The Grey Wolves

Welcome to the Pre-Kindergarten program at Teton Valley Community School!

Our program is inspired by the innovative early education centers of Reggio Emilia, Italy. At the heart of this system is the powerful image of the child. Rather than seeing children as empty vessels that require filling with facts, Reggio educators believe children are full of potential, competent, and capable of building their own theories about the world in which they live.  In our classroom, we conduct in-depth Project-Based Learning which is guided by student's questions and interests. Throughout the evolution of project, all areas of child development (physical, creative, academic, and social-emotional) are addressed along with the essential skills of critical thinking, problem-solving, teamwork, and acquiring a joy of learning. 

Documentation of daily activities and long-term projects is also integral to the program. On this site, you can view how children are engaged in the learning process through photographs, examples of student work, and analytical observations from teachers.  Documentation promotes parent-teacher and parent-child communication and serves as a comprehensive authentic assessment tool. Enjoy!

The last few days of school have been filled with fun, costumes, performances, and sun. We could not ask for better weather so we have spent much time outdoors.  We appreciate all of the support and volunteer time you have spent in our classroom. Chris and I have enjoyed spending time with your beautiful children. We have many great memories and I hope your children do as well.  Thanks for a GREAT year!

This week is all about finishing up projects for the year. We are practicing for the Extravaganza and completing our costumes. The Extravaganza is June Please bring your child to the Teton High School Auditorium at 3:45 so we can be ready to start at 4:00.  Please bring your child's costume to school on Monday so that we can complete a dress rehearsal.  We will bring all of the costumes to the auditorium and dress the students in costume there.  We have an all school song before we do our classroom performance. After our class performs we will send the children to sit with parents for the remainder of the show.

For those students attending Kindergarten at TVCS, we will have a Kindergarten Visit Day on Monday June 2, 2014.  The students will eat lunch with the Kindergarten class at 12:00 and return to our class at 2:30.  Please send your child with a picnic (cold) lunch.

We held a parent information night on Wednesday to share information about our projects over the past year.  Thank you to the families that attended.  It was wonderful to share our exciting year with you.  The students have worked so hard and have grown so much over the past school year. 

Next Week is Spirit Week and we are inviting the students to dress up to show our school spirit.

Monday - Pajama day

Wednesday - Dress Crazy Day

Friday - Super Hero Day 

We enjoyed a beautiful day in field.  We completed a nature scavenger hunt, looked for macroinvertebrates, and we field tested our boats. Please take a moment to see the learning captured in the photos in this section as well as in the project area.

The Grey Wolves continue to work on the show for the Extravaganza.  Several students made costumes and the list of characters was emailed to families.  Please remember to meet with Bonnie if you need assistance with a costume.  We can make on or find costumes here. 

We had an exciting week that wrapped up our reading buddy project as well as visited the hangar at Warbirds.  The students are working hard to finish up projects as well as practicing our show for the Extravaganza.

Next week we will be taking a field trip to Warbird's to see the numerous airplanes.  We can see the differences and the similarities between the vintage air crafts. 

We moved our classroom outside so that we could spend more time in the sun.  We have watched many "shows" in the last week.  They have ranged from music concerts, magic shows, plays, and interpretive dances.  The students are creating tickets and the set.  Some students have served snacks and drinks (water) during the performances.  I wish we had more time because this could be the next project.  Maybe we will incorporate the desire and the energy into our extravaganza performance.

This week we spent one day outside in beautiful sun and the next school day back in snow pants.  We have made the best of the weather and have continued our project.  Please take some time and read more in the project section.

Our reading buddies visited and we continued our collaborative project.  The students work in pairs to create an object that moves with air or in the air. Most of the materials used in the projects have been re purposed. We were able to test a few of the boats in our water table to determine if they were able to float. 

We have enjoyed the week together.  Our project is in full swing and we had a wonderful time building objects with our reading buddies.  The 3rd and 4th grade students (Tiger Wolves) have been studying the science circle which is made up of 1. Observe, 2. Question, 3. Hypothesize, 4. Design  5. Collect Data, 6. Analyze Data, 7. Conclude, and 8. Share. We have met together the last few times and have observed how air moves objects and have made hypothesis about the air.  We have designed an object that uses air to move.  Today we started building the object out of materials in our art studio.  This work coincides with our project "What causes something to move?"

Welcome Back to School!  We hope everyone had a wonderful spring break and are back into the routine of life.  It seems that Spring has come to visit.  Don't know how long she will stay.  we have been enjoying the sunny skies.

