Kindergarten Week 26

by | Mar 18, 2016 | In The Loop

Language Arts 

Measuring lines with small and big marshmallows.

Measuring lines with small and big marshmallows.

We read a great book to go along with our Rojo, Blanco, y Azul theme. The book we read was “El regalo de Li”. This is a story of the naturalization process in the United States. Li Fong, a young Chinese boy, has two very important issues on his mind: becoming a citizen of the United States and losing his first tooth. In his young mind, the two are intertwined- he seems to think that the Tooth Fairy won’t visit him until he’s a citizen. This provided us the great opportunity to talk about how one becomes a citizen. We all agreed that being born here seems to be the easiest way!

This week we also worked a lot with different types of sentences and how we can extend our sentences by giving just a little more information. We also had a discussion about how we stay on topic when writing. We showed several books and asked what we could expect to learn about, always being sure they stayed on the same topic.

Measuring leprechaun height with cubes and paper clips.

Measuring leprechaun height with cubes and paper clips.

Math

We incorporated our money skills into our morning binder work. Now students use coins to form each new number of the day.  They are pretty comfortable using either 4 quarters or 10 dimes to form the 100. Then they just add on dimes, nickles, and pennies from there.

We had a lot of fun using our measuring and comparing skills for Saint Patrick’s Day activities.

Social Studies & Science

This week we started our unit on “Farms”.  We will be focusing on animals and their needs.  On Monday we brainstormed things and animals you can find on a farm.  We learned about the many jobs a farmer has.  We learned that most of the food we eat at some point came from a farm.  We learned about the buildings and machines on farms.  We had fun making finger puppets of farm animals and we used them to help us to sing “Old Mac Donald”.  Hopefully your student shared these with you at home.
On Tuesday we learned about cows and calves and their needs: food, water, and space to live and grow.  We learned that baby animals need to be fed and cared for by their parents or people.  We started our own class book of “Old Mac Donald” with a twist!  Just wait til this comes home for a visit!  We also reviewed the landforms that we are learning about by creating them out of playdough.
Lastly, on Thursday, we learned about chickens, hens and roosters.  See if your kiddo can identify the needs of a chicken.  We also explained whyu farmers raise chickens and the foods that come from chickens.

Image 1Art

In Kindergarten art, the students finished their “Windy Day” pictures. They added a few more swirly lines to the sky, and then we reviewed using basic shapes to draw a person. The students also learned how to draw a kite shape. The students glued all these parts together to make great windy day art!

 

Music

We talked about folk music traditions around the world, and especially the use of he harp in Ireland.