Hi JK parents!

Happy Mother's Day to the most wonderful group of mothers!  You are all doing an amazing job with these fabulous, kind, intelligent, hilarious little beings!  Lila and I will be spending Mother's Day with good friends and their children, celebrating getting through another year of parenting!  :)

We are learning more about insects and have loved discovering the similarities and differences between multiple insects.

Dr. Glader read The Fantastic, Elastic Brain.  She taught us how to use our brains to do things even better as we get bigger!  She explained that the children in JK all have 5 more magic years of the first 10 years of life-the most amazing growth period where you will actually have long term memory.  When you make mistakes your brain is stretching the most.  You can stretch the part of your brain that controls your feelings too!

Literacy:

We played games finding the beginning and ending sounds of words.  In reading groups we hunted for letters, letter sounds, popcorn words, and used "flippy dolphin" when decoding words to use the other sound when the first vowel sound doesn't make sense.   We continued putting letters in "word jail" when the letter made a different sound than what we had learned.  We have been practicing our rhyming words and compound words too, clapping out syllables.

Math & Science:

We continue to learn about the behaviors of bees, and how they communicate with each other.  We practiced our 3D shapes, and practiced saying "sphere".  We also practiced counting to 100 and by 10's and 5's.  We are using story problems to add and subtract.  The children love stories about themselves to hold their attention!  

We potted flowers and made handprints on them for Mother's Day!  The children also made cards for their moms and colored pictures on their questionnaire's.  

We had a visitor Bee Keeper, Mr. Bailey's cousin.  (Ahem, it might have been Mr. Bailey dressed up in a bee keepers suit, but we will never know!)  I picked up a honey comb and all of the tools necessary to keep bees from a Bee Keeper last night, and brought them to class to share.  The place I picked everything up has a backyard farm with chickens, goats, ducks, and of course bees!  The children were able to try on the suit and see the smoker, a honeycomb and the brush and trays.  

 The goats were head butting me, but were as friendly and sweet as can be!  

Snack time outside!!

Fine Motor:

We finished our self portraits for May, our last one of the year.  We made honey combs by cutting out hexagons and glueing them carefully together.  The children all added their own bees to their honey combs and then wrote buzzzzz or other bee related words.  

Social Emotional:

We made our compliment circle and took turns giving our classmates compliments.  We have been role playing each day with different scenarios to help with finding the right way to communicate with friends and schoolmates.  

Have a lovely weekend!

Ms. Massey

Hi JK parents!

We are still studying ants and are thrilled with all of their tunnels they are digging in our ant farm!  This week we are also studying bees and other insects.

We welcomed another new student to JK!  Jacob just moved here from California and and has a sister, Victoria, in first grade.  The children have been so sweet in showing him around the school and getting to know him.

Math and Science:
We made a Venn diagram comparing and contrasting the differences and similarities between ants and bees.  They both have six legs and a thorax, abdomen and head, as well as antennae.  Unlike ants, when bees sting they die.  Ants can sting and bite repeatedly and because of their smooth stinger they can pull it right out instead of it being harmful to their bodies when they sting.  The children loved hearing that a bee's favorite color is purple!  We are using hexagons to make bee hives.

We read a story about shapes and added a side to a triangle one at a time until we had so many sides the shape resembled a circle!  We also talked about what it means to be "greedy" and how our shape in the story always wanted more.  We are role playing and practicing different thankful scenarios and how our manners have to be used at all times, and how sometimes we think things in our heads but don't say them out loud.

We have learned that bees have 5 eyes and are the only insects that makes food for us-honey!

We had a honey taste test and used descriptive words to make a chart, identifying all of our senses and what we experienced.  They thought is was "so tasty and golden deliciousness!". 

We gave our grass a haircut, practicing our scissor skills.  We continue to observe and document our bean plants.

Literacy:
We used our reading A-Z books to read stories and hunt for sight words or letters and letter sounds.  We have been practicing adding different letters to the beginning of words to make different rhyming words.  We use trees to create rhyming groups of words.

Our third grade reading buddies came to read with us, and helped their buddy complete a "Response to Reading" journal page.  They love illustrating a picture about the story and then sounding out words to label their illustration. 

We are practicing using different words and scenarios to navigate friendships.  Ms. Yonan and I acted out a few different situations and the children offered suggestions and then acted out how they would have done things differently.  It was so sweet how they are so caring and really know how to be  a good friend.

Fine Motor:
We created more ants using foil and pipe cleaners, as well as spoons and pipe cleaners.  The children painted them and added eyes.

We are coloring pictures as part of our Mother's Day surprise for you.

We are making shapes with fabric rubber bands and peg grids.  It's another great fine motor exercise!  It increases dexterity and familiarity with shapes.

