'Fast and furious' - A day in kindergarten

Seven hours after they arrived at school in clean clothes and looking like they just stepped out of the bathtub, kindergartners board buses and head home covered from head to toe in marker ink, stickers, glue and playground dust.

With all of the activities the 5- and 6-year-olds do during the school day, it's no wonder how the kindergartners get so dirty.

"Fast and furious," is how Linda Suedekum, teacher at the Primary Annex in Jackson, Mo., described a typical day in the life of a kindergartner.

Shortly before 8 a.m., as the buses pull up to the Primary Annex, children are greeted with a smile and hello from their principal Andrew Rodgers on their way to the cafeteria to watch movies.

Watching movies for about 30 minutes gives the children time to visit and talk with each other before settling down to learn.

At about 8:10, students start trickling down the hallways to their classrooms where they begin their morning chores. After hanging up their bookbags and jackets and saying hi to their teacher, kids in Suedekum class "put up their lunch cards."

On a bulletin board children find their names and pictures and place a card with either a picture of a lunch tray or brown bag in a slot behind it. This lets Suedekum know how many children brought their lunches and how many are going to buy them, and it lets her know if any children are absent.

After children put up their cards, the class counts the number of lunch trays and the number of brown bags together.

Repeating themselves

Repeating lessons are a large part of teaching kindergarten, Suedekum said. Lessons like counting that are taught on the first day of school are revisited every day throughout the year in activities that are fun for the children.

Students count the number of days they have been in school and the number of days that have passed in the month. There is also a weather chart in the room, and each day the children decide what type of weather to place on the chart. After they choose, they count the number of sunny, cloudy or rainy days they have had so far that month.

Besides counting, the children do other lessons each morning that include saying the names of colors, the days of the week and the names of the months.

The children usually sit on the carpet during the morning activities, but 5- and 6-year-olds can get pretty fidgety if they stay in one place for too long. That is why Suedekum has the children go to their seats and do an activity that lets them move around a little bit and have a chance to get dirty.

In journal writing, Suedekum usually has the children complete a sentence by drawing a picture, such as, "I am happy when ..." After markers have colored the paper as well as the children's arms, legs and noses, the children share their drawings with the class.

Relieving restlessness

Having time to move around and color gets most of the restlessness out, so the children sit back on the carpet for another lesson. But not all of the kids are ready to focus so Suedekum uses short songs or rhymes to get the children's attention. A song she sings when the children are rowdy goes, "one, two, three, four, cross your legs, sit on the floor. Five, six, seven, eight, it's time to cooperate."

One of the most enjoyable lessons for kindergartners is learning letters, because it is the one time during the day when they can play with the Letter People.

The Letter People used in the classroom are similar to those that appeared on the Letter People television show on PBS in the 1980s. Each letter person is a blow-up doll that stands about 20 inches tall. Suedekum's class has six letter people, and students have their favorites.

A popular doll

Every doll comes with its own song and tape telling all about it. Mr. M, who has a munchy mouth, is a popular letter person among the students. Erica Anderson said Mr. M is her favorite because he munches everything in sight, which she thinks is funny.

Suedekum uses the Letter People to help the children begin to read. As part of an exercise, she has students hold the dolls in a specific order to spell out a word. Together the class sounds out the individual letters and then puts them together to get words like mat or hat.

When the students aren't using the dolls to learn, they rest on top of a shelf out of reach of the children.

"I like the Letter People 'cause they help me learn letters," kindergartner Dalani Bruce said. "But we can't play with them 'cause we'll pop them."

Learning through play is an easy way for the children to grasp concepts. Last week Suedekum had students bring a stuffed bear to school for a weeklong lesson she developed about bears.

On Monday the students made a list of what they knew about bears. Then they made a list of what they would like to learn about bears. By the end of the week, after doing bear projects and listening to bear stories, the students made a list of what they learned about bears.

One activity students did with their bears was a lesson called "Where bear" that taught about direction. Suedekum stood at the front of the room and called out where to put the bear, such as above their heads, below their knees, behind them or in front of them.

At the end of the lesson, Suedekum asked the students to use the new words they learned to describe where things in the classroom were located. She asked one student to tell her where the clock was and the student said it was on the wall above the bulletin board.

Working with others and sharing are lessons that Suedekum said are also learned in the student's first year in school.

One of the most important lessons, which is also the easiest to learn, is making friends.

"I've made a lot of friends," Nick Maccaux said. " I have four girlfriends too."

Making friends

One of the easiest times to make friends is during play time, Suedekum said. The children are given a lot of opportunities to get out of the classroom and play together throughout the day, which makes students happy.

Maccaux and Kylie Dunlap agreed that the best thing about kindergarten is play time.

A few recesses, lunch and music classes give children time to get away for a while, which helps them concentrate more easily in the classroom, said Suedekum. Because kindergarten classes are for a full day, children are also given time to rest or nap for 30 minutes in the afternoon.

At the end of the day, after all of the markers, glue, scissors and paper have been put away, the children spend the last 20 minutes or so playing in the classroom. Children share toys, puzzles, Legos and blocks and sometimes listen to a story before they load the bus to go home to prepare for yet another day of kindergarten.

hkronmueller@semissourian.com

335-6611 ext. 128