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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This week in math we engaged with the Albert Mouse Math series. Each day, we read a new book in the series and practiced the skill of the book. On Monday, in Albert Adds Up, students practiced adding and subtracting along with Albert. We used manipulatives to help us practice one-one correspondence as well as adding objects to a group and taking them away to subtract. In Albert is Not Scared, students used their bodies to practice learning directions (left, right, above, below, across, through, etc.) as we followed Albert's journey through an "amousement" park. In Count Off, Squeak Scouts!, students practiced sequencing numbers from lowest to highest, and highest to lowest. And in Where's Albert?, students practiced skip counting by 2s, 5s, and 10s.
Kindergartners have been practicing skip counting -- counting by 2s, 5s, 10s, and more -- in math recently. This week, we read a couple of books to help us practice skip counting (pictured above), and we made skip counting kites for 2s and 5s!
In our ocean explorations, this week we learned about what a food chain is and what this looks like in the ocean. Students were introduced to the idea through the book "Hey Diddle Diddle: A Food Chain Tale", which is a fun sing-songy rhyming book. After this, students sorted pictures of the animals in the book to recall how the food chain was organized, and how energy moves from one being to another. As we read more books and made our own food chains, we discussed how all food chains begin with plants, who get their energy from the sun!
This week, our ELA practices were pretty all over the map. With Hali's birthday, we used some of our morning practice to make birthday cards! This was a great way to authentically practice writing. Students worked to sound out the letters in the messages they wanted to write and this gave us an opportunity to keep practicing our handwriting skills. In addition to these activities, students began working in Explode the Code books to practice spelling and reading CVC words. We also focused our attention to words in the U family (-un, -ub, -ut, etc.) and practiced substituting beginning sounds: "what happens if I replace the 'S' in 'sub' with a 'T'?"
Kindergartners have been exploring the theme of OCEAN through a variety of lenses -- books, songs, dances, artwork, games, and more. This week we focused on one animal that fascinates us all.. sharks! We read SO many cool books on sharks (thanks, Clara!), made some shark-inspired artwork, and looked closely at shark teeth, trying to identify which teeth went to which sharks!
This week we began studying the ocean in our project time! We read lots of books about what animals live in the ocean and how the ocean has different layers. Studying the ocean has complemeneted our measuring practices in math, since we can think about how deep the ocean is, or how big animals are, like the blue whale! This week we explored oceanic layers through a science experiment which created a model of ocean layers, and we made some art work about different ocean animals!
Every morning we have a quick ELA practice before our brain break. This week, we focused on relating letters to our ocean studies, like in the book: The Sea Mammal Alphabet Book (thanks, Hali for this special read aloud!). We also focused on "sky writing" letters from top to bottom. This is when we stand up and use our arms to make BIG letters in the air. We then moved from sky writing to practicing fine motor skills and writing them using our whiteboards. With each letter, we thought of words that begin with the sound! Lastly, we started a new style of guided reading as a class. Our first book exemplified how patterns in a text can help us beginning readers practice reading! We read the book together, then practiced "whisper reading" on our own.
This week in math we began studying measurement. We thought about all of the things we could measure -- length, weight, age, time, height, even temperature! We read lots of books on measurement and practiced some short measuring activities in the classroom, like using paper clips or cubes to measure ocean animals, and sorting/comparing ocean animals from biggest to smallest!
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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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