Snowpants on Kinders

As we were walking into the forest last week, one of my students commented that he didn’t like winter. I asked him if he enjoyed tobogganing and building snow forts and he said, “Yes, but I don’t like getting dressed for winter. All I want to do is to wear shorts and a tshirt and my shoes so I can go outside and play.” I couldn’t argue with that.

Getting kindergarten students dressed in snowpants, boots, coats, hat and mitts (why would anyone think that gloves were a good idea for 4 year olds?) is a regular cause of frustration for kindergarten educators as well as for their charges, without a doubt. I remember seeing a meme someone had posted with a photo of a bear, its mouth wide open in a roar. The caption beneath the photo read, “MITTS! ON! LAST!” Clearly a joke best understood by those of us who have lived through the chaos of dressing a group of little ones in wintertime.

There’s no getting around the fact that we live in a wintery country where, for at least for 4 months of the year, it is necessary to wear warm layers of clothing. When winter weather hits, it is definitely time to read Robert Munsch’s hilarious story, ‘Thomas’ Snowsuit’ as a way to acknowledge the fact that getting dressed in winter is a pain, but that, if you want to play outside with your friends, you have to be dressed properly. It takes a great deal of organization, support and (sigh) patience to get a whole crew of kinders dressed to go outside so that at least they will be warm and dry, and at most, they are protected from getting frostbite. It is understood that a few lessons on how to dress and regular reminders are part of the job for kindergarten educators. This is especially important for those students who are new Canadians and whose families may be unfamiliar with the best ways to dress their children warmly.

On a good day, a child may take an average of 10 minutes to get ready to go outside, and thankfully, we all have a handful of students who are ahead of the game when it comes to independence and self-regulation. And then… there is the rest of the class. It is a wonder that we manage to get outside at all when there are a host of hurdles each day which inevitably delay our departure. There are the common hurdles such as individuals who are distracted from the task at hand (i.e. getting dressed NOW), or those who flatly refuse to get dressed. If you combine these personalities with: zippers that are wet or get stuck or are broken; mittens where the thumb liner won’t go back into the thumb; gloves (argh!); snow pants with snaps that won’t snap closed; pants that crawl up if not properly tucked into socks before putting snow pants on; and ‘lost’ mitts, hats, scarves, etc.; what you end up with is often described as the ‘herding kittens’ phenomenon.

We are lucky that we only have to go through the getting-dressed routine once a day, because our outdoor learning is first thing in the morning when the students arrive at school already dressed. That means having to only get dressed once at school for the play block at the end of the day. In the afternoon, when they do get dressed for outside, we dismiss students one at a time as they finish up an activity so that there will only be a few at a time in the cloak room rather than the whole crew. On the wall in the coat room are visuals for everyone to remember the order one gets dressed (snowpants on first…mitts on last), and we sing songs while students get dressed to help them stay focussed (“Put on your boots, your boots, your boots….let’s go outside…”). I have also found that sometimes you have to cajole and be creative to discover what strategy works with students who would rather wander around the classroom and continue to play instead of getting dressed. For instance, there is an SK student who, I discovered, is only motivated to get dressed if I time him (his record is 1 ½ minutes!) otherwise, he will use every delay tactic he can, even enticing others to join his boycott.

It is definitely not the part of day I most look forward to, but regardless of the time and effort, getting dressed independently, in winter or in summer, is one of those life skills that requires a lot of patience. Students are learning how to dress themselves so that they can be comfortable and warm while they play outside. The key is finding ways to make it as seamless (no pun intended) as possible for everyone involved while you wait for warm weather.

 

Hundertwasser, Spirals, and Lollipop Trees

One of my favourite artists is Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1928-2000), an Austrian artist, architect, and environmentalist whose work is colourful, playful, and unconventional – characteristics which make it perfect for any age to enjoy. Hundertwasser hated straight lines and the colour grey, but loved rain, trees, and the infinite beauty of nature.

