Good Afternoon JK Parents!
We were all happy to be back together after the long weekend! We talked about Martin Luther King Junior last week and the legacy and changes brought about by his lifetime of activism for social rights. We listened to his biography for kids and read books about his life. The children learned the opening of his most famous speech and took turns reciting, "I have a dream..." and then explained what he fought for. It was nice to reflect on what we learned and talk about all the ways we can be like him through our actions, peacefully standing up for what we believe and fighting for everyone to be treated equally, regardless of skin color or position. We are continuing our Kindness Month Calendar and learning different ways to be kind each day. Wednesday each student talked about things they love about themselves. I loved hearing about their talents and smart brains and everything else they love about themselves!
We celebrated Aadi's birthday this week. Happy Birthday to an amazing 5-year-old!
Math & Science:
JK Theme for the week is Winter! We began by learning about snow and ice crystals, and how they are formed. We love Brain Pop and Brain Pop Junior, where Moby makes it interesting to learn facts about all things science. We made snow flakes by cutting different patterns in folded paper.
We are learning about migration and hybernation, and looking for signs outside of animals in the winter. We are reading about birds, rabbits, foxes, bears, and many other animals, and categorizing them into groups of either migration or hybernation, or neither.
We began talking about currency. This is a K or First Grade skill but I like to introduce concepts and provide a foundation, and then build upon that for groups in Math. We will be learning about banks, saving money, the difference between goods and services, and many other money related concepts. Ask your child to recite our money poems, and pull out some coins to talk about the differences in them and how much each is worth. We will be designing our own store and using our knowledge to pay for things, calculate how much different items cost, and develop an understanding of commerce. We are playing games with coins and our cash register, as we learn the value of each coin.
We learned about symetry and decorated mittens choosing whether to make them symetrical or not. We also talked about descriptive words and how adding those to stories makes it more interesting to read. I loved hearing about their snuggly, soft, icy, cuddly, warm, scratchy, wet, pretty mittens!
Literacy:
We are concentrating on letter formation of "Qq" and have put "Cc" in letter jail for sounding like "Qq" (as in cube).
We read Snowmen at Night and learned about all of the different jobs snowmen do while we are sleeping. We used the writing prompt, "If I were a snowman at night I would...." and then wrote and illustrated a journal page. Some children wrote that they would drink frozen cocoa and play with their mommy and daddy, or have a snow ball fight, or sell the best snowman icecream! :).
French:
We are singing and learning as the simple phrases, numbers, colors, animals etc become more familiar in French. We love Madame!
Fine Motor:
We loved reading The Snowy Day and talked about our favorite part of the story. We painted with puffy paint and added ourselves to the snowy scenes. I loved that the children noticed the colors in the snow in the story. I had always painted with plain white snow, but they noticed the rainbow of reflections in the story and it made our pictures much more interesting! Our snow has melted outside but we are looking forward to the next round so we can copy Peter's footprints outside and turn our toes inside and outside as we make tracks in the snow.
We are using rhythm sticks in class to tap out syllables in our names and different words. This "functional proprioceptive input" is a great way to help children focus as they are learning to differentiate between each letter sound in words.
Have a lovely weekend!
Ms. Massey
