La lectura

This week we read about Ginger the cat who is not happy to have a new kitten in the house.  In the end this big cat and the little kitten become fast friends who are willing to share all their things.  Students then wrote in their writing journal about a friend.  We focused on starting with a capital letter, leaving space between the words, and ending the sentence with a period.

We have been having a GREAT time with our Estrellita program!  Everyone is getting very good at saying their sound chart.  Here is a link to the sound chart without hand signals.

And here is a link to the sound chart with hand signals.

 

Your child brought home a login to the online student portal of our Estrellita program on Friday. (I put it into the front cover of their reading binder).  This is very fun for the kiddos and they can progress through the sounds.  Right now we are focusing on letter sounds and NOT letter names.

You might see a plastic baggy with syllables con “a”.  We did an activity with these in class but you can have your child read them to you at home too.

Las matemáticas

Our weekly objectives were to:

• Count on and identify more and less than a given number.
• Use non-standard units to measure classroom items.
• Compare the length of items. (más largo, más corto)
• Compare the height of items. (más alto, más bajo)

 

History & Geography

We have begun our next American history unit on the first voyage of Columbus and the later voyage of the Pilgrims.  This week we learned about how gold and spice were strong motivators in Europe’s desire to find a non land route to Asia. We read about King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain and their granting Columbus the means to attempt his new westernly route across the ocean to the Asia.

Our objectives this week were:
• identify the continents of Europe, Africa, and Asia
• understand why Europeans wanted to travel to Asia
• identify King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain
• understand that Columbus had a new idea of how to get to Asia

Science

This week in science we learned about our sense of touch. The class watched a short video showing how nerves and skin work together to allow us to feel things.  We continued to work on our sensory booklets and we began making a book on the sense of touch. On Friday we played games using our senses and reviewed what we have learned so far in this domain.

Our objectives were to:
• identify the five senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch
• demonstrate understanding of the sense of touch
• provide simple explanations about how the sense of touch works
• demonstrate understanding of different textures the skin can feel
• label each of the body parts associated with the five senses
• describe how the five senses help humans learn about their world

 

Specialists

Art with Ms. Kelly

Me and My Shadow

The kindergarteners learned how to use basic shapes to draw a person, and then they worked very hard cutting out their figures and tracing them onto black paper. We reviewed the concept of shadows when the students were outside at recess, and then we read Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem “My Shadow.” We’ll do more weather-related art during the different seasons.

Turkeys and Reindeers

We did a Guided Drawing of a turkey and the students added their own fun colors. The students also used basic shapes to paint a reindeer with antlers and a red nose of course! 

Holiday Mural

For the “Holiday Mural” on the bulletin board at school, the Kindergarteners made houses using construction paper scraps, and then they added snow using sponges and tempera paint. These cute houses are on the Holiday Mural at school.