Years ago, I happened to randomly look up “Hundertwasser Lesson Plans” on the computer and was thrilled to see that, because Hundertwasser had spent a lot of time in New Zealand, the country’s Ministry of Education had posted an art lesson plan for grade 2 students to learn about him and his whimsical style of painting. I immediately read through it and adapted it to suit my grade 6 students’ abilities as well as the limited art supplies I could find in my school’s stockroom – large cardstock paper (or bristol board), acrylic paint in primary colours, sharpies, white glue and sparkles.

Recently I adapted and introduced Hundertwasser to my kindergarten students. I started by showing them some of his work, taking particular notice of his ‘lollipop’ trees – painted with bright spirals. To encourage students to play with spiral lines, we set up a table with different colours of plasticine and a collection of white boards so that every student could roll out a plasticine ‘snake’, and then wind it up into a spiral on the whiteboard. Almost every student came to the art table that day. They seemed to be mesmerized by the action of rolling out long ropes of plasticine and then spinning them into spirals. Their creations were beautiful and all different; some were as tiny as a coin, others were large and irregularly shaped filling the whole white board, and yet others were delicately made with the finest, thinnest spirals in one continuous colour.

Our discussion about Hundertwasser spirals lead into an inquiry about where else we could find them. The students loved a book I read called, “Swirl by Swirl: Spirals in Nature” by Joyce Sidman. All through the day, they would come up to me and show me spirals they had found, drew, or created using materials in the classroom – blocks, loose parts, and toy animals, for example. Halfway through the day, we even fit in a spiral dance, holding hands as we moved around the classroom, winding up tightly and then unwinding while the music played – that way, they could actually feel the tight hug of a spiral. When it came to Writer’s Workshop at the end of the day, almost everyone wrote about spirals. As they were explaining their work, students would tell me where they found the spiral they had drawn – on a butterfly’s face or a seashell, the bodies of snakes and worms, or elephant trunks and spider’s webs. They had clearly begun to notice!

Exploring spirals is a first step into discovering more about Hundertwasser and his amazing creations. This week, my goal is to create a forest of Hundertwasser-inspired ‘Lollipop Trees” in the hallway leading up to our classroom. The students have already painted circles using cool colours (green, yellow, blue) of paint on circles of cardstock. When they are dry, they use a Sharpie and trace a spiral on top of the paint. Using warm colours (red, orange, yellow) on sheets of cardstock, the students will then cut and paste strips for the tree trunks. When I taught the grade 6s, they painted a poster where they recreated a town inspired by Hundertwasser by painting lollipop trees, onion domes, bright colours, wavy lines, and irregular windows into a rich street scene. With the kindergarten students, the grade 6 art project is a bit too ambitious and so instead, they will be isolating key elements of his work, so that they can feel as if they are IN one of Hundertwasser’s paintings with larger-than-life lollipop trees.

Next up, we will explore onion domes…

Time to Recharge

The way work slammed into the holidays this year explains why I find myself sleeping in late every morning. Phew! That just happened! Now the two weeks ahead seem like all the time in the world to do anything but work. So, what is the best way to spend this time off?

Some things are out of our control around these super-charged holiday periods – traveling, family time, weather, finances, health – but finding some time to shut down and recharge your energy supplies should be a priority before heading back to work in January. Things really start to gather momentum when we return to the classroom with end-of-term reports being the biggest extra-curricular activity for teachers at this time of the year. Not that I’m thinking about work. Well, maybe a little. I am finding it really hard to walk by recycling boxes in the city without glancing in to see if there is some cardboard – kindergarten gold – I can harvest. The holidays have already provided me with an abundance of recyclables for the Creation Station, so it is not as if I need to keep gathering items. I will just be super ready for our first Monday back and I’ve made sure I have some sturdy plans in place for the first week for a smoother re-entry.

