Hoppin' Into Junior Kindergarten!

Hi JK Parents and Friends!

Our fabulous art teacher, Mr. Matt, has many of his paintings in shows currently. One of the shows is opening this weekend in Evanston so wanted to provide the details. Please take a look and support his amazing work!

Mr. Matt Braun Art Show:

1100 Florence Gallery for the month of May. Due to COVID, all the work will be displayed in the front windows of the gallery and be able to be viewed from the sidewalk.

The paintings and drawings in this show are inspired by my experiences living, teaching and traveling in India, Nepal and Myanmar. I will be donating 20% of all proceeds from the sales of these paintings to Mutual Aid Myanmar. https://www.mutualaidmyanmar.org/

And a few from his Wisconsin Show...2020 Portrayals

We have been learning about the parts of an ant, the different kinds of ants, and the benefits they provide by aerating the ground and transplanting seeds, as well as taking care of decay from animals and plants.

The children drew ant nests, cut and pasted a Queen Ant into their next, as well as a worker ant, and labeled all of the parts of an ant along with the life cycle stages.

We played lady bug Math games using the spots to add, subtract and group by 5's and 10's.

Literacy:

We are working on stories for Mother's Day! We talked about descriptive words to make stories more interesting. We practiced composing stories as a group and adding details about the characters.

We learned our right and left hand, by knowing that our left hand makes an L when looking at our fingernails and our right hand makes a backwards L. Ask them to show you their left or right hand and the L it makes!

Social/Emotional:

The JKers practiced their listening skills by completing a listening exercise. We are practicing listening to friends and teachers by pausing for three seconds when someone finishes speaking to allow them to finish their thought. We are noticing the color of our friends' eyes, as that is a great way to be sure we are looking at someone while they are speaking. We read a book about manners and are talking about everything from playdate etiquette to manners while yawning and eating. It's funny to them to hear about manners from all over the world.

Have a lovely weekend!

Ms. Massey

Math and Science:

We began our study of ants this week, and found plenty when we completed a Spring Scavenger Hunt around the school and park grounds. We dug for worms but didn't find any. Mr. Ziggy and Mr. Matt built Pre-K-1st Grade raised beds on the playground, so we will be able to garden outside! We transplanted some of our bean plants and will be planting some other things to fill our garden. We researched ways to keep rabbits from eating our garden, and are using talcum powder to sprinkle on the leaves to deter them. Rabbits tend to eat from the top down so sprinkling the leaves has been suggested by many on-line resources. Cayenne pepper has worked for some but it didn't ever work for me and the squirrels eating my flowers/roots.

We practiced completing complex patterns as well as addition with ants they could see and hidden ants in a basket.

We finished Earth Day planets and hung them in our windows.

Coding...we learned to turn right or left and count steps to code our way through the classroom to find certain objects. There are many fun coding games online to try as they grow in their abilities to code! We love to code in JK!

Thank you to another fabulous Mystery Reader! Alannah was super excited to see her mommy!

Jayce has been working on his US Map, including Hawaii and Alaska. He finished painting it and got to take it home this week. There are times when we are all working on different projects and interests...one of the many things that makes Roycemore great.

"I made a mistake!" And that is what JK is all about! Amazing listeners make mistakes too. It's all okay! Like Pete the Cat teaches us....just keep on keepin' on. Nice work, Jayden!