During Jesus time today we worked on a little emergent reader entitled See Me Obey. We learned how Noah trusted God's Word to build the ark and followed God's lead. He trusted that the Lord would keep His promise to save him. We can also trust God's promises and we have hope that we will have eternal life in heaven. It was fun for the students to add details to the pictures and highlight some important sight words as well. Also we watched a special video with a song to help us practice our memory work for tomorrow. Please help your child learn "Trust in the Lord with all your heart." Proverbs 3:5
We continued another rotation of literacy centers and thematic centers in the morning. We also made an analysis of our August weather graph and noticed that most of our school days in August have been sunny. We worked on the meaning of the words "most" and "least". I had to point out that 0 is less than 2 and so the least kind of weather was snowy. Later we also worked on discriminating Mm with Nn. The number of points and curves does make a difference. I have noticed a few children think lowercase m has 3 curves and lowercase n has 2. Some others think that an N is written just like M. We are working hard to correct this discrimination error. Later in the afternoon the students continued to practice locomotor movements in the gym. We also worked on control and balance. We used different pathways to move around the gym, such as straight or curved paths. Then we would freeze. At other times we would try to balance on specified body parts on gym spots. This was difficult for some students as I also included right and left directions. For instance, each child would have to freeze and balance the right hand and the right foot on the gym spot. Another time each would have to balance just one knee, etc. This is also a good game to help children learn to listen, remember, and follow directions. Having a freeze game helps to develop self-control. After gym the students went on a 3D shape hunt. We found countless cylinders around our school. What was more difficult to find were cubes. Most of the shapes that students thought were cubes were actually flat square shapes or rectangular prisms. We built a cube out of 6 squares to help the students understand the concept. I also showed them a video about 3D shapes. We began our day with chapel and it is a blessing to know that we lack nothing in life. Jesus is our Shepherd and he gives us everything we need, including eternal life.
The day was filled with another rotation of literacy centers and thematic centers. Later in the afternoon the students really enjoyed picking some sunflower seeds to save for planting next spring. It is best to save them in a brown bag, rather than in a plastic bag where they would mold. They take about 2-2 1/2 months to reach the blossom stage. Some would like to try planting them now for fun, but you have to keep in mind that frost could come in October. It would be fun to try a few and save the rest for spring. We also spent a great deal of time working on identifying left and right. The students took a positional test to see if they could glue shapes into various positions that I specified. What a busy day! We learned a variety of ways to help us trust in the Lord like Noah did. We put special stickers on a page to remind all of us of different things that strengthen our faith and trust in God. Thanks be to God that He still loves us and never leaves us even when we doubt His promises!
We continued our literacy centers and it is amazing to see how far the students have come since the first day of school. Their independence has grown significantly as they complete tasks and find special activities to do while others are still working on their centers. We also started special thematic centers based on space and sunflowers. Students at the blue table were able to paint a sunflower picture and we even brought in some of the petals from our sunflowers outside our window to observe. The green table is making a special book about space that also helps them to learn the sight word "see". It is fun for them to see a model of the solar system as they work on the book. The yellow table has an activity where the students learn to sequence the life cycle of the sunflower. It is fun for them to glue real sunflower seeds in the middle. At the red table the students are practicing the correct formation of Ss as well as learning what words have the initial /s/ sound. They are being creative as they write space or sunflower stories in their journals. We had fun using hula hoops in the gym to practice locomotor movements. We are learning to hop on one foot and jump with feet together on two feet. It is good to learn to jump or hop inside and outside the hoop and also to move forward and backward as we jump or hop. We worked on a book that is designed after the format of "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See" It is called "Moon, Moon, What Do You See?" This predictable emergent reader is great for learning some very important beginning high frequency words. It was fun to play a number space race game as we are beginning to learn some number words. We are also thankful to have Ayden's grandmother as a very special helper on Tuesday afternoons. She is a teacher herself and her parents were also professors. We welcome her assistance. Today we learned about Noah and the ark. When you get past the "cute" part of the animals going on the boat two by two, you realize that this was just a beginning glimpse of how our God loved humanity so much. He did what it took to save us. Jesus is our "ark" and He came into the world to save us from a total separation from God. We can be sure that God keeps His promises and we have the hope of eternal life in heaven.