Trying to shut off “work-brain” is not easy – in spite of all the distractions over the holidays – and in fact, distractions are often not quite enough if you want to really recharge your energy. Quiet time, time for self-reflection, is what this dark, cold season warrants, sort of like housecleaning for the brain. Whether it is by walking/skiing/snowshoeing in a forest, field or city park, listening to natural sounds, or while listening to your heartbeat as you bob around in a floatation tank filled with warm, salinated water (doesn’t everyone have one of these kicking around the house?), we all need time to ourselves. Hopefully, you will find the opportunity to gather some loose ends within your mind so that you don’t return to work frazzled and unrested.

Our jobs are stressful, no doubt about it, with a high rate of burnout, so that is why there are so many reminders, to new teachers especially, for the need to look after ourselves. Occupational burnout is a real thing and I recall a doctor friend, whose patients included police officers and teachers, who was fond of saying, “You guys are always on stage. If, for some reason, you aren’t able to perform, I will have to take your badge away.” With that in mind, we are lucky to have a break in between gigs, where we can slow down, take some things off our plates, stare into space and breathe deeply to recharge those batteries.

Getting some perspective

The first time I really became aware that I was not in control of how other people saw the world was over 25 years ago when my mother was diagnosed with Early Onset Alzheimer’s at the age of 60. Before she got sick, like most families we would work together as a unit, going through our days with similar expectations of daily routines. When her decline became more rapid and evident, simple activities like stacking the dishwasher or opening windows on warm days caused conflict and stress. As she lost her ability to speak, the challenges were enormous for all of us – What did she want? What is she trying to say? Why is she doing that? Her behaviour was a puzzle for us. It was not until we began to try to see the world through her eyes that we were able to more often avoid stressors. We needed to stop thinking about our reality – opening windows on warm days was rational to us  – and start to see how open windows were a cause of anxiety for her. No use in trying to figure out why she became agoraphobic or hope for an improvement in her condition, it was enough to see that her world was turned upside-down and that we needed to realize this in order to be able to communicate with her on her new terms.

I was reminded of the importance of understanding that all behaviour is a form of communication when I attended an engaging workshop this week entitled, “Exploring Autism – The Elementary Years.” In one of the activities we participated in, the presenter encouraged us to consider the complexity, or puzzle as it was presented, of autism. The puzzle of autism refers not only to the fact that we have much to learn about causes and supports, but also to the fact that the disorder encompasses a variety of aspects from sensory processing and anxiety, to the developmental level of the child and their independence. After exploring the spider web of symptoms and strategies to help support children with autism, we were left with the central notion that it is a social-communication disorder; these children are definitely communicating to us, but the moments of intense frustration result from the lack of mutual communication due to the fact that we are not using the same language. A goal, therefore, is to try to see the world through their eyes so that we can better understand the stressors and be supportive when behaviours erupt.

In a classroom, we are constantly seeking perspective, not only for students with clinical diagnoses, but also for every behaviour that requires support and redirection. In one of my kinder classes, there is a child who experiences intense bouts of anxiety and fear of abandonment. She will often cry when we go on walks outdoors if she feels she is too far behind me or my ECE partner. We have learned that there is the possibility that she and her siblings are sometimes left alone in the apartment when their parent doesn’t come home at night. Knowledge of this possibility helps us to understand that what this child is feeling when she cries is not simply to attract attention, but is a symptom of a significant fear. In this case, we know the “why?” of her behaviour and this helps us find and implement supports at school. Taking her hand and walking with her is enough to allay anxiety at the moment and to build her confidence that we won’t abandon her.

