Hi JK Parents!
Thank you for the lovely drawings, cards, gifts, flowers and amazing support through Teacherer Appreciation Week. We felt incredibly appreciated, and loved all of the special attention and hugs from the children and you all. We hope you all had a lovely Mother's Day, celebrating the amazing moms you are!
Babysitting will be offered again by middle school on Friday, May 13th. Please see the link below for details if you would like to have a night out while your children are having a pizza party!
https://forms.gle/
I cannot believe we have only 3 weeks left of school! It seems it was just winter break. We will have a JK Breakfast (muffins/pastries and coffee) Tuesday, May 31st at drop off. We look forward to sharing art work and photos from our wonderful school year.
We are practicing manners in JK! The children are setting the table and learning about manners around the world. Ask them what the first thing is you do when sitting down to eat a meal, and have them show you how to set the table. We read Manners Can Be Fun and learned about the piggies that are not always polite. We are role playing different social situations, ranging from what to say when opening birthday presents to helping someone carry groceries or holding a door open. We completed cutting out, pasting, and labeling place settings, and picked out a favorite food to serve on the plates. We talked about "BMW" as a way to remember Bread plate, then Meal plate, then Water glass. I often recite this when at formal dinners and trying to remember which bread plate is mine :). We learned to shake hands by ensuring that the webs meet, and compared a proper handshake to a "limp fish" handshake. We learned to always wait until everyone has their food before we begin eating, just as we do in class. We also talked about how to be graceful if someone is not practicing good manners.
Fine Motor:
JK bunnies completed our last calendars of the school year this week. We used tape for tape art to make flower gardens. The process of tearing tape is an excellent activity for fine motor development. We wrote a story about a flower garden, using descriptive words for the characters and setting.
Summer will be here in a blink so we have been putting together some fun packets (summer learning mats for 10 weeks and a Fine Motor Packet) along with other resources for you to link to for Kindergarten practice, just for fun (not required). We have spent the year preparing them and am confident they are in an amazing place to enter Kinder! I always recommend lots of reading each night, and writing centers for story writing or simple letter and number formation practice. Have fun and get outside, and experience the city and nature. Get together with friends and have lots of thought provoking conversations encouraging them to pause before speaking when listening to others and to always ask 3 questions to make good conversation. Use hole punches, monkey bars, peel oranges, and play with play dough and clay to increase fine motor muscles and skills.
Math & Science:
We continued to measure and observe our plants in JK, and completed journals labeling illustrations. We talked about making educated guesses and what that means, and discussed different effects of over watering, too much sun, under watering, etc. We made predictions and problem solved for the plants that haven't sprouted and planted new seeds in those pots.
The children sequenced scenes and extended complex patterns, along with a domios center where they played and practiced addition equations. We played a fun frog game, Math Masters, for more math with manipulatives practice.
Literacy:
We are making our way through CVC and sight words, working on blends and digraphs, and of course practicing our Handwriting Without Tears. I have seen amazing improvements on isolating sounds in words and identifying the beginning and ending sounds. We are working on the rules of silent e, "r" words like hurt and shirt, words that end in Y or Y as a vowel, and endings like ing and ed.
Have a lovely weekend!
Ms. Massey
