Going to Kindergarten!

Yesterday was a fabulous day! In case you don't know, a morning literacy block in Mrs. Choiniere's kindergarten involves a variety of activities. Several tasks are available and different students do different tasks. These tasks need to be monitored by an adult. This morning, Mrs. Choiniere's parent volunteer could not come to school, so she was going to have to change her plans. So I went to Kindergarten to work with that group. As a kindergarten teacher in a previous life, I found out that I have not lost my touch. Students were workiing on the letter "Ll." We talked about the letter "Ll", identified capital or upper case "L" and lower case "l"; we read the book "Leaves" and circled the L's in the story; we used a white board to practice writing "L" and "l"; read the names of pictures that began with "L"; ann finally practiced writing the letter "L" and "l" on paper. In other parts of the room, students wrote in journals, read a book with the teacher, and made leaf prints. It was a very busy time!

The experience made me think about the differences in kindergarten today. Long ago, when I taught kindergarten, children still learned their letters. However, today students were immersed in "L." It was a multi-sensory approached - look at "L," say "L", look at "L" words, write "L", read "L" words, read sentences that begin with "L." All of these activities took place in a 30 minute time frame, leaving plenty of time for play and other activities. It really made my day!