Some behaviours, however, are harder codes to decipher and we are currently trying to gain perspective as a team into the possible reasons why one of our students is having serious toileting issues when this was previously not a problem. The fact that this child, who has behaviour issues as well, has been soiling himself almost every day for the past month when there are no evident symptoms of a digestive disorder, is the puzzle we are currently trying to solve. What are the reasons for his behaviour? What is he communicating to everyone? Despite our efforts to give him support and encouragement for positive interactions with his peers, why have none of the behaviours changed? We are sleuthing to be able to gain perspective into this child’s world so that we can give him the support he needs as soon as possible, and we are expanding our kindergarten team to include the administration and Learning Support Team so that we can gather some insight that might help us help him. At the moment, we have very little to go on, and we realize that our team of ECEs and teachers can see the result but not the cause of his behaviour. Doesn’t mean we are giving up, only that we have some work to do.

Organizing the Flow of the Day

We have clocked in three months in our kindergarten class so far, and on the whole, my ECE partner and I feel there are some really strong aspects of our day – the outdoor learning blocks at the beginning and end of the day, for example, and weather permitting, outdoor time in the middle of the day for a small group activity (today it was raining and the puddles were the big attraction).

Since we are with the students for the majority of the day, the two of us have worked at creating a ‘flow’ to the day. Nonetheless, we find we are still constantly making adjustments to the classroom set up, to activities, and to the overall schedule. For example, we have trimmed our circle times considerably since our students sit as a large group for music and games in French with their two other teachers each day. What we occasionally do now is have a quick everybody-to-the-carpet for a regrouping or a message before an event or activity, with the time spent sitting limited to about one or two minutes maximum. Sometimes it is just a chance to have a ‘huddle’ for a reminder that we are about to do something together as a class – tidy up, wash hands, get ready to go outside, or line up for library. The message is simple and clear and helps the students prepare for a transition, and we have sometimes used it as an opportunity to ground the group if the energy has risen towards the rafters.

Considering that the model of Full Day Kindergarten (FDK) is mandated to reflect the structure of the preschool day rather than a Grade 1 classroom, we often have to remind ourselves of the board directive for a play-based program as we leave behind longer, teacher-lead, large group lessons. However, this can sometimes lead us to feel as if we are not adequately preparing our students for reading and writing activities in the Grade 1 program. Thus, we are at odds as to the delivery of our program – preschool exploration or preparation for seatwork using alphabet and number systems, or a possible blend of the two? (for insightful articles discussing this conundrum in kindergarten, please see, “The Joyful, Illiterate Kindergarteners of Finland” from The Atlantic, as well as the blog, “Why I Don’t Like Play-Based Learning.”).  

In our classroom, I guess you could say we have attempted a blend of large group circle time for music and games balanced with opportunities for individual inquiry and play-based (i.e. student-driven) learning. Keeping in mind that managing to get a whole group of jk and sk students to sit quietly in a circle while we deliver a lesson does not necessarily mean that the whole group will learn what we are delivering, we have found that we are more successful gathering a small group of students for a smaller, more intimate and focussed lesson where we can attend to and assess each one of them individually for a shorter amount of time. Expectations for group learning are still met and we can easily target what we want to achieve. To do this, we have designated a floating time during an exploration time block where we will invite a few students at a time to come and visit us for a short activity or task. We try to select the students who are ‘free’ to dedicate their attention to the activity, that is, those who may be travelling from one centre to the next, or those who are just finishing up a snack, so that their play is relatively uninterrupted. We have found that when we are set up for a task we regularly get visits from other students who may not have been invited but are curious as to what we are doing and ask if they can join in. As we observe them, we can see that this curiosity and voluntary participation is ideal to include on a report card as evidence of Problem Solving and Innovating.

So while we seek to achieve a balance between true, play-based learning and the expectations of a program ‘aligned with the curriculum’ in our classroom, my partner and I feel as if the flow to our day has genuinely begun to reflect the most positive aspects of both, offering the students as many opportunities to learn how to learn.

Here we go with the snow

Monday morning, we went to school in the first blizzard of the year. It was bitterly cold, and the wind howled around, blowing the 20 centimetres of snow into small drifts. Was there ever a question that our outdoor learning block at the beginning of the day would be cancelled? I am not comfortable just automatically calling for an indoor morning during inclement weather, and usually tend to have a Big Think if I do. So, making sure that all my students had the requisite cold weather clothing, we set out in the morning as usual.

