We have been talking about Winter and all that the season brings.
Literacy:
We are all working on popcorn words (sight words) as we spell them out in our morning meeting and pop up together! It's such a fun way to learn the words that are not easy to sound out and really have to be memorized. We play games to jump from sight word to sight word. We talk a lot about the characters in a story and anticipate their actions or have the children talk about what they would do if they were in the story. This all helps with reading comprehension. The simple act of them turning pages and taking a picture walk as they read to themselves or make up stories or retell stories is all great for literacy and promotes comprehension.
We are working on writing stories about Pete the Cat, with a beginning, middle and end and illustrating them. The children are using inventive spelling and dictating as we help them create imaginative tales!
Math & Science:
The children are working on story problems and worked through addition and subtraction problems with Pete the Cat as we read, solved, and manipulated buttons to learn the symbols (+ and -) and their meaning. This is typically a Kindergarten skill but we introduce it in JK to begin more critical thinking about numbers and the basic concepts of grouping and counting, more and less. For the children who are ready for more advanced problems we introduce them to the complex multi step story problems and walk them through different scenarios. They guide the level to which they are capable and are always stretched as we want them to realize they are often capable of much more than they imagine. We created complex patterns (and by complex I mean ABCDEE, ABCDEE, etc. patterns) with buttons and grouped them by color, shape and size. We talked about opposites and over, under and beside. I love hearing their answers to some of my opposite questions. "What's the opposite of bad?" Kids: "Candy!" Some are beginning to understand that there are grey areas and everything is not black and white. These math exercises promote higher level thinking and are multi-disciplinary in that they cover multiple objectives to learning.
We talked about all things Winter and grouped things according to the season to which it belongs. I know it sometimes doesn't make sense to four and five year olds that they cant wear their bathing suit to school in the winter, or their favorite sandals, so it helps to discuss the different ways clothing helps us play, and be comfortable, in each season. We dressed paper children cut outs in appropriate weather and grouped different activities according to the season.
Fine Art:
The children completed the letter Jj stamping and tracing and writing, and filled out their letter Jj cut outs with upper and lower case letters. We talked about the j being similar to i in that we don't ever let the dot above touch the letter below and how it's always a dot and not a circle. We decorated mittens after reading the story, "The Mitten" and The Missing Mitten Mystery". We created patterns and talked about warm and cool colors, and symmetry in a pair of mittens-one to the other. The children also crated snowmen letter signs spelling out their names.
Social Emotional:
We talked about what giving is and how we can give to others. Giving can be gifts or the gift of your time or your kindness, or even something as simple as a smile.
The children have been loving playing the game Sequence. It's a game of recognition, strategy and counting, as they socialize with friends and learn about being a good sport and congratulating a friend when they win, or being a good winner.
We jumped and counted and got our wiggles out lots this week. I lead the children through brief moments of meditation as we practice "Calm Classroom" strategies. We used a triangle at the beginning of our morning meeting as a way to bring us together and focus on our JK community of learning. Dr. Glader also used a chime to center us all when she visited. Self awareness and self soothing strategies are beneficial to learn at this early age as they will carry these children through to adulthood. We use visualization as we go on bear hunts and all sorts of imaginary adventures.
Dr. Glader came to visit and read us a book about getting frustrated and different ways we can help ourselves when we get angry. She is truly the child whisperer.
If you are still reading this, you earned a gold star and I hope you have a wonderful weekend!
Ms. Massey
