We have had a busy last couple of days. The students started some thematic centers based on an apple theme. Based on the book The Seasons of Arnold's Apple Tree, the students are making their own version to help them learn about the seasons. Another great book by Dr. Seuss entitled Ten Apples on Top gives the students a chance to practice patterns and counting as they glue mini apples onto their photo. Look for these to be in the hallway soon. Their photos are priceless as it appears they are trying to balance ten apples on each of their heads. At another center the students are learning the sight words "as" and "am" with a book titled I Am. They are writing apple stories in their journals, practicing the correct formation of Aa, and learning some of the sounds of a as they find words in a dictionary. In Math the students are doing beginning addition as they are making number combinations. In Indiana students learn to compose and decompose numbers. Using two different colors the students try to find a variety of ways to make a specified number. In gym yesterday the students had fun playing a train tag game. In Science the students learned that the sun appears so large because it is so close. Other stars appear to be small because they are far away. We modeled this in the hallway using two paper plates that were identical in size. The students pretended to be the Earth. I placed both plates on chairs in close proximity. Then I had the students observe "another star" as I moved that plate/chair to the opposite end of the hallway. They noticed that the plate looked much smaller when it was far away. However, when I brought that "other star" back close to them, it appeared the same size as the "sun".
Today we began learning about how God kept His promise to Abraham and gave him the blessing of a son. God is faithful and keeps His promises. Most of all He kept the promise to send Jesus to be our Savior.
We started a new set of literacy centers this week. The students are sequencing story cards, stamping words, making words out of playdough, playing a letter race, and identifying words that begin with the /b/ sound. Later during Math the students used manipulatives in their Math tool kits to play a match it game. They compared to see if their partners counted the same number of blocks. Later we worked together to find combinations that make 7. We colored pumpkins to show that 1 and 6, 2 and 5, 3 and 4, 7 and 0, etc. all make 7. We learned quite a bit about parts of an apple as well as the growth cycle of apple trees. It was fun to watch a special video to help us learn more about apples. Did you know that on the other side of the world you can find a variety of apples that can weigh up to 4 pounds? We look forward to learning more about apples throughout the week. Today we had fun singing and dancing to the song "Father Abraham". It was fun to praise the Lord as well as learn right and left. If you don't know the song, have your child teach it to you. We enjoyed a fun story about dinosaurs that went to school and broke all kinds of rules. Then we tried to identify with the characters. The students drew how one of the dinosaurs felt in the story. Then we all thought about how we would feel if a dinosaur came to our school and we drew pictures to show our feelings. Later in the day the students had fun in the gym as we played a game called "Squirrels in Trees". Students had to move quickly to find an open tree. In Science the students learned about morning, noon, and evening sun positions. They learned through a song and some photos that the sun appears to be low in the sky during morning and evening. It is high in the sky at noon or in the afternoon. We also learned that the position of the sun affects the length of the shadows. It was fun for the students to use flashlights to see how the shadow length changes if the light source is low compared to high. We ended the day with a fun book and CD called No Sleep for the Sheep. Tomorrow we will see if the sheep solve the problem. Earlier in the week we had another farm book called Farmer Duck and it was also fun to make inferences and predictions about the plot.
It was the 20th day of kindergarten and the kids knew it right away before the bell. They were so excited because they knew it was a "Zero Hero" day. On every 10th day we get to dance a special song as we count by ones to 100 and we get to dance a special way on every 10th number. Kindergarten starts learning place value from the start. Our state standards require that kindergarten students learn that numbers in the teens are composed of a set of ten and so many ones. We were also surprised today that it was so cool. We entered 50 degrees on our September thermometer page. We continued our literacy centers as well as our thematic centers and each child was at a different center than yesterday. The students also made several special books to practice number words and color words. They will bring these home on Friday. We continued to work hard on identifying 3D shapes as well as positions. They will each be tested on the names of these shapes as well as left and right. Please work on these skills at home as well. Thanks!
It was good to get back to school today after a nice Labor Day weekend. We learned how the Lord blessed Abraham and how He still blesses us today. The best blessing of all is our Savior. We started another rotation of literacy centers today. At the alphabet center the students have fun looking through magnifying glasses to find lowercase letters and a corresponding picture with a matching initial sound. At the word work center the students are making a predictable sentence book with the sentence frame "Here are _____." They have to match the fall picture to a word with a matching initial sound as well as cut out each sentence and put the words in order. At the phonemic awareness center the students are playing a spinner game to identify rhyming words. The writing center has picture and word cards. The students play "I spy...." and look for the word to print that matches the picture. At the reading center the students find a book and draw pictures of the characters, setting, and their favorite part. We also started a new theme this week. It is fun to learn about the farm and the students will be making American Gothic pictures of their own to mimic Grant Wood's famous picture. They will also be making a variety of farm books to practice some of their sight words. At another center the students are making a "Farm Seasons" book to help them learn about different events that happen throughout the year on a farm. They are also printing Ff, words that begin with f, and farm stories. This afternoon the students reviewed 3D shapes with a special video and worked hard to identify which 3D shapes have flat faces. They also had to identify the shape of the faces. It was fun to play barn bingo. The students made their own bingo cards by printing the numerals 1-9. Then we played bingo several times. It was fun to read a variety of farm books as well.
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