Today I got to visit the kids classrooms,
First up was Xander. First he showed me his handwriting practice that he does every morning. He takes some tracing paper and lays it over a template with the alphabet, some punctuation, and numbers on it. Then he practices making all of them.
After that , he shows me his editing work. His teacher writes out some thing for him, in this case a short letter, but with lots of mistakes in it. His job is to find the mistakes and correct them. He does this with correct editing symbols. I was very impressed at how quickly he could move through the letter finding the problems.
Then he showed me one of his science experiments. He took some magnets and was looking at how many paper clips he could suspend from each one before they fell off.
After that, he showed me the multiplication bead board. He picks a problem out of the box and then puts beads down on the board to help him learn his multiplication facts.
The hour was up quickly. I gave him a hug and told him how proud of him I was. He seemed to have had a wonderful time, and I know that I did. He even let me take on of his handwriting practices that he did for me and take it to work to hang on my wall.
After that it was Mira’s turn. Kate and I did this observation together.
First, Mira showed us the flower cutting work. I was amazed at how much she is able to do on her own. She gets the work tray out and brings it to the table. Then she goes and gets water in a small pitcher and pours it into a bowl. Then she goes and selects a flower to cut. Then she puts on her apron to keep herself from getting wet. She trims the flower down to the proper size to fit into one of the small vases they have in the classroom. They have them do it in stages though, instead of one cut, to give them more practice. She trims the pieces into the bowl of water. Then she takes the bowl and throws out the stems and dumps out the water. Then she goes and picks a vase. She puts more water in the small pitcher and pours it into the vase. Then she puts the flower in the vase and puts it on one of the tables in the classroom. Then she cleans everything up and puts it all away.
Then she showed us the spindle box. She has a large box which is divided into sections labeled from 0 to 9. She takes spindles from the spindle box and counts them out for each section.
Next she showed us the continent puzzle. This is a large puzzle with the seven continents as separate pieces. She takes the pieces out and puts them down on the guide map (which is basically a picture of the puzzle with the names of the continents on them.) Then she labels each continent with the color coded label which goes with each of them. She actually knows which ones are Europe, Australia, and South America without any help already. She named those as she picked them up from the puzzle all by herself. Then she puts the puzzle back together.
Next up was the sound box. She went and got the box and then a set of sandpaper letters to go with them. In this case it was s, t, b, m, and a. She then takes the objects from the box and puts them under the correct letter, really under the correct sound, since that’s what they focus on in the classroom. The hardest part for her was knowing what all the things were called, since some of the objects are unfamiliar to her, or might have another name that wouldn’t fit under any of the sounds.
At that point we were done with the list she had made with her teacher, so she started picking other things to show us. We also got several demonstrations of mat rolling during all of this.
Next she shows us the caterpillar puzzle. It is a puzzle of a caterpillar with the pieces numbered from 1 to 10. She takes them out and builds it on the table and then puts it back in the puzzle again.
She showed us the knob cylinders next. They are different sized cylinders which she removes from their places and then puts back into the correct positions.
Then she showed us the bead stringing work. It’s a long string that she puts large beads onto. It’s another of the manual dexterity works that they have the kids do.
Then she was getting ready to show us the table washing work, but we ran out of time, it was time for morning circle in the classroom. Kate promised her she would come a little early to pick her up and let her show her then, which she did. Kate said it was quite impressive.
We gave her goodbye hugs then and Kate and I left to go have lunch together, which was another treat in itself.
We were both very proud of the work that our kids are doing at school. They both do a great job at school, and I’m always amazed at what they are able to do. I look forward to having another chance to come visit them in the classroom in the future.
