Good afternoon JK friends and family!
Our class has been busy filling
"buckets" with acts of kindness, and received certificates during our
ceremony to celebrate this past week. Each child has been collecting
tickets in their envelope each time they filled a friend's bucket. They
decorated their certificates with stickers to signify the different ways they
were caring and thoughtful. I was so proud of the effort they showed in
finding ways to make others happy. We had a mini cotillion class where we
read Manners and discussed how using good manners is another way to be kind to
friends. We made cards for our amazing
kitchen staff, sang songs for them in our classroom. They were touched to be remembered on
Valentine’s Day by their favorite (so they tell us) children in the
school!
We had such a wonderful Valentine's Day party
and season, decorating mailboxes, writing about people we love, decorating
cookies and cupcakes, playing pin the heart on the Valentine, Valentine Bingo,
and learning about St. Valentine.
Language Arts, Science, Math and Fine Motor:
(Many of our activities, as usual, provide multimodal learning and
include multiple areas of study within each activity!)
Our librarian visited our classroom and taught a
lesson about volume. The children experimented at the sensory table with water
and containers to make comparisons and predictions. We read Room
for Ripley and multiple other books about friendship, manners, and
Valentine's Day stories, providing examples of how we can help each other and
become even better friends. We made fish
tanks with colorful tissue paper and filled them with our own Ripley from the
story. The children illustrated and wrote about their favorite characters,
focusing on a particular favorite scene. They used their knowledge of
letter sounds to provide the beginning and ending sounds of words, and worked
on adding the middle vowels to CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) words.
The children are beginning to recognize some of the blends and are
becoming more familiar with more popcorn words. The Bob Books and Reading
A-Z (Raz) Books continue to help us during our reading groups to advance in our
letter and word recognition, and become more fluid in reading practices.
Additional Math:
Along with learning about volume, we practiced
our numbers as we counted sweethearts and other Valentine themed manipulatives.
The children sorted, categorized, and summarized the items and then
answered questions about which was more, less, the most and the least.
They all enjoy writing numbers on the white
boards, and playing games with number finds. It's great practice to use
the calendar to work on the one to one correspondence and locate numbers and
then count different blocks to represent that number.
Building on our Dr. Seuss theme, and using Green
Eggs and Ham, we used a spatula to flip green (paper) eggs with different
numbers written on them, while sharing with our friends which number we were
flipping, into a bowl. They love playing games and sharing their knowledge
with friends.
Additional Language Arts:
Dr. Seuss has given us multiple ways to practice
our rhyming words. The children loved the story of the Lorax,,
and making their very own Lorax’s. We have also read There's a Wocket
in my Pocket, and I Can Read with my Eyes Shut! They
laughed at all of the lovable animals in Wocket in my Pocket, like
the Nink in the Sink and Zamp in the Lamp.
We all wanted to adopt these amazing characters! The enjoyable
singsong prose and easy and silly words make these books great predictable
stories to assist them with their confidence in reading.
We have new Dr. Seuss games and puzzle the
children are excited about. We will celebrate Dr. Seuss's birthday with a
culminating activity Friday including feasting on green eggs and ham (for those
who wish to try it-no ham for our vegetarians!) The children once again
filled the frog jar, so have earned another pajama party. We will include
this in our Friday celebration, so please have them wear their favorite pajamas
and come to school ready for lots of silly Dr. Seuss style fun!
Mrs. Massey