The children made stamp collages with insect stamps and labeled them using inventive spelling.  We also completed May calendars by cutting and gluing construction and tissue paper to make May flowers.  They labeled the calendars with May words.

Social and Emotional:
We are role planing different scenarios about how to be a good friend.  Sometimes it's a matter of not knowing the words to ask someone if they would like to play or if they are okay.

Dr. Glader came to read with us and talk about different anger strategies.  Walking and counting are both great ways to calm down before reacting.  She let the children practice and also passed our classroom frog around and took turns telling her something they wanted to share!  I heard about haircuts, flies in the dishwasher, and all kinds of interesting things.

We watched the dress rehearsal for the Lower School play, 101 Dalmations.  The children loved watching the performance and were the most attentive audience.  They were singing "Cruella Deville" all afternoon.  Our music teacher, Julie Herrick, does such a fabulous job, working with 1-4 grade.  She's such a talent and we are so fortunate to have such a passionate teacher.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Ms. Massey

Hi JK parents!

          

We played a fun super hero memory game where the children had to match the upper and lower parts of a super hero's body.  They loved it! 

We are engrossed in the world of ants this week, as well as all of our growing plants!  We have begun studying the parts of an ant and learning about their predators, diet, environment etc. The anticipation has been building and the interest will be more informed now that they have had a few days to learn about the habits of ants.  The ant farm arrived and we went through the process of transferring the ants to their new home, by first refrigerating them to calm them before quickly emptying the vile into the gel ant farm.  They have already made quite a few tunnels and connected them.  The children are loving observing their work!  They have designated an area for their "ant graveyard" where they push all of the debris and dead ants to keep their habitat clean. 

Math & Science:
Ask your JK child to tell you the parts of an ant!  They should be able to point out the abdomen, thorax, antennae, head, legs and mandible(s).

We have been playing a couple of different money games to add 10's together along with familiarizing ourselves with coins and currency.  This is just an introduction to studying money in Kindergarten, but some of the children have already learned their coins and are able to add things to purchase items in our store. 

Our plants are growing, some just now at the sprout stage of the life cycle.  We are documenting the process as they observe and water each day.  Making comparisons and offering suggestions for healthy growth has been fun for them.  We have been measuring the bean plants in cm and tracking their growth.  They have been sharing information about their own gardens some of you have at home.  I have heard about rasberries, flowers and vegetables.

The Jessie White tumblers came to Roycemore and the children loved their performance!  They flipped and flew over 13 people!  It was so exciting and inspiring!

Literacy:
The children are learning more letters and blends that are not the typical sounds.  We continue to learn popcorn words and practice our writing.  Any writing practice is advantageous.  Even if the children do not know the words they are writing, they are becoming more familiar with combined letter sounds and word spacing, letter scale etc.

Fine Motor:
The children made an ant hill by coloring different tunnels and placing "ants" throughout the colony.  This is an amazing fine motor skill for practice.
We created ants using aluminum foil.  They have all been coloring ants at free play.

We began painting ants we will complete next week for our wall ant colony with tunnels.  We are using spoons and pipe cleaners to make the head, thorax and abdomen.

Have a lovely weekend!

Ms. Massey

Hi JK parents.

 We decorated and then sat on eggs and came back from recess to see they had hatched into chicks (peeps!).  It was so fun! 

We have been planting even more this week, by adding wheat grass to our already sprouting grass, and also planted white and black beans.  We tallied the results of whose grass had sprouted on Monday, using tally marks.

 

We made "dirt cups" simulating the dirt and mud with Oreos and chocolate pudding, and of course a gummy worm! 

Fine Motor:
The children measured themselves and made a JK Flower Garden with stems representing their heights!  They decorated their flowers with sequins and talked about who is taller, shorter or the same height.

Literacy:
The children made their own books on Growing Things" and illustrated them.  Each of their stories has a beginning, middle and end.  It's fun to hear about their characters and settings! 

Happy Birthday to Brandon! 

Math & Science:
We are learning more about different stages of the life cycle of plants and are most excited that fruits and vegetables actually begin as flowers!  It's nice to hear their vocabularies expand as they add words like "fragrant", or "colorful" to descriptions. 

We have all progressed to our third page of sight words on roll, read and write.  If the children don't know the sight word they locate the letter and letter sound at the beginning and ending. 

We are all practicing our Kindergarten behavior when earning ninjas to put on our bulletin board.  Traveling through the school while respecting the artwork on the walls as well as silently walking are skills they have all mastered! 

We learned about chicks and watched the hatching of eggs before making our own eggs to sit on to incubate.  The children loved watching videos of baby chicks hatching!  We talked about the incubation period and the life cycle of the chicks.  They all kind of want a baby chick now!  :) 

Have a lovely long weekend! 

Ms. Massey