacing guides and “cover” the curriculum. I want my teaching to be deep so that the learning sticks and is meaningful and exciting for the children. I follow the children’s lead while making sure I am accountable to the curriculum, standards and expectations of my county. It’s a juggling act of sorts, and it’s not easy, but it’s something that I can’t do any other way. I strive to be that “good fairy” and give my children the gift of a lifelong sense of wonder and to keep my sense of wonder alive each day in our classroom. I can only do that when my focus is on the children in our classroom, their interests and their needs, at this moment in time.

How are you keeping wonder alive in your classroom?

This post is cross posted on the #kinderchat blog as part of the NaBloPoMo project. Early childhood educators from all over the world have contributed to the #kinderchat blog this month for daily posts about teaching children in the early grades. Join us for our weekly chat on Twitter – 9pm EST Mondays under the #kinderchat hashtag – and for a new Webinar series starting January 30. Katie will be leading a conversation about writing in the early years at 9pm EST January 30. Join us in Blackboard Collaborate for the first #kinderchat Campfire Webinar!

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Explore!

“In play a child always behaves beyond his average age, above his daily behavior. In play it is as though he were a head taller than himself.”

Lev Vygotsky

Several years ago I had a huge “a-ha” moment while reading Serious Players in the Primary Classr oom: Empowering Children Through Active Learning Experiences. If you’re interested in meaningful, purposeful play and learning then this book is a must-read. My “a-ha” moment resulted in creating one of my favorite times of the day – Explore. I started Explore when I was teaching second grade, and have done it with first grade and now kindergarten. We start and end each day with 15-30 minutes of Explore time. When my students enter our room every morning they unpack and then choose an Explore station. I have a work board where the children move their name to indicate their choices. Choices might be: blocks, art, iPad, dramatic play, sand table, garden rocks, Legos, puppets, puzzles, games, math manipulatives, play-dough, building ramps, etc. Reading in the library and writing are always choices. I typically have 12-16 choices with space for 4 children at each station.

Because my room is on the small side, I don’t have the supplies out in pre-set stations, for the most part. I teach the children where to get the materials and how to put them away. Children are free to move from station to station as they wish – as long as there is room, they can change stations as much as they’d like. As the year goes on, it is my hope that Explore will turn into student-generated projects and stations that they create as an extension of our curriculum. I leave the board up with different options each week, but the children know they can let me know if they would like to create their own Explore station.

One year after a trip to a folk art exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, a group of second grade students decided to create their own folk art exhibit during Explore time. Just the other day we found a HUGE box in the hallway waiting to be taken out with the trash. We grabbed that box and it is currently being painted as a Fairy Princess Castle House. What will happen next is yet to be seen. It’s up to the children what they choose to do with the box. It’s up to me to provide the supplies and space for their creativity to shine.

During Explore I want kids to do exactly that – explore different things in our classroom and play! This is an important time for me to interact with the children. Walking around the room I take pictures, engage in play with students, ask questions, wonder out loud and observe. Kid-watching during Explore time gives me tons of anecdotal notes to help guide my teaching. This is a time rich with oral language opportunities and a chance for all students to be successful, empowered problem solvers. They are engaged, invested and learning a tremendous amount.

Explore is a time in our day that I couldn’t live without. It’s messy, fun, productive, exciting and full of learning that may not happen within the normal day and set curriculum. I can easily say that I don’t have the time for this. But I believe that we make time for what is important. And this is important work for children.

Have you tried a version of Explore? Please share your experiences with open ending exploration and play time for children. We would love to hear new and different ideas!

I’ve taken the idea of Explore and carried it over into math and literacy as well. Stay tuned for my next post on how Literacy Explore works in our classroom. And check out Kassia Omohundro Wedekind’s post on Math Explore over at Math Exchanges.

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