Thank you to Erin and Pat Gaffney for the St. Patrick's Day celebration.  We enjoyed making rainbows and discussing the pot of gold.  We were surprised to see that a green pepper can create a shamrock when dipped in green paint.  Happy St. Patrick's Day!

The teachers in both preschool classrooms have been discussing options to create a smooth transition for those children that nap and those children that do not nap.  We have decided to try something new.  The students that nap regularly will go into Caite and August's room for nap time.  The students that do not nap will remain in our class and will be joined by non-nappers from Caite and August's room.  Those students that do not nap will be given the opportunity to rest quietyly for 20 minutes and then get up and complete quiet activities.  We will read a story during the 20 minutes to help the students be engaged while relaxing his or her body.  This solution will provide the nappers with a quiet environment to sleep and the non-sleepers with an quiet place to be engaged and complete activities.  We had some success so we will continue to refine this change in programming. 

This week continued our exploration of motion produced by air.  The force of air is incredible and we have been experimenting with a variety of materials and two types of "wind storms".  Please read the full story of our exploration in this week's project section. 

We also had an amazing adventure in farm and garden with Emily.  Take a peek!

We had a wonderful week exploring our new project.  Please read more about our new project in the project area.  We have enjoyed some new snow, some classroom visitors, and wonderful teamwork.  Students are very motivated to write and draw.  We have observed some wonderful samples of drawing, writing, art, and science.

This was a short but busy week.  We are starting a brand new project based on the interest of the students.  Please see the project section for more details.  We have enjoyed farm and garden as well as reading buddies.  It was fun to visit a few other classrooms as we finish our fire safety project.  We enjoyed the snow and some new experiences in the sensory table.

This week we had a visiting graduate student from Teton Science School Megan Matthews.  We had a wonderful experience with Megan.  She brought us specimens of Grey Wolves that we could touch and feel. We were able to ask questions and learn more about wolves.  Megan introduced the fact that wolves have excellent sense of smell. She coached the kids through a tracking project.  They found smells on the snow and discussed what might make the smell.

On Wednesday Megan brought in tubes and balls that the students used to build a large marble run. She also introduced the idea of using cardboard boxes as a sled.  She allowed the students to create their own unique designs.  It was great fun!

This week was busy with marbles, cars, and puppet shows.  We created marbles out of water, paint, and balloons.  We let the balloons freeze outside and then opened them up.  The frozen ice marbles are beautiful and interesting.  The paint lines inside of the ice create a unique feature in the ice.  We raced them down the slide.  Carried them around in buckets.  We will see what else we can do with them next week.

Happy 5th Birthday Walker and Cadence!

We had a surprise visit from Huck Dyer (Jemima's brother).  He is in the second grade and has written and illustrated a series of books.  He read to students in the library as well as at morning meeting.  It was a wonderful experience for him to share his work and also for our students to see that young people can complete amazing things.  We hope to hear the next book in the series soon.

Happy Half Birthday to Maggie Berkenfield

This week we completed a mini-project on snow sculpting.  The students were interested in igloos the last few weeks and started building one in the play yard.  There were multiple jobs necessary for building the igloo.  First, Tucker would dig giant pieces of snow out of the ground.  Next Rudi, Zane, and Walker would carry large pieces of snow over to the building site. Next Nico was directing other students where to put the blocks of snow as he dug a center hole.  Cora and Nick filled in the spaces between the snow blocks to create a wonderful space. We tried to continue work on the igloo but ran into structural questions. This construction continued for nearly a week with other students working in different jobs along side the leaders of the project.  We thought we would go see the snow sculptures to learn more about building with snow.  We took the students to see the snow sculptures in Driggs on Monday. Our group worked hard to build another igloo in the community build section of the snowscapes.  Again, it was tricky to build the top and we were short on time.  When we returned from the trip, we noticed that the igloo in the yard had crumbled.  I am not sure if the students will build the igloo again or start on a new sculpture. 

Learning takes place in all levels of Teton Valley Community School.  We spoke with students prior to Winter Break about finishing our fire project.  At that point they were very clear that they were not finished with the helicopter or the fire project.  Chris and I went along with the students wishes. When we returned we have tried to re-engage the students with the project and have been successful to a point.  However, it is pretty clear the students are finished with this project because they are moving on to other topics.  We will be dismantling the helicopter and also providing the student with opportunities to reflect on his or her work on the project.  This will look like a written document that will contain photos and text about how your student was involved and what academic importance the project held for him or her.  We will have a space for the student to reflect and write his or her thoughts about the project.  Once finished, we will place the document in the child's portfolio.  Chris and I will be creating documentation of the entire project for our classroom.  We will invite you to a project night where we can share our thoughts about the project with parents.