We started a new set of rotating literacy centers this week. At the alphabet table the students are learning to make letters out of playdough as they roll snakes and form each letter using straight lines, curves, or a combination. They are then able to use some cookie cutters that help practice initial sounds of words. The word work table gives the students a chance to make a flip book where they use beginning sounds to match words to pictures of school supplies. The phonemic awareness table gives the students a chance to decide if a card has a pair of rhyming words or not. They sort the cards and put them on the bus if they rhyme or back in the house if they do not rhyme. Then they color appropriate pictures to match cards that have rhyming words. At the writing center the students play "I Spy" and search for words of school supplies. The reading center gives the chance to sequence picture cards. We worked quite a bit to form uppercase and lowercase Ss correctly. We also worked on identifying the beginning sound of words that began with m, s, or t. If they heard a word beginning with s, they made sunglasses. If the word began with t, they pretended to be a tall tree. If the word began with m, they rubbed their tummy in the middle and said "Mmmmmm." We read a few good books about sunflowers and learned about its growth cycle. Then we went outside to cut some of our sunflower heads that were hanging with developed seeds. Throughout the week we will pick some of the seeds to save. During Math, the students used geoboards to form rectangles and "perfect rectangles" called squares. We also completed two more pages in our "Color Train" books. This morning we started our day with chapel. Mr. Borcherding taught us about the glory of God and because of Jesus we will get to go to heaven and be in awe of His glory. The solar eclipse makes us think about what that might be like some day. How great is our God's love that we will be gathered together to give glory to God eternally!
We sorted lowercase letters by tall, small, and "fall down" letters. It is so important that young children are exposed to lowercase letters. None of the uppercase letters are small or have tails. However, the lowercase letters come in three sizes. Our reading material has more lowercase letters than uppercase and without lowercase recognition, reading becomes rather difficult. The same is true for handwriting and meeting the standards of writing sentences. The kindergarten standards have the kids learn to print a sentence that begins with an uppercase letter. Then they need to separate words by spaces and end with punctuation. Without learning which ones are tall or small you would never know which is an uppercase S or lowercase s for instance. We had fun moving to a DVD song to learn to recognize which letters touch the headline, midline, and baseline. We put our hands in the air if the letter was tall, our hands in the middle if the letter was small, and our hands down low if the letter "falls down" with a tail. Later in the day we worked quite a bit on concept of word. I showed the students one word at a time. When I asked how many letters there were in the word, most would reply with the correct number. When I asked how many words it was, most unfortunately answered with the quantity of letters. For instance, when I showed the students the word "can", they could identify that there were 3 letters. When I asked how many words it was, they would also reply with the number 3. We spent a significant amount of time today learning that words are letters put together and when they are put in a sentence they are separated by spaces. We counted words in sentences. Then we compared the number of words to the number of letters in a sentence. With a couple of different books, the students are highlighting various words as we go on a variety of word hunts. Continue to help your child point to words as you read together. Use vocabulary such as letter, numeral, space, word, sentence, period, etc. with your child. These are very important print concepts to learn in kindergarten. Today was a special day in kindergarten because it was the 10th day. It was a "Zero Hero" day. The students learned that on every 10th day 0 comes to help because another set of 10 is made. The students put a tenth dot on their ten frame and moved it to the tens place in their pocket place value page in their calendar books. Kindergarten standards require that students learn that a number in the teens is composed of one set of ten and so many extra ones. We had fun dancing to a "Zero Hero" number song where we sing by ones to one hundred and dance on every 10th number.