In a previous post, I mentioned how baking hot the kindergarten playground is during the warm and sunny months, but I had no idea how miserable it could be in the cold. With the cold weather, it turns into a wind tunnel, creating a crusty surface of snow and ice. WIth the climbing structure now closed, there is little to do when the conditions are so unfavourable. The only shelter is a small plastic playhouse in a corner, and the rest of the area is open to the elements as the wind whips up the hill from the river and blasts the yard. If a student drops a mitten, it creates mayhem as they run squealing after it before it gets pinned by the wind to the chain link fence at the other side of the yard. Hilarious.

So, I admit that while I was hollering the students’ names into the wind in order to be heard while I took attendance, I began to have second thoughts about the idea of staying outside for the morning block. I am glad to say that we decided to stay outdoors, but not in the kindergarten yard which was so inhospitable. We decided, instead, to go on a walk in the snow around the school where we could at least get out of the wind and allow the students to have some fresh air and fun. Having taught in an Inuit community at the top of Hudson’s Bay, I remember recess time on the tundra where it was often cold and blustery and staying indoors was not an option. You dress for it, and without making a point of whatever opinion you may have of winter, you get out into it and enjoy yourself.

As we trudged through the drifts, I was so impressed with the children’s resilience in spite of the cold. There are some students who have never been through an Ottawa winter and who have to borrow warm clothing each day for our outdoor block, and yet, there they were, laughing as they would try to walk in the deep snow and fall into their friends, or as they made snow angels for the first time. We climbed the mountains of snow the plow had pushed to one end of the junior yard, then rolled down the hill at the back of the school into a field of fresh drifts.

It took us over half an hour to navigate the complete school yard and make it back to the fenced-in kindergarten yard. The wind was still howling and a couple of mittens had fallen off during the climbing adventures, so, looking at the rosy cheeks and running noses, my ECE partner and I started a slow filter indoors for any students who were ready for a change of environment. While most children filed into the classroom, a handful wanted to stay outside and asked me for the toboggans. Since we were all well-dressed and well-prepared to continue staying outdoors for a little while longer, the tobogganing was a bonus activity that saw the students continue to independently explore a host of different ways to slide down the hill. Reflecting on what the students were learning, I easily made anecdotal notes for all for the Four Frames, excepting LIteracy and Mathematics Behaviours. What’s more, the students looked out for one another before heading down the hill, patiently took turns, and helped each other up the hill if they struggled with their sled. They were a very happy crew, and when we made our way back to the classroom, although many of them would have preferred to stay outside a while longer, everyone brought their sled back to the shed and stacked it properly without a complaint.

When we got inside and they were peeling off crusty mittens and snowy boots, you could hear sighs of, “That was so much fun!” from the cubby room. It’s only the first snowfall, but I am really happy that it was a positive experience for all the students. I will remember that the next time we get walloped by winter weather.

Construction Day

Something my ECE partner and I are developing is a more general structure to our week so that the students know what to expect on certain days. We have the usual special activities throughout the week such as Reading Buddies and going to the library, but we have begun to look at having a theme for certain days. So far, we all now look forward to Fridays – not only for the obvious reason, but also because it happens to be our weekly Construction Day (Jour de la construction). We got the idea from one of our colleagues who mentioned that she had heard about a kindergarten teacher who had a building day where the students exercised their burgeoning engineering skills. Given just the general idea of a day dedicated to building stuff, my partner and I jumped on the idea and are now constantly building on (no pun intended) ideas and activities for the kinders as designers, builders and artists.

