It's kind of insane how in just 24 hours everything can change.
One moment my colleagues and I were just beginning the discussion of preparing for distance learning for a few of our students who decided to take precautions and stay home...to...school being shut down until further notice.
Then all of California began to slowly shut down...
...then social distancing turned into shelter-in-place.
Thankfully everyone I personally know, and my own family, are safe from Covid-19. I respect the precautions that our state (and country for that matter) is taking during such an uncertain time. The most all of us can do is to stay indoors for the protection of others. However, being home for the first week with my 4 year old and husband (who is also working from home) has proven interesting.
Nonetheless, my kindergarten team and I have been working tirelessly to create distance learning activities and lessons for our students. It's been a challenging task at times but not because of us putting together our plans, but the roadblocks that come from higher up. However, that's a different conversation for a different day.
Today, I wanted to quickly share out a new workbook that I created for my students while we're away from the classroom. We launched our seeds/plants unit and knowing I (and my students) wouldn't have access to a lot, I created a workbook that includes the activities that we would have covered in class. It's easy prep for parents as the only thing they need is to be able to print and have WiFi to access videos.
Incorporating Seesaw
This week our team expanded the use of Seesaw for students to use to interact more and to share their learning while at home. We informed our student families that not only would we email their weekly lessons and activities, but that additional activities will be uploaded to Seesaw for them to complete. This is a great option for the social interaction, but also for those parents who don't have a printer at home.Seesaw already has an extensive collection of assignments for all grades and creating my own is a breeze. It's been fun to see how my students are engaging with me and the work and I look forward to doing more with them.
For our seed/plant workbook, I periodically upload a page for students to respond to. For example, the first activity is labeling and coloring the part of a seed. I uploaded this page from their workbook and allowed them to snap a photo of their workbook or have the option to complete this part via Seesaw by filling in the blanks right there. I've enjoyed, so far, the capabilities of Seesaw!
Utilizing YouTube
By no means am I a YouTuber or even want to be. I don't like being recorded and I certainly don't like videos of myself. However, in times like these where distance learning is thrown into my lap I have to do what I can to be there for my kids. So, I created a YouTube channel! It's nothing fancy...but it's a platform where I can share my read alouds that I've created using Shadow Puppet.After I create my videos using the app, I simply upload them to YouTube and share the link in my lesson plans to parents. Again, nothing fancy or impressive...just simple videos for the stories I'm using as a part of my seeds/plants unit. You can check a few of them out here:
Guess That Seed!
To make this Seeds & Plants unit a little more fun, I've been rummaging around my kitchen to find different seeds to share with my students on Seesaw. I then upload the pictures as an 'activity' for my students to guess the kind of seed it is. They've come up with so many different, and unique, answers! I like getting a little tougher each week first beginning with the big seed then this last week I found these tiny seeds.
Here's a peek at what I've sent. Can you guess what they are?
The Spring Collection
This seeds/plants workbook is one of a few resources I'm building as a part of my Spring Collection. We began with our unit on weather before jumping into plants and life cycles. I found this to be super helpful in building their schema since weather also operates in a cycle. It also gave my French colleagues time to introduce seeds/plants to them as we purposefully staggered our lessons to complement each other.
