Hi JK Families!
We have missed a few of our friends who were not feeling well or were away still or recovering from holiday activities. I missed them all so much over break. I loved hearing all of their stories about their adventures. Welcome to Keshav, our amazing new student! We are loving having you in JK!
Congratulations to Jessica Nguyen and James Rondinelli on their birth of baby Anne/Annie. The class has all had parenting lessons this week as Claire shared her baby knowledge, stories and excitement! We are incredibly happy for you all.
We are learning about penguins and their habitat. This is one of my favorite themes to teach, and the kids have so much fun with all of the activities. They looked at pictures of penguin parents feeding their babies by regurgitating in their mouths and many other behaviors of these incredibly adaptive birds. Penguins are one of the only living beings that can withstand the incredible weather of the Arctic. We learned that penguin females go to sea for two months while the males stay in the sometimes -120 degrees below zero to care for the penguin eggs. Penguins can walk faster than humans and love to slide on their tummies for faster movement across the snow and ice. They also swallow fish whole and don't chew their food. Penguins are black on their backs to blend in with the ocean from skuas that are flying above, and are white on their bellies to appear as rays of sun when predators are swimming beneath them in the ocean.
Fine Motor:
We made tear art penguins and labeled their parts, and added eyes and beaks. Tearing is much more difficult for early childhood because of the simultaneous push and pull dexterity required. It's an amazing fine motor activity to help those small hand muscles. Their pictures are displayed outside our classroom so take a look when you are here.
The children completed January calendar scenes with snowflakes, snowpeople, and evergreen trees, and then decorated and labeled their pictures. Some wrote stories about the different items.
Social Emotional:
It is kindness month for us and we are exploring a kindness activitiy each day. So far the JK bunnies have been working on appreciating friends, and complimenting. We even went on a "compliment hunt" around the school where we found school faculty to compliment. Today we discussed opening doors for a friend. Please share any new activities you see that might be a result of our conversations. They are all so sweet and love watching them take care of each other with kindness!
Music: The bunnies enjoyed learning song that accompanied sign language actions, and interpretive dancing with scarves.
French: Aligning with our penguin theme, Madame has been teaching us words for polar animals. The bunnies have been working on discribing the animals using their prior knowlege of numbers and colors.
Art: We started a 2 week long project this week that began with painting. We cant wait to see what Ms. Lorenz has for us next week!
Math & Science:
We learned about many different kinds of penguins and studied their habitats and read in groups many penguin books. We watched both non-fiction and fiction videos about these adorable flightless birds. We studied the penguin anatomy and learned about their adaptions to their icy and cold environment with their extra sharp claws and webbed feat, and layers of blubber, as well as their rudder like wings or flippers.
We measured each student and compared their height to that of an Emperor Penguin. Most of the class was the same size or shorter, but a couple were taller. We made a bar chart and each student took turns comparing the different heights. We will save our data ro measure ourselves again at the end of the schoool year.
We practiced trying to walk with "penguin eggs" on our feet, and played penguin memory, math and learning games. More penguin fun next week!
Have a lovely weekend!
Ms. Massey
