KINDERGARTEN GRADUATION

After three years with them, our little kids are going to primary :'( , so we prepared a lovely graduation to celebrate our kindergarten time together:

        some of the kids were the presenters...
  other performed: "la Ratita Presumida"play  in spanish
 and others read The Paper Bag Princess in English


     

They have grown so creative, so imaginative, so collaborative and happy that i can't be more proud of them.



Next year we are back in the three year olds classroom, looking forward to start with new kids, but now it is time to enjoy the holidays, with the family and friends and it is also time to read a lot and study a lot: We need to be prepared for 25 kiddos in each class

VISITING OLITE'S CASTLE

 The 13th of May we visitedThe Royal Palace of Olite, one of the coolest places in Navarre which luckily is pretty close to our town.
They gave us knights vests and told us lots of stories from medieval times that happened inside the Castles walls.
 We visited the different rooms: this one is the bat's room.
 we went up the spiral stairs.
 we saw the Queen's Room
 also the King's
 The Gallery
the Queen's garden that used to have lots of animals including lions!
 The dicovered "The egg" which is a rock that was used to store food, it was like a fridge from medieval times.

They gave us pretty cool medieval stamps
 We explored the towers in little groups with the teachers.




MEDIEVAL MATH: LOGIC GAMES

Castle Logix are fantastic, kids loved them. They are challenging. The books have different levels which makes it fantastic to fit all the kids needs:




MEDIEVAL ART: BLOCKS AND PAPER


These kids are amazing, the way they see things, the way they create, they impress me more and more each day. What i am still trying to understand is if they are so happy playing with blocks in class why do they continue playing with computers, phones and tablets at home? Anyways....

Here you have two castles:

 paper shields and castles,
   a medieval town, two ladies in crowns and paper shield and armour
 a princess cape, knights in armour and helmet with their swords.



a closer look at the helmet
and a castle
 more helmets and armours plus an enourmous sword.

DRAMATIC PLAY: IN THE CASTLE





BREAKING STEREOTYPES THROUGH PRINCESSES STORIES.



One of the main motivations behind this project, was to confront the kids to their preconceived ideas about princesses and princes, about boys and girls. Through many traditional tales and stories kids, specially girls, are introduced to the concepts or women being helpless beings that need to be saved by knights or princes.  At times, these concepts are extrapolated to the perceptions of men and women in general. This does not mean that traditional tales are bad, but we need to analyze them carefully with our kids.

 When we asked the kids about what a prince or a princess is like these were some of the answers:

We read books about different types of princesses...




But our favorite one was  The Paper bag princess
During the book appreciation week we created a Kamishibai and we told the story to kids all over the school from 3 year olds to 5th graders to show them that princesses can also be brave


 

MEDIEVAL TIMES PROJECT part 2: CREATING THE CASTLE


From the brilliant Mrs. Myers we got the idea and the steps into creating our own castle, check her out: http://mrsmyerskindergarten.blogspot.com.au/2014/01/investigating-castles-part-1.html 

So this is how we did it:


INVESTIGATING CASTLES IN BOOKS:
Using the books the kids brought, we started investigating the parts of a castle so we could turn our
class into one. We paid special attention to the windows, the doors, the lights and the entrance
:



TIME TO CREATE A CASTLE:
After deciding on our castle’s windows, door, drawbridge and lights. It was time to set the groups, what we were going to do and how.
We started by creating torches because we discovered that in medieval times there was no electricity so they used fire in torches and fireplaces
We needed cardboard and plastic papers (yellow, orange and red) to simulate the fire.

 


Then we decided the type of windows we wanted in the castle and we built them with cardboard:


then we made the drawbridge chains:

I assembled the porculis:


we painted the drawbridge:



The teachers placed paper on the outside of the classroom for the kids to decorate using a big sponge:

After working with the story of the Paper Bag Princess the kids decided to place Elizabeth and the Dragon on the door: 


 we also made flags to decorate the inside:




and look at our castle kitchen, we had a fantastic time playing there:
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