Tools Kindergarten visit: Vocabulary voyage to Ancient Egypt

Interested in learning more about what’s happening in Tools classrooms? Julianna Colonna, our featured kindergarten teacher for the month of November, posts photos and shares activities from her classroom at Ravine Drive Elementary School in Matawan, New Jersey. One of her favorite things about teaching kindergarten in a Tools classroom is watching her children’s “excitement build each day” as they dive deeper into the stories that frame their play themes.

Pyramids, scepters, mummies...oh my!

Today, Ms. Colonna’s kindergarteners travel back to Ancient Egyptian times, where they encounter new words, like mummy, pyramid, scepter, and hieroglyph. Classmates, working in teams, identify these words on playing cards, recognizing and reading them more quickly and accurately with each round.

In another activity, children, working in pairs, “call” each other to deliver secret, coded messages. The only way for their partner to know what the call is about is to decipher the code (hint: it has to do with the letters that make up the word!) and find the corresponding image.

More than words

While recognizing what new words look and sound like is one component of vocabulary development, understanding the meaning of the words is as important. Ms. Colonna’s kindergarteners show that they can do both. Below, children line up like mummies, hands tight at their sides, preparing to walk—or rather, shuffle on straight legs!—through the hallway.

Close your eyes and be transported to the desert ecosystem of Ancient Egypt!  

Thank you to Ms. Colonna and her class for sharing the lexicon of Ancient Egypt with us. To see more from Ms. Colonna, and other Tools Kindergarten Teachers of the Month, check out recent posts here.