All week long, boxes are delivered to my classroom from other teachers, from the breakfast program, from the office administrators, and even from the construction workers who were on-site for several weeks putting in a new accessible toilet in the school. In the classroom during the week, the creation station might not be set out, but is always an option if someone asks for it. We do hold on to some special boxes so that there is plenty of variety to be brought outside during the first block of outdoor learning on Friday morning, if the playground is dry. Typically, masking tape, scissors and markers are brought out as well to be used with the cardboard. From our shed, large building blocks, buckets, shovels and sometimes pylons, are also hauled out and presented as possible building materials.

Before we get building, however, we usually have a book and a discussion on the topic, just to stir up the creative energy and to garner ideas of things that are built – either by people or by creatures. Last Friday, we made a list of planes, trains and castles, until one JK student with a fascination for spiders, put up his hand and said that he wanted to build a giant spider web. Great idea! I thought for a moment, then told my ECE partner that I needed to get a few things from inside the classroom. I found 3 different small balls of yarn in various colours and textures for the giant spider web. I attached one end of the yarn to a spot on the chainlink fence, and gave the ball to the student. He easily picked up the idea of how to weave the yarn through the links, and the spider web started to grow. Other students became interested and soon I had fished out 5 more balls of yarn. One side of our school yard began to bustle with children who were pushing and pulling yarn through the fence, trying to attach pieces of cardboard or rocks, some of them even getting ‘caught’ in the giant web as they tried to pass over or under someone else who was weaving. It was a huge success. The web stayed up for about a week, until the arrival of heavy winds and rain, then it soon came unravelled and blew away.

Every Friday, when we come into the classroom, we continue construction activities with whatever we can gather up from our art supplies and toys; playdough; blocks; Duplo; popsicle sticks and white liquid glue; or, chairs, tables and table cloths. We ask the students to draw a diagram of what they plan on building before they get started. For the SKs this is an interesting challenge, while only a few JKs at this point are able to see the connection between what they are drawing and what they end up building. Nonetheless, they like to talk about their ideas, whether the final project looks anything like their ‘blueprint’. Midway through the day, we have a circle so that students can share their creations and hopefully inspire others to build different things than they usually build, like the spider web.

Construction Day offers great opportunities for inquiry and it touches on key aspects (the Four Frames) of the kindergarten curriculum, namely, demonstrating mathematics behaviours, problem solving and innovating. What we like most about it is that it is largely a student-lead day. We have to do preplanning to be ready with a variety of opportunities for building, but we are at our busiest in the midst of a variety of projects, as we try to produce materials that the builders ask for.

Walking in the Woods with Kinders

With our weekly walks in the woods, I’m trying to come to terms with having a planned lesson versus just letting my kindergarten students explore the space in their own way. On the one hand, presenting a challenge to them as we enter the forest is a good way to target curriculum expectations and to focus their attention on things they may not yet have the literacy for, i.e., certain kinds of plant characteristics, the change in seasons, or evidence of animals, even the habits of relatively common ones such as the beaver, woodpecker, or wood duck. On the other hand, it is so true that real learning can happen when the teacher steps out of the way. We often think we are doing our students a favour by helping them inch towards enlightenment with guided questions, but sometimes, it is much better to turn our voice off and turn up our listening skills to hear what is being said without interrupting. While our responsibility is to make sure everyone is safe, we don’t always have to be in charge of learning – letting the students lead their learning is a rich experience we need to foster as much as possible, even if we feel to do so is not really teaching.

So, the obvious choice for me is to do a bit of both with some teacher-lead learning, followed by me following the students. With the hour that we spend in the forest each visit, we have a goal upon entering that helps remind the students that they are there to use their senses as ‘Nature Detectives”, after that, comes the free-association part of our forest ramble. As we start on our visit, I am ready with one teacher-lead activity that draws their attention to some new aspect of the forest that they might not have noticed before, such as, “Find a yellow flower,” or “How many different colours can you see in the forest?”. As we walk along and they point out the yellow flower, that gives me the opportunity to talk about the plant’s (goldenrod) properties, or when they notice different colours, it opens up the discussion about why leaves are not staying green any more. With the natural environment all around us at that time, it is amazing how much deeper students listen and how much more they remember. They are relaxed, it is calm, and there is just a small group of them, so learning comes a little easier because they are, in a sense, using all of their body to learn.

