La Lectura

It was very exciting to see how quickly the children are learning! We reviewed the vowels, A E I O U with their sounds and motions with their hands. They learned a song, “El barquito” where children learned to focus attention by mimicking the rhymes of the song as well as review counting the numbers.

We practice making curved lines and circles, first making strokes in the air with their fingers to later make the strokes on the whiteboard and then writing circles on sheets of paper. We learned that many letters have curves and circles. (We made a list of them.)

We read the book again, Look Out, Kindergarten! Here I come! (¡Prepárate Kindergarten!, Allá voy! and summarized the main events.

The children shared their thoughts and feelings about the story, encouraging them to think about and become aware of how stories are written. We used pictures to retell a story, likewise they learned the vocabulary used in the school that they use to read: book, big book, letter, card, poster. Also, we tried different types of writing materials: pencil, crayons, marker, pen.

As a follow up, students were reminded that letters make words in reading and writing so we practiced with different words as well as with their names so they could make the connection between what letters these words carry and how they sound.

In order to continue expanding their vocabulary in Spanish, we did fun activities , labeling different utensils in the classroom: board (pizarron), table (mesa), door(puerta), desk (escritorio), chair (silla), window (ventana), wall (pared).

The students learned two new focus words (word of the day) “El, La” (The) where children contribute ideas to make sentences and then write those ideas in their notebooks.

Las matemáticas

We continued working with numbers 1- 6 practicing their strokes, the amount they represent, whether it is even or odd and what is a “ones place” / unidad in the place value chart. We also worked on forming tallies. Four down and the fifth one crosses to make a group! We will be working with tallies every day, all year long. (We keep tallies for their Spanish usage in the class to earn trips to the treasure box as a class. They learn to LOVE tallies!)

“Jack be nimble…”

History & Geography

“Jack be quick!”

Another terrific week! The class has been having fun with our unit on Nursery Rhymes. We have been doing lots of singing and acting out. Your children are excited to share some of these with you in their “I Can Read This!” binder which will come home next week after we discuss it in Curriculum Night.

Our weekly objectives were to:
• act out familiar nursery rhymes
• identify rhyming pairs when listening to poems
• listen to, understand, and recite the rhymes: “Jack be Nimble”, “Jack and Jill”,” Little Miss Muffet”, “This Little Pig Went to Market”

Little Miss Muffet and her spider friend.

• find and circle word wall words in copies of the rhymes.

Science

We began our first science domain on Farms. The class is learning about what a farm is and what they might find there. This week our focus has been some of the animals found on a farm.

Our weekly objectives were to:

• explain what a farm is
• describe the farmers job
• Identify some animals on a farm and the sounds they make
• describe how some food comes from farms as crops
• Identify some buildings on farms
• sing Old MacDonald Had a Farm

English Sight Words of the Week

blue, go, the, be, he, her, to, and

Character Education

This month in Character Education we are focusing on Kindness. We have done a few hands-on lessons with cotton balls, sandpaper, a tub of water with rocks/leaves/feathers/pinecones. Our objectives for the lessons were:

What makes a good friend?
Words, tone, and facial expressions can affect our message to our friends.
Cotton ball words/tone/facial expressions are received as kind. (Please, Thank you, May I help you? Good job!)
Sand paper words/tone/facial expression are not kind.
Each Kindness by Jaqueline Woodson – to show how each small act of kindness has a ripple effect.
Compliment circles- practice giving and receiving compliments (say thank you!)

Week 2 Kindergarten News