We will determine our new project by observing the students to find areas of interest.  One area of interest has been puppets and puppet shows.  The other area of interest is the building of a igloo.  Since we are interested in sculpting things out of snow we will be taking students to see the ice sculptures in Driggs on Monday January 20, at 10:00 am.

This week was about remembering what preschool is all about.  We prepared the classroom to allow the students to get reacquainted with the classroom and the routine after spending two weeks away from school. 

Chris and I covered the loft space with dark fabric to see what the students would do with the space. We observed the rest of the week and the students have used the space as a wolf den, a dark room, a puppet theater, and a guinea pig home.

Jemima Dyer performed a puppet show she had written at school and at home.  She and her brother Huck performed in front of the preschool class.  This sparked a great interest in puppet shows.  We found the puppets in the storage shed and the students started creating stories.  We will see where this leads.  Thanks Jemima for your inspiring show! We took the opportunity to continue our discussion on non-fiction and fiction stories.  Jemima describes her script as fiction.

We had a wonderful week sharing the spirit of the holiday season.  We had a creative and joyous concert where our students demonstrated some of the knowledge they have learned through out our fire project.  We enjoyed making a new version of a traditional Christmas Carole.  Thank you to all who made the night a wonderful experience for the Grey Wolves. 

We finished the week with a Holiday party shared between the two pre-k classrooms.  It was exciting and interesting to see what is happening in the other classroom as well as share our progress on our classroom projects.  Thank you to the families that brought treats to share and spent the morning with us.  We enjoyed the day. We were able to share a story with the Mountain Lion Reading buddies (5th and 6th grade) and also our reading buddies.  Twice the stories in one day.  Lucky!

The last two weeks we have been reading various books by Jan Brett.  We have discussed how they are the same and how they are different.  The students noticed that there are small pictures on the right hand side of the book that gives a clue to what will happen next in the story.  We also noticed that there are small pictures on the left side of the page that reminds us about what happened before. We also noticed that Jan Brett uses many of the same animals in the story and the illustrations are very similar.

Here are the books we have read by Jan Brett

The Mitten

The Hat

Trouble with Trolls

Home for Christmas

Daisy Comes Home

Gingerbread Baby

The Three Snowbears

We have had a busy yet successful week. 

• We have practiced the necessary skills of problem solving and critical thinking with our helicopter construction. 
• We learned about bees, honeycomb, beeswax, and honey with Emily.
• We have braved the frigid cold to run, jump, and sled.
• We have used real tools in a safe manner to build a sturdy control panel.
• We have enjoyed our time with our reading buddies.
• We have created a unique version of our song for the Holiday Concert.

Please take a look at the project area and farm and garden for further information. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

We had a wonderful day in our Pj's and enjoyed our pancakes!  Thank you to Rachel Kirchner for helping us prepare for the party.  Thank you to all the parents that brought ingredients and snacks for our special morning.  There will be no school from November 25 through 29th so please enjoy the break and safe travels to all that may be spending the holiday away from home.

We shared as special morning meeting with both preschool classrooms.  Each student had the opportunity to share what they were thankful for this Thanksgiving.

Grey Wolves & Mountain Lions, Thanksgiving 2013

What are the Grey Wolves thankful for?

Bode: “My bed”

Nick: "Thanksgiving Dinner"

Cadence: “My mom”

Braden: “The classroom”

Zane: “A book”

Maggie: “My fish, my dog, my cat, my brother Sam’s lizard”

Tucker: “My family and my toys”

Cora K: “My family”

Jemima: “Pancakes, parties and pajamas!”

Fiona: “My momma”

Zach: "My Mommmy"

Rudi:  "I am thankful for giving joy"

Bonnie: “Hannah, Cora, and all of my friends”

Chris: "My beautiful family"

What are the Mountain Lions thankful for?

Leo: “My pretend doggies”

Cora M: “Hello kitty”

Owen: “For my birthday”

Rowan: “For the pie”

Connor: “For playing with my friends”

Sawyer: “For my dog”

Murphy: “For my birthday”

Marleigh: “All my friends”

Abigail: “Willa!”

Willa: “Leo, Bennett, Abigail, Maggie, Marleigh”

Cash: “Cupcakes!”

Henry: “Baby Bee”

Bennett: “New black lab puppy”

Erin: “The baby!”

