Hi Everyone!
The JK Bunnies are in full friendship and Valentine's Day mode!
Fine Motor:
We created heart paintings for Valentine's Day and made heart people to decorate our room for Valentine's Day! We created piggy banks this week too as we talked about how important it is to save money. Each student thought of something they really want to save for, and we wrote it on the bottom of their bank. I can't wait to hear about all of the money they save. We learned about all of the ways we can help people by giving, either with material things or with our time. The children made coin trees by making rubs of different coins with crayons. It’s a difficult task and requires using both hands to place, hold and color over each coin, then moving it to another spot around the tree branches. They love learning different ways to create art!
Social/Emotional:
We talked about needs versus wants and completed an activity classifying things into categories, and how saving for things you want helps you also have things you need. It was fun to hear about things that they thought were needs, like furniture, a microwave and toys. I love hearing their thought processes...."Well, we need toys or we would be bored!" (a word not allowed in JK :) ). It required asking the question, "Would we still be alive without toys?" It takes me back to undergrad and Maslov's Hierarcharchy of Needs. From the bottom of the hierarchy upwards, the needs are: Physiological (food and clothing), safety (job security), love and belonging needs (friendship), esteem, and self-actualization. We talked about how if you don't have food and clothing and don't feel safe, it's hard to think about anything else. Big concepts for four and five year olds but they love thinking about these ideas.
We continue to award gold, silver and bronze medals each day for our most helpful and kind friends, showing random acts of kindness throughout the day.
We played Don't Wake Daddy game and laughed as daddy sits up with his sleeping cap on his head. It's one of my favorites!
Literacy:
We are concentrating on the letter "Tt" this week and are talking about some blends that change the sound of the letter, as in "the". We made a list of all of the "Tt" words, read the Tt Alphatales book When Tilly Turtle Came to Tea and recited our Tt chant. We practiced writing letters, beginning at the top, and concentrating on the scale of the letters.
We are busy assessing all students through the "ESGI" tool, and love seeing the upward trajectory in every student! I can't believe it's almost time for Parent Teacher Conferences again.
Math & Science:
We are working on counting and skip counting, and using manipulatives to group items by moving each as we count. This one-to-one correspondence is the most important element of math in early childhood. More important than adding and subtracting multiple numbers is concentrating on the foundations by creating sets of 5 and 10 to increase subitizing skills. We love using manipulatives for addition and subtraction and story problems are our favorite! There is so much anxiety in higher grades surrounding story problems, so we concentrate on how fun they are and how much we LOVE them. Just as we public speak every single day in front of the class, to make that an afterthought and not a stress inducing activity as most adults feel it is.
Have a great weekend!
Ms. Massey
