Each morning at The Kineo School, we begin by putting away our bags and lunches,
swapping shoes, and then checking-in at the reading corner. We start the day with
reading time, and we have already discovered that the kids often gravitated toward nonfiction books and magazines. They were using their background knowledge (for example, about sharks) and their letter/sound knowledge to figure out pieces of text and share information about their books. We learned a new vocabulary word from a Fancy Nancy book and tried out our best thinking poses to show we understand the word “ponder.”

We role played stories and built vocabulary about airport travel. Students wrote boarding passes, and we rolled dice to get the flight number for our travels. We even turned our carpet into a runway as we talked about the important job of air traffic controllers.

We used links to make patterns. “A pattern happens over and over and over again.” Students also made patterns in building towers to represent a certain number.

We explored our five senses through stations in the classroom and through a silent walk outside where we focused on what we could see, hear, touch, and feel (not tasting what we find outside though).

Students collaborated on a piece of art that is now hanging in the classroom. We worked with dots and circles and lines to shape a bigger picture. We experimented with color mixing and created secondary colors using the primary colors: red, yellow, and blue.

We talked about the different groups that we can belong to and how different groups often have different rules. This led into a discussion of our time in the Kineo classroom, at Emerson, and in the gym at Kineo. We call our teachers a different name, we wear different things on our feet, and the rules are a little different — but all are helping us learn!

We also enjoyed two trips to the park. On the first day, the kids ran in the field and played in the leaves. We introduced the game “Red Light, Green Light,” and they added Yellow Light. They wanted us to use it to describe when we would stop at the crosswalk to check for traffic before crossing the street! We walked over to the train play structure at Marymoor on Friday and listened to the stories of allosauruses and kittens and train conductors on the train.

The energy and imagination of the children is inspiring. It is everything we hoped we would see in the classroom we’ve created, and more.