This week has been full of cycles, as we study the life cycle of plants and frogs! The children are able to comprehend so much more when the topic is relatable to them and their own lives. Making connections between their experiences with plants, flowers, seeds, gardens, tadpoles or fish and frogs, insects etc. builds meaningful foundations for understanding.
Science and Math: We continue to discuss cycles of both plants and animals, and are studying the life cycle of the frog in depth. The children have documented and illustrated their favorite parts of the life-cycle, along with seeing frogs in their natural habitats in our Scholastic film. Most of them chose the tadpole as their favorite. They thought it was hilarious that frog's tails fall off when they become adults. I asked them if they use to have a tail when they were little, and one response was, "I never had a tail, but my brother did!" We played Bingo Math with number cards, working on the number recognition and one to one correspondence of the single and double digit numbers.
Fine Motor/Art/Science: The children are coloring, cutting and sequencing plant life cycle collages. They are happy to explain the different steps to you, so be sure to ask them how a seed becomes a plant! We have also been making our own frog pond, and choosing patterns to decorate our frogs based on our favorite frog. Most of the children decided they wanted their frogs to be poisonous.
Language/Literacy/Reading: The children continue to work on sight word recognition and writing. We play many games as a whole group as we introduce more words from our list of 100 most common frequently used words. Asking the students to point out sight words as they are reading to you is a great way to increase their recognition and understanding.
We used the rhythm sticks to practice different tempos to music, making soft, loud, fast and slow beats. I modeled different rhythms and they echoed them with incredible accuracy! Musical instruments were one of my favorite elements of JK, and continue to be a big hit for this class! The gift of music is one of the gifts you give to children that they carry with them for a lifetime. I played cello for 14 years, and know how much enjoyment it brought me (after I got over having to carry that monstrous thing everywhere!)
Show and Tell continues to be another favorite time of the week, and each child's ability to lead a class discussion while calling on friends has improved steadily throughout the year. Their confidence and leadership skills are super for four and five year olds!
Enjoy the long weekend!
Mrs. Massey
