The Beginning!
Dear Little Einstein’s Families,
We would like to say welcome to our old and new families to our weekly blogs were you could see the activities your child has been doing. It is very important not only to see the activities but also to help your child at home on different areas based on what they have learned the whole week.
Meet our Group!
Pre-k: Zeno, Eliab, and Aylin
Kindergarten: Joy, Sachi, Yanet and Finnegan
Our class designs
We have Large group and Small group.
Large Group: it is an exploration time that includes,
· Reading books: it includes storybooks, comprehension books, and ‘I can read’ books that helps them with reading.
· Calendar: It is where they explore with, days of the week, month of the year, date, weather, sound of letters and counting.
· Zoo-Phonics corner: a corner where they explore with sounds of all the letters with Zoo animal stories.
· Caterpillar: as the name indicated it is a caterpillar that grows one number a day. It has pattern and tell us how many days it has been since we start school.
· Music and Movement: the groups favorite time! We explore with different songs that has, instructions, numbers, days, months, sounds of letters and many more.
· Board message: different questions that will help us to have a transition to small group.
Small Group: Small group is a specific activity that the children explore with throughout the week. This week,
o Zoo-Phonics introduction: last week, most of our groups quickly settle down to our daily routines, school and classroom responsibilities and rules. Based on that, we started our normal classroom activities right away. We explore with different flashcards and talked about what their beginning sounds are, after that we matched the flashcards on the Zoo-phonics, which were only letter ‘a, b, c and d’.
o Classification of natural materials: last week Sachi, Eliab and Joy played a pretend game, where they used a dry leaf as money to sell donuts. And this week, after talking about what natural materials are and where we can find them, we collected, dry leaf, sand, water, and rocks (Both smooth and rough). We classified them as, hard, soft, smooth, rough, pointy, and colorless (For the water).
o ‘More’ and ‘Less’: counting numbers is part of our daily large group activity while doing our caterpillar. This week for our math session, we tried to see the concept of ‘More’ and ‘Less’ by counting numbers until forty with the kindergartens and single digits with Pre-Ks.
o The Mat is Lava: inspired by the song “The floor is Lava” we have created our own game called ‘The mat is lava’ were we put different pictures of animals and action figures on a mat and circle them around until we stop the music. When the music stops, they show us the action of the picture they stand on except the picture of Lava, if you stand on the Lava you lose!
Afternoon session
Afternoon session includes different activities with a focus of academic areas for the pre-k and kindergartens. Here are the schedules of afternoon and the activities they explored with this week.
§ 12:30-1:15 Lunch and magnet exploration
§ 1:15-2:00 Small group
§ 2:00-2:20 Quite time and reading books.
§ 2:20-3:00 Different work time centers.
§ 3:00-3:30 recess and pick up time
The activities they explored with this week.
o Jumping on a number: math exploration was about number identification from 15-40 by jumping on a different number their teacher asks them to jump on.
o Natural and man-made materials: a continuation of our small group activity, where they had a long conversation and exploration on what man-made and natural materials are.
o CVC and sounds of letters: after taking observation of our groups in kindergarten, we come up with a game called, “Hunt the CVC” were they hunt CVC words from a big bowel and blend the words to read with their teacher help. The Pre-k also explored with the same activities but focused on the sound of each letter makes.
o Tossing water Balloons: as it was a request by the pre-k and Kindergartens to play water fun, this Thursday, we played with water balloons for our cooperative games. We did not get to the splashing part, as some of our friends did not bring extra cloth to change.
Reminders
o Since it is rainy season, please send your child with raincoat and boots.
o Some of our activities will include paints and water so please send your child with extra cloth, including underwear.
o We will start Art with paint soon; in our special day program, which is Tuesday, therefore it is advisable to send your child with an old cloth.
How Pre-k and Kindergartens spend their week with Pictures
