As children develop an awareness of letters, and the sounds they make, they also have to learn how to form letters smoothly and automatically, writing from the top of the letter to the bottom. This year our youngest children have enjoyed a variety of classes where they are given the chance to practice copying words Read More >>
India
Students in Kindergarten and First Grade have been learning about the culture of India through the use of the book Count Your Way Through India by Jim Haskins. We started at one and learned about how to say this number in Hindi and about the amazing banyan tree. Students then drew their own banyan tree Read More >>
Printing
The youngest group of students are participating in a printing class. They are working their way through the alphabet learning how to form all the capital letters correctly. They have worked on the letters A-M so far and will continue to practice the rest of the capital letters before moving onto lower case letters.
Solar System
The youngest children started learning about the Solar System in January. Children developed questions they wanted answered about each plant. As we listened to The Magic School Bus, Lost in the Solar System, and books by Seymour Simon children drew and wrote notes about each planet. We started with the gas giants and then moved Read More >>
Listening Center
Once a week the youngest students listen to a book on tape. As they listen they copy the title of the book and start drawing a favorite scene in the book. More recently children have been asked to write one or two sentences. Some of the titles they have listened to this year include: Thidwick the Read More >>
Centers for our youngest students
Centers are an important part of the day for Kindergarten and First Grade students. Every day they participate in at least one language arts, math and gross/fine motor center. Children learn by playing games in these centers, whether they are adding, subtracting, learning letter sounds or reading sight words. To simplify their contracts, we use Read More >>
Lyle the Crocodile
Students in Kindergarten and First Grade are exploring the fun of Bernard Waber’s loveable crocodile, Lyle. Each week we read a Lyle book and then draw and write about one part of the book. Students love predicting what will happen in the story from the pictures, discussing vocabulary and drawing their own pictures for each Read More >>
Measurement
Inch by inch we built our own measuring tapes and used them to measure our thumbs, ears, wrists, and waists. We were excited to find how much easier it is to use a measuring tape to measure around things than it is to use a ruler!
New and Good
New and Good is a tradition at The New School. It was started in the 1970’s by Bob Newman, when he was the director of the Syracuse Institute for Enabling Education (the precursor) to The New School. It has worked effectively during all these years to merge affective education, pre-reading and early reading education. New Read More >>
Chicken Science
The Kindergarten and First Grade science class has recently been learning about chickens. Students have explored the life cycle of the chicken, looked at and ordered the 21 days it takes to hatch a chicken egg, and named the parts of a chicken egg. We’ve also read great books on chickens and had discussions on Read More >>