Happy Sunday! Here is what Kindergarten did the past two weeks!
Last week we did a STEAM activity as part of our morning work where students had to create a bridge out of blocks that could actually hold weight. Students worked together and had to make sure the structure was actually a bridge — that something could go underneath it as well! It was fun to see them try and get more elaborate with their bridges as they continued to make them. This activity connected to a story we read later that day about architects and engineers working together to build a skyscraper. Students loved the story On The Construction Site because it has special pages that reveal hidden pictures when you shine a light through the page!
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Last week students read several stories, including My Lucky Day by Keiko Kasza which they did a class book report on! Students loved how silly this story was. Mrs. Michael, our school principal was a special guest in our room last week and she read Uncle Andy’s by James Warhola which is a true story written by Andy Warhol’s nephew about what it was like to visit his famous uncle.
We have been working on nouns and remembering that they can be people, places, or things (including animals). Last week we did this noun sorting page together. We also are still continuing practicing building words on our own by isolating sounds we hear in a word.
In Math we reviewed some of our addition and subtraction concepts with some fun activities! We used mini erasers as counters to help write number sentences in small groups.
We also practiced using unifix cubes as a whole class!
Last week we read the story Puppy Mind by Andrew Jordan Nance, which is all about calming your “puppy mind” and staying focused. We have been practicing our deep breathing to help us re-center when we start to lose focus. The book also discusses who we need to speak kindly to ourselves and be gentle with ourselves when we are having trouble focusing. To hit this point home, we sat in a circle and practiced complimenting ourselves and the person to our left. Students did a wonderful job finding genuine things to compliment about each other!
Last week we celebrated Reid’s birthday!! Woohoo! Jeremiah’s birthday was also celebrated on Monday, as his birthday was over the weekend. So many six year olds now!
This week in Math, we read a book called 10 For Dinner and used it to practice addition. We are still continuing working on higher numbers, and we also have started working on concepts of time. We started with reviewing vocabulary like “first, next, and last” and the parts of the calendar. We learned about the terms A.M. and P.M. and did a sorting activity of things we do in the morning and night. Next week we will start getting familiar with the different kind of clocks and do some introductions on how to read a clock.
In Reading this week we are still building words and writing sentences. Somehow we got into a conversation about service dogs, so I decided to read one of my favorite books to Kindergarten. Madeline Finn and the Library Dog is about a girl who builds her confidence with her reading skills by reading to a special dog at the library. We then wrote a sentence in our journals about the story! Students are still practicing remembering those sentence writing rules and becoming more confident with their writing.
In Social Studies we have started learning about money and community as part of a Junior Achievement program. We started learning about choices and how our choices impact everything we do. Students have a journal that we will be using for the next couple of weeks for this!
Friday was a big day in Kindergarten as we had our pajama day and “teddy bear party” as they decided to call it! LOL! We spent most of the morning doing a STEAM activity. As their morning work, students had to build a house for their stuffy that they brought in. Students had a hard time making a house the appropriate size for their stuffies, and remembering that houses have a roof and four walls.
We then did a speaking and listening activity where students had to do a show and tell with their stuffies! They have to practice looking at the class and speaking loudly, and then facing the person speaking and listening quietly when others share.
To continue our STEAM activity, we gave building houses another shot! This time, we used a strategy that we learned about from the book we read last week and made blueprints of what we would want the houses to look like.
Then we made a visit to the Maker Space that has recently been created in our school and used the materials there to build our houses using our blueprints as a reference! It was so interesting to see the different strategies students used. This was a fun way to be introduced to the Maker Space, which we will be using at least one more time before the end of the school year!
In the afternoon, we wrote in our journals about our stuffies and even spent time reading some leveled books to our stuffies. It was so cute and such good practice for reading out loud, just like Madeline Finn practiced reading to the dog in that story!
As I told you all in an email earlier this week, we have decided that graduation will be at 10 am on June 7th (a Monday). I will give you more details about it in the next coming weeks!
As always, let me know if you have any questions or things you want to know!
Love,
Ms. V 🙂