Language Arts
squares
Wow! What a busy week. We continued our Teamwork theme with a great story: Swimmy by Leo Lionni. In this fable Swimmy was left all alone when the rest of the fish in his school were eaten by a large tuna. Swimmy then set out to find another school of fish, and he did. However, when his new group of friends are afraid to venture out into the ocean, Swimmy invents a plan to protect them. Swimmy showed them that teamwork could save them. The kiddos enjoyed illustrating this story with a special paint project.
This week we worked with the pronouns: él – he and ella – she. They had no problem with the concept of pronouns replacing proper nouns.
We worked with riddle poetry this week. The students were great at figuring out what the ¿Qué soy? riddles were. Next week the students will work to write their own personal riddles.
rectangle
Math
We have officially began our geometry unit. The students are already very familiar with two dimensional shapes. This week we talked about circles / circulos, squares / cuadrados, and rectangles / rectángulos. We talked about what makes a square, what makes a rectangle, and how they are different. The students all did a great job telling how a square has 4 equal sides and a rectangle has four sides with two sides shorter than the other two sides. We have almost completed our two dimensional shapes on our class Teamwork mural. We plan to add three-dimensional farm animals when we get to that part of our math lessons.
Science
This week we started our unit on Taking Care of the Earth. This week we learned that Earth is composed of land, water and air. We identified examples of these in our own environments. We learned about how humans, plants, and animals depend on Earth’s land, water and air to live. We also discussed how people have a special responsibility to take care of the earth. See if your kindergartner can tell you some of the ways we can care for our earth.
We also learned about garbage. We were amazed at how much garbage humans generate! We learned the process that garbage goes through from its creation to being dumped in the land fill. We learned what a landfill is and why it is a dangerous place. We discussed alternatives to landfills.
Every April, we challenge families to send in trash-free lunches. We are doing our part in reducing the amount of trash we as a school are sending to landfills. This means sending lunch items in reusable containers and minimizing the pre-packaged foods with wrappers. It’s fun for the kids to compare the difference in the amount of trash we generate. We will begin on Monday, as we paid close attention this week to how much garbage we produced.
Save the date!! We have our last field trip on Friday, April 29th. We will meet at the Vancouver Water Resources Education Center at 9:30 in the morning. We will have lunch after the presentation, play at the park, and then return back to school for a regular afternoon with the usual dismissal time. Like most Spanish With Sarah field trips, students will be transported by their parents or a driver arranged by their parents. Stay tuned for more information!
*****Save the date!! All moms are invited to a special Mother’s Day Tea on Tuesday, May 3rd at 2pm.
Art
The kindergarteners learned about Eric Carle’s artwork this week. We talked about how he makes a variety of painted papers in different colors and textures, and then uses these papers to cut out shapes to create his animals. The students had fun making their own painted papers by mixing primary colors. Next week the students will use their painted papers to create a “Very Hungry Caterpillar”