Week 33: Celebrating Our Kindergarten April Stars!

Dear Family, 

We hope you are all doing well! In our kindergarten journey this week, we continued learning, exploring, and sharing what we know with one another and ended our week with a special Friday birthday celebration. Happy Birthday to our three April Kindergarteners who made our week extra special! 

Happy Birthday Lubono, Solomon, and Leul! We love you!

Large Group

We always begin our large group time with warm greetings and our special “How was your weekend?” sharing every Monday. After transitioning from free choice book reading with our transition song, we come together and greet one another, setting a positive tone for the day. This week followed our familiar routine, but with a special twist; our kinders took turns leading our large group story time sessions! Each day, two children had the opportunity to choose and read a book to the class. This experience supported their reading development while also building their confidence, as they proudly shared their voices with their friends.

“On Saturday, I went to ICS with Adelene and Josh and played swing and Adelene made a sand castle and Joshua was pouring water. On Sunday, I was learning some funny things from my church teacher and then we were doing a worship song and the parents were clapping and I saw my mom and aunty.” -Kian

“Last time, with my BYD car my big cat was copying me. When I say mhmmm (sticking out his tongue) she do the same.” -Ismael

“I water the plant outside and go back inside and uhm then I watched my iPad and I watched Dino movie” -Samuel

“Sunday I was staying home and I was watching TV and i didn’t go anywhere. And I watched movie, spider man movie. In Saturday mommy and my daddy went somewhere and daddy drove the car and I stayed at home and I even made a magnet jet and it worked.” -Lubono

“With Betselot I eat donut and drink juice and water and I also eat grapes and blueberry. And then again I go to church” -Yemariam

“With Yemariam and then I eat donut and blueberry and go Yemariam to church” -Betselot

“On Friday, with my daddy, Abi, and Yaredo I went to segdet and it was night time so we walked to our car first to school and he took me back home. In Saturday my daddy go to Germany and bought me socks, shoes, pants, and sweater( he didn’t go with airplane okay he went with his speedy car) and on Sunday it was holiday and my daddy brought cake and I cut it and served for everyone and that’s my weekend. “ -Leul

“The sky is blue” -Nai

“The first day I was watching TV after that I slept when it was night time. The next day was holiday so I celebrate with my mom, uncle, and my grandma and when it’s the next day I was about to come to school but then I got sick so I stayed home.” -Yadon

“First early morning I watched TV and after that I went to buy pizza. In Sunday I woke up and got ready to go somewhere and I went somewhere I mean to church and after that on Monday it was my birthday and my mom said she has a surprise for me. And also my uncle gave me a projector to watch videos with. And my mom’s surprise was even so cool she gave me a science experiment tools that I can do volcanos and chemicals.” -Solomon

Literacy 

This week, we returned to building our word wall by focusing on writing words for the letters I and J during our literacy sessions. Our kinders each received a small circle piece of paper, shared a word that begins with the given letter, sounded it out, and then wrote it down beautifully. It was wonderful to see their growing confidence in connecting sounds to letters. For our special Friday literacy session, we turned reading into a fun game! Our children took turns pulling a card from a box and reading the word aloud. This made our learning feel like play.

Math 

We continued our number line journey this week, focusing on subtraction. Our kinders practiced drawing their own number lines to help them recall the concept and support their learning. They then used their number lines to jump backward to subtract numbers. To our surprise, this was even easier for them than addition! They were quick, confident, and excited as they worked through their worksheets. In our second math session, we brought the activity to the board and made it more interactive. Our children created their own subtraction questions and chose their friends to come up and solve them. Everyone had a turn, and it was a fun and engaging way to learn together.

Science 

This week in science, we continued our human anatomy lessons by exploring bones and muscles. We learned that our body has 206 bones, which help give our body shape and protect our organs. We also discovered that we have over 600 muscles, which help us move, run, jump, and even smile! We talked about joints as well, explaining that they are the places where bones meet, allowing our body to bend and move easily. In our next session, our children brought their learning to life by creating their own skeleton models using Q-tips. They carefully glued the pieces to show how they think a skeleton looks, and the results were creative and impressive!

Art 

This week, we took our silhouette art to the next level by experimenting on a larger scale using chart paper painted black as our background. For our first attempt, we worked together to create one big dinosaur silhouette. Our children were excited to see how a large design would come together, and it helped them understand the concept even better. In our second activity, we used the individual cut out pieces from our previous art session. Our children carefully taped their shapes onto the black chart paper, then painted the empty spaces around them using bright orange and yellow colors. Once the paint dried, we removed the cut outs to reveal their beautiful silhouette effects. The results were bold, creative, and full of color! This helped our children see how their ideas can come to life on a bigger canvas, and they truly enjoyed the process. 

Next week’s schedule:

Monday – Math, Literacy

Tuesday – Literacy, Science

Wednesday -Library, Math 

Thursday - Science, Music

Friday - Library 

Specials:

Monday- Art

Tuesday - Gym

Thursday - Ethiopian center/ clay

Reminders and notes:

• Please make sure that our children are wearing suitable clothes on Monday as we have art class and activities get messy sometimes.

• Every Wednesday and Friday is library day. Our children will be bringing home a book of their choice in their library folder, so please make sure to read the book with them over the weekend. Please return the folder the following Wednesday so they can get a new one.


• Every Tuesday, we have gymnastics, so please ensure that our children come dressed in comfortable and loose fitting sports attire to facilitate their exercise.

• Every Friday, we have football, so please make sure our children wear their football jerseys if they have them, or any comfortable shorts.



So many happy moments this week; can’t wait for more next week!