Hi JK Families!  

Our ants continue to mesmerize the JK class.  They have created quite an intricate tunnel system in their small ant farm.  We have made predictions and journaled their activities.   

Centers:

Literacy:  The children have been working hard to implement reading strategies.  We use picture walks and eagle eye to find clues from the illustrations to decode words.  The popcorn words are becoming more familiar as we try to make sense of the many exceptions in the English Language.  We use stretchy snake to stretch out words as each sound is enunciated to find write or read the letters.  Our inventive spelling has improved and provides the children more freedom in writing story thoughts.  

Math & Science:  We have planted and watered our grass seeds and watched them grow.  They are so excited to see the process of growing things and proud of their daily care for their plants.  The April song was one of their favorites as each acted like a seed that finally grew into a May flower.  Our morning meetings are rich with stories about our school activities and how those relate to their activities at home.  I am always thrilled to hear they are sharing their knowledge with their families!  

Fine Motor:  JK has been working on Mother's Day illustrations they are so excited to share!  Just as our ants work together as a team to create their amazing tunnels, the students have been working together to create art in their group stories and illustrations.  They all created amazing observation drawings of the ant farm using colored pencils.  The different interpretations were amazing!  The observation drawings over the year demonstrate their improved attention to detail and documenting exactly what they see or what is most interesting and important to them.  We use KWL charts often and discuss what we Know, what we Want to know, and what we have Learned.  This guides our learning centers, providing materials and information that the students are interested in and about which they want to learn more.  

Social Emotional:  We have watched the Free to be You and Me movie over the course of the past week, and discussed our similarities and celebrated our differences.  The children loved the babies discussing how they knew they were either male or female, and how their stereotypes were completely opposite when generalizing girl or boy careers and activities.  We have studied kindness and the rewards received through giving and promoting kindness being contagious.  This video was one they enjoyed and had so much to share after watching!  Please view it when you have a moment.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnZfRh_7tzw

Photos below are just a few out of many.  I'll be adding more once I consolidate from ipad, camera, and phones.  Have a wonderful Sunday!

Mrs. Massey

Writing and dictating to create stories!  

 Happy and smiling as each child receives individual attention to improve their skills in letter formation!

 Handwriting Without Tears in JK!

 Ipad technology to work on their math skills.

 Magna Tiles are just the beginning as the zoo comes to life for the animals!

 Cinco de Mayo Sombreros and Miracas!  They used their scissor skills, coloring and gluing with Ms. Korine.  

 Happy Birthday to Jane!  

Rhythm Sticks in music time in the classroom.  

Hi JK Families and Friends!

This week has been full of cycles, as we study the life cycle of plants and frogs!  The children are able to comprehend so much more when the topic is relatable to them and their own lives.  Making connections between their experiences with plants, flowers, seeds, gardens, tadpoles or fish and frogs, insects etc. builds meaningful foundations for understanding.

Centers:

Science and Math:  We continue to discuss cycles of both plants and animals, and are studying the life cycle of the frog in depth.  The children have documented and illustrated their favorite parts of the life-cycle, along with seeing frogs in their natural habitats in our Scholastic film.  Most of them chose the tadpole as their favorite.  They thought it was hilarious that frog's tails fall off when they become adults.  I asked them if they use to have a tail when they were little, and one response was, "I never had a tail, but my brother did!"  We played Bingo Math with number cards, working on the number recognition and one to one correspondence of the single and double digit numbers.

Fine Motor/Art/Science:  The children are coloring, cutting and sequencing plant life cycle collages. They are happy to explain the different steps to you, so be sure to ask them how a seed becomes a plant!  We have also been making our own frog pond, and choosing patterns to decorate our frogs based on our favorite frog.  Most of the children decided they wanted their frogs to be poisonous.

Our reading buddies are impressed with the JKers ability to search and find sight words in their reading!  We are always happy to spend time with out third grade friends.

Language/Literacy/Reading:  The children continue to work on sight word recognition and writing. We play many games as a whole group as we introduce more words from our list of 100 most common frequently used words.  Asking the students to point out sight words as they are reading to you is a great way to increase their recognition and understanding.

We used the rhythm sticks to practice different tempos to music, making soft, loud, fast and slow beats.  I modeled different rhythms and they echoed them with incredible accuracy!  Musical instruments were one of my favorite elements of JK, and continue to be a big hit for this class!  The gift of music is one of the gifts you give to children that they carry with them for a lifetime.  I played cello for 14 years, and know how much enjoyment it brought me (after I got over having to carry that monstrous thing everywhere!)

Show and Tell continues to be another favorite time of the week, and each child's ability to lead a class discussion while calling on friends has improved steadily throughout the year.  Their confidence and leadership skills are super for four and five year olds!

Enjoy the long weekend!

Mrs. Massey

Welcome back from Spring Break!

I missed this class and was happy to see smiling faces back at school!  We are jumping into spring and studying the life cycle of the frog, planting and blooming, tops bottoms and middle's of vegetables and which part (the root, flower, top etc.) we eat, along with many other plants coming to life this season.






Centers:
Fine Motor:  Cutting out birds and decorating with feathers, and building a nest for their home.  The children loved choosing colorful feathers and carefully placing them on their birds.  Their scissor skills continue to improve as they are able to cut careful and precise lines.

Math and Science:  The children measured themselves and counted inches, comparing their height to that of the first of the year.  We created a flower garden with flowers they painted to demonstrate their height with the stems of their flowers.  Understanding who is taller, shorter, more inches, less inches, etc. is a great way to compare and contrast with something that is meaningful to them.  We completed our April calendars and practice "riding the elevator to the top" to find the day of the week after finding the date.

