Each morning the Kindergartners practice a variety of ELA and math skills/concepts. ELA usually follows a weekly schedule: Mondays and Tuesdays the Kindergartners work at their own pace in their Explode the Code books, on Wednesdays and Thursdays we practice Guided Reading, and on Fridays we play sight word games. This week in math, students developed their "April Math Journals" through engaging in addition and subtraction activities, comparing and counting numbers to 20, and illustrating story problems!
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This week we read "Mrs. Spitzer's Garden" and reflected on what we would like to have in our "dream" gardens. Students illustrated their ideal garden and practiced independently sounding out words to describe their drawing.
Kindergartners have started a spring gardening project which we will finish the year with. In this project, students will learn about the parts of a plant, natural life cycles, soil critters and soil health, and more. This week we began our garden-themed explorations by zooming in on the first stage of plant growth: SEEDS! Students collected and dissected maple seeds and kidney beans to find the 3 main parts of a seed: seed coat, embryo (or baby plant), and the food storage! We learned how roots are the first part of a plant to grow, and that a baby plant is called a seedling. Students also searched for seeds in common foods (lemons, strawberries, blueberries, and peppers) and compared the sizes, colors, and textures of each. We finished the week by planting grass seeds in decorated cups to make a crazy hair character that we will check on next week!
Our days in the Kindergarten classroom are non-stop. When we are not engaging in an instructional lesson or activity, students are constantly inventing and creating new games and crafts around the room and in the courtyard. Here are some highlights from this week, which show students experimenting with colors, ink, and paint, playing charades and jenga, tinkering with blocks and trains, playing "school", and making birthday cards for a classmate!
Every morning Kindergartners practice ELA skills to build their reading and writing. One warm up this week was the game "Where's that sound?" where students heard real and wacky words and tried to focus their hearing on where a particular sound was heard -- in the beginning, middle, or end of the word. For example, if focusing on the sound of "A" when listening to the wacky word "BAP", students would try to identify that the a sound landed in the middle of the word. Another warm up this week was a quick sight word practice for the words "was" and "out". When we're practicing sight words, students read, trace, write, build, and find the words. We also listen for the words in read alouds, practice writing the words through multi-sensory activities (like writing in shaving cream), and search for the words around the room.
Students spent time this week illustrating and writing about their favorite activities and signs of Spring. We use these journals as an opportunity to not only express our creativity and ideas, but to practice weekly sight words and ELA skills, such as sounding out words and forming our letters.
This week in ELA, we reviewed our vowel sounds and letters by playing guessing games. We also focused a lot on the act of blending individual letter sounds to read a word. With all children at different levels and abilities, we used "wacky" or made-up words to practice this skill. We went through words one letter at a time, first sounding out individual sounds, then figuring out what NEW sound was made when we blended them together. We discussed a lot about blending, and how we can blend other things, like when we bake a cake, make a smoothie, draw with crayons, or even add numbers together!
As we move into our final two months of the year, we will engage in a project focused on natural life cycles as the Earth comes back to life around us. This week, we read lots of books on signs of spring, discussed our favorite activities in the spring and summer time, and took nature walks to search for signs of spring in our community. We also zoomed in on one particular aspect of spring: tree buds and blossoms! As we walked around Summers-Knoll and County Farm Park, we looked for signs of trees waking up and *carefully* collected samples of different buds to compare and sort when we returned back to the classroom. In art, students took nature walks to find and sketch blossoming and budding trees and plants. Students also learned that you can count how old a tree is by counting the rings it has! The books above helped introduce students to key ideas and concepts we will explore in the coming weeks, such as how plants grow, parts of a plant, the role of sunlight in sustaining life, and more!
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About MichelleMichelle has been a part of the Summers-Knoll community since 2015. Before teaching Kindergarten, Michelle taught 3rd and 4th grade. Archives
May 2021
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