After a few minutes of teacher-lead learning, I am ready to follow their lead about which paths to trek down, or which fallen tree trunk to climb under or over. I look forward to hearing what they notice and listening to their talking. When we take the time to stop and just hang around in one spot for a bit, they are quiet at first, taking everything in. Some wander a bit and focus on the ground just at their feet, others crouch and look under branches. While it would make sense for me to point out the big things like the beaver lodge, or the dead birch tree full of holes made by various woodpeckers, the Kindergarten Nature Detective draws my attention to the smallest orange and black, fuzzy caterpillar on a leaf about 2 feet off the ground. Or crouching down, in a mess of mud and twigs, someone spies one red berry, or a toad stool the size of a fingernail. Our perspectives are completely different – I am taller, look farther into the distance, and know the space and what can be typically found there. With the 4 and 5 year olds, some of whom are very tiny, the forest they see is new and the area they are comfortable exploring is on the ground around their feet.

When we are walking back to the school, I try to recap some of the things we experienced so that they can write or draw it in their journals, share it with their classmates or talk about it with their families when they get home. Do they readily remember the yellow flower they learned about? Sometimes. But the student who found and gave a pat to the fuzzy orange and black caterpillar easily recalls every detail.

How to Get Outside

I know I have probably spoken about the wonderful connection my school has with a nearby bird sanctuary, but I thought it might be of use to other educators to know some of the administrative requirements that are in place that make it happen. Depending on the location of your school in relation to that of a nearby green space, it may be possible to establish the opportunity for your students to access a natural setting (a park, a watershed, a field) on a regular basis – without extra costs or volunteers to organize. This is how teachers and students at my school have managed to be able to do just that.

Every Wednesday and Thursday, I take a groups of 5 kindergarten students out of the school yard, across a soccer field, over a bike path, and through a turnstile into a forest located at a large pond formed beside some rapids on the Ottawa River, not far from downtown Ottawa. It is called Mud Lake, and it is considered a “Provincially Significant Wetland and an Area of Natural and Scientific Interest by the government of Ontario.”

It is a very important destination for birders carrying all variety of cameras, and it boasts meandering walking paths in the summer and fall, and snowshoeing and cross-country skiing trails in the winter. Some winters have even seen a rink being flooded and cleared at one end. It is well used, but not overused or abused. The trails are clean and it is rare to find any garbage on a walk through the forest.

The kindergarten students are not the only lucky ones to be able to regularly go for a trek in the forest for an art lesson, some math, or science inquiry, this is what the entire school does each week. While having such a rich and diverse natural environment to explore may sound too good to be true, it is counterbalanced by the fact that the outdoor area on the school property is less than to be desired. In particular, the kinder yard is an inhospitable square of pavement surrounded by a chain-link fence, and offering absolutely no shade. The children wilt at their outdoor play on warm, sunny afternoons, so having the respite of a cool, verdant forest is extremely welcome.

To be able to take a small group of kindergarten students each time we visit, there are 2 important criteria that need to be fulfilled: firstly, the parents receive a year-long field trip permission form to sign on the first day of school. Secondly, the kinder educators maintain the student-to-adult ratio of 5:1, thus avoiding the necessity of requiring parent volunteers. This way, if we need to change the time of our visit for some reason, we can still go later on in the day because there is no one else to organize except ourselves.

