How blessed we are to hear God's Word. Through His Word He works faith in our hearts and supports us in our daily walk through life. We started making a little craft of a child studying God's Word. The kids will be bringing these home tomorrow.
During literacy centers we talked more about how some books have illustrations that tell another story besides the story told by the text. The kids studied the pictures and told the other story in their own words. One of the centers has a game that helps the kids to practice ch, sh, and th. Another center has a matching game that helps the kids to match long vowel sounds. They are putting words in order to make sentences that retell Rosie's Walk. Another table helps the kids to print sentences in proper form beginning with uppercase, leaving space between words, and ending with a period. Finally students are making the pig character and sequencing pictures to help retell the story If You Give a Pig a Pancake. We continue to work on counting by tens and identifying how many sets of ten are in numbers such as 40, 80, etc. The kids also had fun playing a money bingo game. Their practice money coins were sent home today. Continue to help your child practice money identification. There are some great money videos online and one of their favorites is by Jack Hartmann and is called "The Money Song". The kids made a manipulative to turn and show animals that are out during the day or night in the desert. We learned some facts in a little nonfiction book about the desert. It was interesting to many that the desert can be cold. A desert is a desert not because of the heat, but because of the low rainfall. We have been having fun the last couple of days with some dinosaur centers. I have been so impressed how kids at the blue table can sketch and paint some dinosaurs. Look for these in the hallway sometime next week. Kids have also been having fun measuring and exploring some real fossils in the room. Students are learning to measure and then to make their own bone drawings in certain lengths. They are imagining what it would have been like to have been a dinosaur and are also writing stories about dinosaurs.
Another topic we are researching is the desert. A great book is called Cactus Hotel. It is interesting to learn how important the saguaro is to the desert in Arizona. Kids made a few books that helped them to learn more about desert life. We only have one day left in the second trimester. Today I was busy running some assessments for report cards and so I did not take many photos again.
We studied about a visit that Jesus had with Mary and Martha. From that event we learn that it is important to take time to listen to God's Word and to be with Him. Through His word, He blesses us. We watched a little video to help us understand this lesson. This week during literacy center mini lessons we are studying about authors and illustrators. Today we wrote our own "About the Illustrator" paragraphs that could be included with books that we have illustrated. Throughout the week we will also compare and contrast some special books. The students are sequencing a couple of different books: If You Give a Pig a Pancake and Rosie's Walk. At some other centers the students are playing games to match vowel sounds or to match digraphs (ch, sh, & th). Finally the students are practicing writing sentences correctly. We are going to focus on Dd this week and work on its sound and correct handwriting formation. Our thematic centers will focus on the desert and dinosaurs. In the afternoon the students had fun learning about the desert with some special videos and books. We watched a rattlesnake and listened to its rattle. It was also fun to learn about a roadrunner and to see not only how small it is, but how fast it can run. Later we made a special book in the shape of a saguaro cactus that highlighted some desert animals. It was also fun to learn about the life of the saguaro through the book Cactus Hotel. I was very proud of the kindergarten class today. They worked so hard and well! They had chapel in the morning. Then they voted and graphed their favorite holiday. We had an interactive writing time to put our points together to write a persuasion piece about our favorite holiday of Easter. Then the students wrote an opinion piece with five sentences and included pictures. After that they printed the numerals 1-20 for an assessment. They listened to a story and took a listening comprehension test. Then they had a recess/snack break. After that they not only worked on their thematic centers, but did their rotation of literacy centers as well. Everyone was finished in time for lunch. What a special class!
After lunch we had a recess break and we celebrated for a bit. Then they worked in their calendar books. For Math they showed 2 ways to make a specified number on their rekenreks. After that we continued to practice money and the students had fun playing a covered in money game with partners. We ended the day learning about colonial times and what it must have been like at the time of George Washington. In addition we talked about fact and fiction. They had fun with money songs and some silly exercise & movement songs as well. Today we reviewed the story about how friends lowered a paralyzed man through a roof for Jesus to heal the man. It was so cool that Jesus showed the importance of healing his heart from sin! The kids put stickers on a page to show that the man was forgiven and healed. We also learned that a "fancy" word for sin is iniquity.
We continued with some more rotations of literacy centers. Our mini lessons focused on how informational text teaches us things. We looked at cookbooks and directions to games. Those are informational text. In the morning we also learned about holidays that are unique to the U.S.A. known as American holidays. Other countries do not have certain holidays that we do. Then we talked about holidays that are shared with other countries, especially Christian holidays. We picked certain holidays that are our favorites. Tomorrow we will vote on a favorite holiday. Then we will write our opinion about why we think the chosen holiday is great. The students continued working on centers that focused on President's Day and letter Xx. Later in the afternoon the students exercised in the gym and rotated among 4 activities while I assessed skills such as hopping, jumping, skipping, sit-ups, etc. When we returned from the gym the students learned to make number combinations on little rekenreks. You can see examples in the photos. Some students are getting great at determining what combinations are possible. We also sorted pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters. The students learned to count by fives to determine the value of a pile of nickels. We ended the day reading some books about Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and making bags for our valentines. This week we are learning about how Jesus forgave a man's sins and healed his legs. God is just amazing and it is wonderful to think how He has the power to heal both! It was fun to watch a video to imagine what it must have been like to see a man lowered through the roof. The students had a lot of questions about the hole in the roof. We are going to research homes back in that time.
We began a new set of literacy centers. Students are placing words into the correct order to make a question and an answer. Then they are printing these in proper form. At another center the students are also practicing printing sentences for Valentine's Day in proper form. The phonemic awareness table gives the kids an opportunity to play a "Go Fish" game for rhyming words. At the word work table the students are identifying what position you hear a sound in a given word. The alphabet table gives the kids a chance to guess a mystery word and then they write a sentence using that word. Our thematic centers are based on a presidential theme. Students are thinking and writing about what they would do if they would become a president. We are tracing the shadow of their faces to put with these in the hall. They are also making a money book to help practice number words along with some others. They are practicing the sound of /x/ and printing Xx in proper form. They are writing some stories in their journals. In Math the students are learning about the need to "count on". This is especially helpful in addition. When you play games using dice, if your child knows how many dots are on one of the dice, have your child say that number and then continue on counting the other dots to get the total. It is good to not always have to start with 1. We also sorted pennies today with plastic money and on black and white pictures. It is good to recognize Abraham Lincoln on the heads side and the Lincoln Memorial on the tails side. Later today we learned more about Abraham Lincoln through a newspaper. We watched some videos about both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Also, we talked about things that were different long ago. |
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