Caitie: “Fun friends and huge hugs”

We had a busy week with helicopter plans and Farm and Garden with Emily.  We have shared stories, written letters, completed block towers, and created beautiful artwork.  We have negotiated social situations, made friendships stronger, and learned more about ourselves and others.

We opened the door between the two Pre-K classrooms on Friday.  We invited the students from the Mountain Lion class to our classroom to participate in some of the projects we are working on in the Grey Wolf classroom. The students moved between the two classrooms with ease and smiles.  Our classroom was working on the back of our Birthday Quit.  We were sewing the ribbon on the edges of the quilt so that it would look beautiful on our walls.  The Mountain Lions and Grey Wolves loved using the sewing machine.  The Grey Wolves enjoyed spending time with the kitchen and the light table in the Mountain Lions Classroom.

Happy Birthday to Rudi Brown!

Helicopters are hovering everywhere in our classroom!  Take a look in our project area to read more.

Happy Halloween!

We had a wonderful Halloween celebration.  We opened the door between the two classrooms and invited the students to explore each room.  Each classroom was set up with different Halloween activities and the students could move from room to room. The students had a wonderful time and were excited to see how the other class operates. We participated in a small costume parade for the main school students.  It was a bit snowy and wet but it did not dampen the holiday spirits.

We spent some time on Monday reflecting on our amazing trip to the Wolf and Grizzly Discovery Center.  We discussed what the students noticed about the animals and what they were doing.  We also asked the students to tell us what their favorite animal was at the Center.  The Grizzly Bears won!

We had an AMAZING time at the Grizzly and Wold Discovery Center today. It was a long trip but an incredible experience for all involved.  Thank you for your understanding with our late return.  Watching a bear break into a container is too exciting to leave.  We were able to see wolves, bears, bald eagles, and a great horned owl.  The wolves were amazingly large and beautiful.  The bears were incredible to watch.  They can lift heavy logs and move large rocks in order to find food.  One was even eating a pumpkin!  We were able to watch a research project in action.  A bear was testing a "bear proof container" and it was not bear proof.  The bear bounced on it until it cracked open so it an amazing demonstration. 

We made an impromptu stop in Ashton, Idaho at the Forest Service Ranger Station on the way to West Yellowstone.  Can you believe we met a forest fire fighter that showed us his gear and talked with us about fighting forest fires.  We cannot believe that he uses a helicopter to get from fire to fire instead of a fire truck.  He showed us what he carries in his backpack so that he is safe and prepared for a fire at any time.  (This important demonstration caused a bit of a delay in our schedule but was an incredible addition to our fire fighter project.) Ask  your students about lifting the backpack and testing how heavy it was.

We celebrated one of our favorite days of the year...Grandparent's Day.  Each student created a special story or letter for his or her Grandparents.  We then made a handprint flower vase on each story cover so that everyone will remember how small our preschoolers were when they wrote the story or letter.  The students were proud to share this special moment.  We used the opportunity to talk about stories and how stories are sometimes created from an author's special memory. We want to thank all of the Grandparents that participated in our wonderful day!  For those of you who wish you could have been here to share the day be on the lookout for your special story.  We will send home all the stories so your special student can share it with you at another time.  Please know that Grandparents are always welcome in our classroom at any time during our school year.

We are in full preparation for Grandparent's Day and the Harvest Festival.  We have a special project we are working on for Grandparent's Day.  The students are excited to share stories with Grandma and Grandpa. 

We had our first week of cold temperatures and snow.  The students are enjoying the changing weather outdoors.  Please remember to send your student with snow pants, gloves, boots, hat, and coat.  If the weather warms up again we can use raincoats and mud boots.  We play outside each day so please pack the weather appropriate clothing. 

Birthday Celebrations:

We will be celebrating birthdays in our classroom this year.  If your child has a birthday in the summer months we will celebrate a half-birthday during the school year.  We will make a special art project for each student and it will hang in our classroom for the remainder of the year.  This year we will be creating a quilt block for each student and it will hang on our classroom quilt.  We will read The Keeping Quilt by Patricia Pollaco at morning meeting to reinforce the importance of our classroom quilt as we add each beautiful square.  The students will sing Happy Birthday at morning meeting and the birthday boy or girl is invited to bring a snack to share with the class.  We will do our best to schedule a parent helper day near or on your child's birthday or half-birthday so that parents can be involved in the celebration as well.

Monday was our first birthday celebration.  Happy Birthday Fiona!