On Wednesdays and Thursdays, while the rest of the class is engaged in outdoor learning, I go to the forest with a group of 5 kinders. I have 20 students who are divided into 4 groups and I take 2 groups each week. It would be great if we could manage more visits any time we wanted, but it is not entirely feasible within the framework of the kindergarten day or week to go more often. With the way we have it set up, each child gets to go every 2 weeks. They still always get their outdoor learning time each day, which may or may not be limited to the kinder yard, so the wait is not so long that they feel hard done by. After school hours, many of the students have started to visit the forest with their families, too, which may account for the clean and healthy condition of the trails and surrounding area.

Every school culture and location is different, of course. You may not have access to a large, safe, natural area to adopt as an extension of your class or your school’s learning environment, but if you do find somewhere to explore, hopefully 2 legal hurdles – the year-long field trip permission form and the student-to-adult ratio requirement – won’t prevent you from making it happen.

Something’s Old, Something’s New

I am at a new school this year and so I am once again learning new routines of the collective culture of the school community as well as the various cultures of the individual students. We have a big crop of Junior Kindergarten students and a handful of Seniors. So far, it is rolling merrily along. Yes, some little ones have had tears, especially a few of the ESL students whose separation anxiety is immense, and a few 3 year olds who are understandably confused about just how long they will be away from their families, but all in all, I think our crews are really coming together in a very happy way.

Last year, in the French Immersion senior kindergarten program at my previous school, the students alternated between a day of English with my colleague and a day of French with me. We were the ones who switched classrooms while the students remained in the familiar setting of their own classroom. We felt that the transition each day was far easier for us than for a whole group of 5 year olds, especially since the classrooms were down the hall from each other. It may have been easier on the students, but there were many times I was in room 3 and something key to the lesson I was teaching was down the hall in room 2…I have a hard time keeping track of my stuff as it is without constantly being on the move! Nonetheless, it worked rather well and it certainly cut down on the organization of the students’ belongings.

This year, in a different setting, my English colleague is right across the hall from me – in 2 giant steps I can knock on her door. Like last year, we, too, alternate a day of French Immersion with a day of English. We have named our two groups of students after trees – birch and maple – and on the bulletin board between our doors (we are at the end of a hallway) there are 2 arrows – one pointing to my room and the other pointing to hers. We switch the pictures of the trees each day so that students and their families know which classroom to go to, should they arrive late and miss our entry from the school yard.

I love having my own classroom again. I am able to concentrate on the one language in the signage and messages I post, and I am able to use all of the (limited) wall space for a French word wall, student work and our inquiry board (“Mur des merveilles”). Also, any resources in the room are mine or the school’s to be used for the French Immersion classroom. Perhaps the biggest improvement is the fact that I don’t lose stuff (as easily…). While there are the many positives, there is still the fact that the students can find such daily transitions very confusing – “Is my hat in this classroom or the other one?”, however we anticipate that that will improve as time goes by and the routine becomes more fluid.

At my previous school, only the teachers moved each day while the ECEs stayed with the students. This year, our principal has set up our program so that the teacher and ECE stay together while the students switch classrooms each day. His belief is that the ECE/teacher team is the most important relationship, and can only properly develop when both individuals are working side-by-side each day. I am very lucky in that I have a great relationship with my ECE – we have similar philosophies regarding every aspect of the program and we share a respect for each other’s knowledge and experience. I know it is not always the case and have heard of some extremely challenging relationships in the kinder program that would understandably make for a difficult year, but I can see myself learning a great deal working with my new teaching partner.

One thing we are still trying to hammer out is regular planning time involving all the kinder colleagues; teachers together, ECEs together, teacher and ECE together, and finally, both teachers and ECEs together. Not an easy thing to coordinate, but an important one. At the moment, we do what we can and we actually make it work, catching a few moments to chat, or grabbing opportunities to stay a little longer after school from time to time. The close proximity of the classrooms helps considerably, as well as the fact that, although the activities, projects and teaching style may be unique to each educator, we still work within the framework of the curriculum. There is always room for improvement, of course, and I expect that things will change down the road as the need arises, but at the moment, I feel as if it has been a pretty smooth start to the year.