Literacy:  Reading groups have been making our way through the decodable books, as well as high frequency books and the leveled readers.  The books that are easy for them to read or decipher based on pictures are great to begin any reading time, giving them confidence and warmed up for more challenging books.  We have been working in pairs and small groups in the classroom to provide a variety of fun activities centered around literacy/language arts.

Writing:  The students wrote books about seeds and the different stages in growing, writing common planting words and illustrating their books.   We will be planting several different vegetables and documenting their growth in journals.  If there are any of you with gardens or a green thumb that want to share any of your knowledge, we would love to have you.

We have a short week this week, as we are off on Friday for the holiday weekend,  as well as Monday (for Professional Development for the teachers).

Enjoy this beautiful weather!

Mrs. Massey

Hi JK Parents!

This week we stacked our cat's hat so high from all of the amazing reading we have done.  Thank you for your efforts at home supporting your children's reading habits.  Thank you for cheering for JK at Palio!  They were all such amazing athletes showcasing their gross motor skills.

Language Arts:

We continue to read our books in reading and writing groups and sound out words we don't know using our reading techniques.  The decodable books help children understand as they use repetition and similar words and word families along with rhyming words.  WE have also been constructing flowers and writing sight words on them to decorate our classroom door as we jump into our Spring theme.

Science and Math:

We continue to classify, group, and count different manipulatives at our math center.  The children measured and mixed play dough for St. Patrick's Day, green with glitter, as they strengthened their small muscle groups to increase fine motor skills.  We began discussing the life cycle of plants as we read about spring and growing things. The children sequenced pictures they colored and made life cycle collages.

Art/Fine Motor:

The children listened and followed multi-step instructions as they colored sight word school busses.
We all played a new game called "Art Studio" where students anonymously illustrate pictures on the white board and the art buyer then selects their favorite.  This exercise requires careful listening of detailed descriptions they have to replicate as their artwork.

We are all fine tuning our yoga poses, as we introduced the butterfly, flower, and frog this week.  It's such a calming activity where their focus and concentration is required.

Thank you for coming to celebrate the St. Patrick's Day season with the beautiful art of Irish Dance. Lila loved seeing her JK friends and sharing her passion!

Jr. Palio show and rehearsal photos of our amazing athletes!

Enjoy the rest of your break!  I am excited to begin the last part of our school year as the growth and learning comes together in our culminating activities.

Mrs. Massey

Welcome to March in JK!

We have been discovering or re-discovering the wonders of Dr. Seuss this past week.  The children have also been preparing for Palio, which will take place next Wednesday at 8:45 am in the gym. This Friday, March 10th will be an 11:30 am early dismissal day.  EDP will be available so just let us know if your child will be staying all day.

Center Time:

Literacy:  The children have written about what they would do if Thing 1, Thing 2 and the Cat in the Hat visited their house.  They used the phonetic spelling of words as they sounded them out to make words.  Their ability to identify the beginning and ending sound is wonderful at this developmental age/stage.  If they are able to identify some of the middle vowel sounds, they are learning the skills many children do not master until Kindergarten and beyond.  I am extremely proud of their progress and the stages at which they are currently learning.  Seeing their excitement when they name a letter sound and are then able to write it by themselves is rewarding to experience, and a joy to see.  Our reading groups continue to advance as we move through our leveled reading books and introduce reading strategies.

Math:  We have been playing a measuring game using non-standard units of measure (colored cubes) to measure different insects or items.  This allows them to also practice their counting and one-to-one correspondence.

Science:  Chef Swaby visited the classroom and led us through a dessert demonstration, creating whipped cream with chocolate ganache to then pipe onto cookies...changing the cream from a liquid to a semi-solid.  The children were as silent as mice as they watched with wide eyes and then sampled the delicious filling.  It was lovely to share the talents of one of our parents.  Please consider yourselves invited if there is anything you would like to share with us!  The children love having guests and getting to know their friend's parents!

Fine Motor:  We continue to refine our writing skills in our sign in each day, as the letters become more uniform in size, the spacing becomes closer and to scale, and the specific formation becomes more natural and requires less effort.  Our play dough time, using tongs and tweezers while at the sensory table, picking up items and sorting them, etc. all assist these fine motor skills to be refined. The "Handwriting Without Tears" program has specific language we use to instruct, by letting then know an "A" is a long line, long line, short line.  We also encourage all strokes to begin from the top and move downward.  Some letters require "jumpy frog", so begin with the initial stroke (such as the letter "p") and then "jump back up" to the starting point to continue the loop around.

We practiced our scissor skills in a scissor center, carefully cutting zig-zag, curvy and straight lines. We completed our calendars for March by cutting out gold coins for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.  This also provided an opportunity to discuss the order of the colors of the rainbow and the reminder of ROYGBIV.

We enjoyed green scrambled eggs and ham, and danced around in PJ's, celebrating the accomplishments of the class along with the birthday of Dr. Seuss.

We have one more week before spring break, and then will be off for the last two weeks of March.  EDP will be available for the first week.  It hardly seems possible that it will be April when we return.  What a fast moving and dynamic year we are having!

Warm thoughts as we head into St. Patrick's Day celebrations this weekend with the downtown parade.  The weather is calling for snow, but for now, I am enjoying the 57 degree day and sunshine. My daughter will be one of the dancers with Trinity Irish Dance Company in the parade (noon start time!).  I will be following behind with the booster club, so look for us if you make it downtown on Saturday!  She will also be dancing at a few places in Evanston next Saturday.  I'll pass those along as well if you want to bring the kiddos to watch.  It's always fun and inspiring to see all of the talented dancers.

Mrs. Massey