K class in co-op

[3girls4me]

Hi ladies,

We attend a mix between a co-op and a tutorial one day a week. :)

One of my children is in the kindergarten class. We are trying to brainstorm ideas for activities. The teacher is a young single woman who is in graduate school, so she does not have time to come up with fabulous ideas and create everything herself. We need open and go, ready-made things. We don't want anything that has to do with phonics or reading. There are some children in the class that read fluently and others that don't even know their letters. So were thinking more science and history/patriotic things. Any suggestions?

Thanks

Poppy

[eternallytired]

If you're looking for open-and-go, have you checked out your local teacher store?  They usually have a variety of topical books at various age levels.  Books tend to include a mixture of copyable activities like mini-books to make, games to play, crafts to assemble, etc.  Something like this book (patriotic!) would be cute.  You would need to assemble your own materials, so these aren't 100% open and go...but I think this is about as close as you can get.

[ByGrace3]

I think the Memoria Press K Enrichment would make great material for a co-op!

[duckens]

Disclaimer: our K-1 class is 2 hours long, once a week).

Our coop K-1 class begins with a craft as the children arrive.

During the class, Weather Bear or Weather Frog are dressed by one of the kids.

The calendar is discussed (days of the week, months of the year, what is today's date).

The teacher has the children guess what shape or item to add to the calendar to continue the pattern.  She has had some very complicated patterns by the end of the year:
 

Tooth fairy: the child puts on the wings (if they want) and brings the basket of toothbrushes and quarters.  Your first lost tooth earns you a toothbrush.  All subsequent teeth earn a quarter.  If you haven't lost a tooth by the end of the year, you get a toothbrush at the end of the year.

Foreign Language:: One year, the kids learned how to say hello in several languages.  They had a hello song that they used this with.  The second year, they learned a little Spanish.

Read a story.

And the kids would play outside if the weather allowed.

Show and tell: Every kid would get a chance to bring 3 things for show and tell.  Because the class only met once a week. one kid would have to wait until the end of the school year for his/her chance.

The teacher has about 6 rotating jobs, and everyone will get a chance to do each of these jobs at least once every year:
--show and tell
--tooth fairy
--weather checker
--weather bear or frog dresser
--line leader
--pattern person

 

 

[cintinative]

this doesn't fit into the subject categories you mentioned, but I think this is a great age to start introducing skip counting songs.  =)  Also maybe some matching games for science would be fun.