Ballet in kindergarten

Our class has had the privilege and pleasure of working with the Oregon Ballet Theatre over the past few weeks - they have sent us a lovely teacher, Miss Hannah, who has given six classes to each of the kindergarten and first grade classrooms.  Her lessons have been built around the story of "The Old Man and the Mountain", and the students have learned bits and pieces in each lesson.  For one of the final lessons, she had them perform it, with half the students being performers and half being the audience.  The kids had a pretty great time with it all.

Here's the links: http://youtu.be/KWcT8jCN_9c  and http://youtu.be/OeKYQLPNqF0

"The Little Engine that Cood"

Just some kindergarten writing, because I think it's really quite dear.

Click here to see

Blast from the past

I had the most "guhBUH" moment today at the end of the day, and it wasn't even with one of my current kindergartners...

One of my former students, now a 3rd grader, came to pick up his kindergarten sister.  He almost made it out the door, and then spun around.

"Oh, Mr. Graham!" he exclaimed.  "I almost forgot!  Tell your sister 'Happy Late Birthday!'  She had a birthday on the 17th!"

How did he know that my sister had a birthday a week ago....?  I haven't had this student for three years....

So I posed the question to him, and he had a totally reasonable answer:
"Well, my sister's birthday is the 16th, and my birthday is the 18th, and I remembered that you had a sister with a birthday in between."

Whoa.  I called my sister to tell her, and she clearly has a new favorite from among my former students.