During Jesus Time the students learned just how sad it was for Adam and Eve to leave the garden after they sinned. Life on Earth was never the same and it still affects us today. Thankfully God still loved us and sent Jesus to save us. Now we can look forward to a day in heaven where there will be no more suffering, tears, pain, or sadness. Thanks be to God! We continued our literacy centers today and then after a morning recess in the gym began some thematic centers that focused on transportation. Thematic centers rotate in four table groups from Tuesday through Friday. The blue table made "I Can Travel" books and they had fun illustrating different means of transportation as well as focusing on the predictable sentence frame..."I can _____." The yellow table had fun experimenting with float and sink as they made aluminum foil boats. They predicted the amount of various materials that it would take to sink the boat and then they recorded the information with tally marks. The green table made a sight word practice book called "Go Up". Not only does this book teach the words go and up, but it also teaches some color words. The red table drew a picture of how many teeth they lost, printed words in a "t" pictionary, printed Tt, made a sentence, and wrote in their journals about how they like to travel. In gym the students had fun moving to "Red Light, Green Light" and our exercise leader, Ezra, also had fun holding up various locomotor words to give them a variety of ways to travel across the gym. We continued to practice printing the numerals 1-5 and also had fun playing a numeral and set bingo game. Today was a pretty exciting day in kindergarten. We began the day praising God that He made the world and all that is in it....including us! It was wonderful to praise the Lord with the song "My God Is so Great!" especially since today we were thinking about the sun, moon, and stars. One of the verses praises God with the words...."The mountains are His, the rivers are His, the stars are His handiwork too!" The second verse reinforces that God loved us so much He sent Jesus to save us. Some of the words are: "My God loves me so. His love is so mighty. He sent His son Jesus for me.....He died for my sins. He rose from the grave. He'll come back in glory for me."
We also started a new five day rotation of literacy centers today. Each day a group of 3-4 students goes to a different table that works on one of the following skills: alphabet, word work, phonemic awareness, writing, and reading. At the alphabet table the students are sorting cards to find a, m, s, or t, etc. in a variety of fonts. Books have more than one way to print letter a, for instance. It is not always a circle with a straight stick. Lowercase t is not always composed of two straight lines. Sometimes lowercase t has a curve at the bottom. Lowercase g can be extremely confusing for students as we only print one circle and then we put on a tail. However in many books a g has two loops. Having kids sort and recognize letters in various fonts is a very important skill in order to read a variety of stories from different books. At the word work center students are making a predictable book with the sentence frame "See the _____". They are beginning to learn the concept of word and are cutting apart the words that are mixed up and then they have to put the words in the correct order. I noticed that many of the students do not know that words are separated by spaces. As much as possible take your child's finger and point to the words as you read together. Count how many words are in a sentence. We also underlined words that began with letter t today. I could easily tell which kids did not have concept of word because some students underlined every t that they came across. Some underlined an entire sentence with one line. The phonemic awareness table had a spinner game where students had to match words that rhyme. At the writing center students made mini pictionaries and looked for words that began with b, d, m, s, and t. At the reading center students were book detectives as they looked for books with animals, numbers, abcs, and people. We also had a variety of other reading and math activities, but the highlight of the day was when we learned about the solar eclipse. I had around 5 different videos which taught the students what a solar eclipse was. We also were able to watch the live stream from NASA and we were all amazed to see how dark it was in some sections of our nation. We could even hear the crickets on the live stream and talked about how some animals thought it was night. At various times, I took students out with their backs to the sun and they looked down into the cereal box projectors to see the sun/moon image projected onto the bottom of the box. Then I also took one student at a time and held the safety solar glasses to their eyes as we backed safely out of the room and then I held each of their heads up one at a time for a few seconds to get a glimpse of the solar eclipse. It was so cool! I showed a model of the Earth (globe) and I used a flashlight to simulate the sun shining on the Earth. Then I put an object in between the flashlight and the globe to help the students understand how the moon was in the way of the sun and we were in its shadow. There were some excellent simulations on the computer that I was also able to show the students. We sang "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands" and especially enjoyed the sun and moon verse. We have a great God and on a day like today it is hard not to be in awe of His majestic creation! How great He is! |
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