There have been many traditions that have been established within ECDC’s community over the years. One of the students’ favorites is Movie Night, where they get to dress in their pajamas after school hours, eat cookies and drink hot chocolate, then watch a few holiday movies with their peers.  For many years there was the tradition of Gingerbread Night for the Butterfly class (4/5K) where families who had created a model of their home, answered questions with their child related to state standards, then spent an evening decorating their gingerbread house, which would be on display in the hall for Movie Night.  This activity grew out of a study of our families, home and community. The downside was that it required a heavy load of food-based supplies which were thrown in the trash shortly after the gingerbread houses went home.

This year we created a new tradition.

As the teachers began to think and plan for the school year they decided that the Gingerbread House tradition could be altered to be more sustainable and meaningful.   As members of the College of Charleston we are encouraged to consider more sustainable ways of thinking.

“What a pleasant surprise to be hand-delivered fresh cookies made by ECDC friends! When I think about how much effort they put into making, decorating, and packaging the goodies, I am so impressed. Add to that their courage to use their “big kid” voices to present the cookies to adults they may not personally know. Wow…what a fantastic experience for the children. Thank you!”  – Courtney Howard, Acting Dean, EHHP

Last school year one of our parents shared his knowledge of running a sandwich shop.  We wanted to recreate this activity of having the children make something that could be shared with others.

The beginning of this year was spent getting to know students and families as we create our classroom community.  Students share their family page that goes into a book for everyone to read and enjoy.

We put student pictures on a large map of Charleston to see where we all live in the greater community, and this year we even included the workplaces of Moms and Dads.

These activities naturally led to exploring our immediate community (Memminger, College of Charleston) and this is how the idea of creating something to share with others was born.

We were also interested in keeping the tradition of families coming together in our classroom community, so we decided to decorate cookies.   We cooked pre-packaged cookies of a certain size that families decorated on “Cookie Night.”  The children in each family could enjoy one cookie the night of, then we packaged the rest to distribute.

The next day, the children walked around the community to deliver cookies to our neighbors.

“I was surprised by the confidence in particular children to approach a complete stranger as we delivered cookies.”  – Mary White, Master Teacher

The event was well received by all and we look forward to continuing this tradition in the future!

Stories and Storytelling have always been a part of my life. My grandparents, father, and uncle all delighted in telling stories and many of my childhood memories involve listening to family stories. I guess it is not surprising that stories have become integral to my classroom but getting here was a multi-year process.

When I first started teaching kindergarten in 2003 the children wrote/drew every day for 20 minutes in little books. I sometimes prompted them but usually left them free to choose their own topics. In 2006/2007 Dr. Emily Skinner volunteered during writing time and introduced me to the Writing Workshop approach developed at Teachers College. This provided me with some structure for writing time and has been a resource for ideas when I needed to help a child move forward.

In the fall of 2007 I participated with Dr. Mary Blake in some research looking at the connection between storytelling and story writing competency. As a part of the research I had to tell personal stories to my students at the beginning of journal writing once a week.  The children were encouraged to respond to these stories by sharing their own stories orally and in writing.

The following semester I introduced “writing workshop” with a focus on storytelling. During writing workshop I did not provide any prompts.  I encouraged children to write about events from their real lives (which I often modeled by telling personal stories).  It became clear to me that the children objected to being restricted to what adults considered real.  The children wanted to tell stories that were influenced by popular culture when I restricting story choices I was cutting some children out of the “story club.”  Since then I have intentionally allowed children to write fiction, non-fiction, or autobiographically; recognizing that they would have different levels of comfort with the scripts inherent in these different story forms.

As writing workshop has developed over the years I have created a fairly consistent script for starting it at the beginning of the year:

1. Allow for independent writing (30-minute block of time)
2. Share a story with very simple drawings and send the children off to write.
3. “Did you know I have a cat? His name is Mowgli and he is a scaredy cat. One day a man named Sam came to my house to fix my bathroom. Mowgli hid under my bed. Sam plugged in a very loud machine. Mowgli ran outside so fast I could barely see him. I thought he was lost. I looked under the house and in the bushes and under the car. I called, “Mowgli, Mowgli.” But no Mowgli. My cat…was lost.”
4. Show them that there are many different ways to write.

Students love sharing their stories with their teachers and especially with each other.  Feel free to ask your child to share what they wrote at any time.  We look forward to watching their stories grow and find ways to capture and share their voice with others!

-Mary J. White, Master Teacher Butterfly Classroom (4/5 year olds)