Week 6 in Kindergarten!

Sep 25

4 min read

Hello Family, We hope all is well on your end, and that everyone is staying healthy through the change of weather and flu season. Thank you for your continued cooperation sending extra clothes, especially jackets, for when the weather changes. We are also paying extra attention to making sure our children stay hydrated at all times. Besides an extra eye on health precautions, our week has been great, as usual. Read on for all the details of our wonderful week!  

Large Group

As usual, we started our mornings with our regular Large Group routines; checking the date, going through our Number Caterpillar, singing our songs, and enjoying a good book together. For our story this week, we read ‘Corduroy’. Through the story, we talked about friendship, patience, and how we should not judge someone simply by their appearance. Lisa sees something special in Corduroy and chooses him even though he is missing a button, reminding us that sometimes the things we value most are not always what we notice at first. This week, one of our main focuses was reading and recognizing two digit numbers. Since we have been working on what comes after a number, we wanted our children to become more comfortable with saying two digit numbers aloud, noticing which digit comes first and which comes second, and recognizing the numbers when they see them.

Literacy

This week in Literacy, we focused on two letters that can sometimes be tricky to tell apart; b and d. We used simple jingles, hand and finger movements, and the familiar bat and ball trick to help our children remember which way each letter faces. We also practiced with flashcards and songs before moving on to a worksheet where the letter b was colored yellow and the letter d was colored green. To make things a little more challenging, we placed the letters next to each other in boxes, giving our children the opportunity to look carefully and identify them even when they appear close together to help build visual recognition and confidence when reading and writing.

Math

In Math, we continued working on our number sequencing skills with the question; “What comes next?” After practicing orally together, our children worked on two worksheets where they had to look carefully at a number sequence and figure out which number should come next. This activity connected nicely to our previous work with missing numbers. We have been practicing recognizing numbers, putting them in order, and understanding how numbers follow one another. Now, our children are becoming more confident at using that knowledge independently.

Science

Remember our science topic last week? Yes, that’s right; it was all about Health and Growth! So, this week, after discussing what grows and giving examples from our own class, we started learning about living things and non living things. It was such a fun lesson to explore, as our children were all eager to participate, share their ideas, and reason out their picks. In our first session, we started with a discussion and then went on a little hunt around the classroom. Each child got a turn to point out two things; one living and one non living. For our second session, we did a cutout worksheet where our children cut out pictures of different objects and sorted them into the right category. It was a fun way to put what we had discussed into practice and see how well they could identify the differences between living and non living things!

Art

Our Art session was all about creating something colorful and personal; jewelry making. Our children were given different colored beads and strings and were encouraged to choose their own colors and create their own necklaces. While they were having fun making their jewelry, they were also practicing important skills such as concentration, hand coordination, sequencing, and recognizing patterns. Some children created simple patterns, while others experimented with their own color combinations.

Gymnastics

For Gymnastics, we continued working on skills that help strengthen our hands and improve coordination. This time, we introduced something that can be a little tricky at first; shoe lacing. We began with a warm up and a little jogging around the classroom before moving on to our shoe models. For this first step, our focus was simply on putting the laces through the correct holes, crossing the laces, and pulling both sides. We know that learning to tie shoes takes time, so we are taking it one step at a time and giving our children plenty of opportunities to practice. It requires hand coordination, concentration, patience, and lots of repetition. Families can also help by practicing with your children at home whenever you have a little time. The more they practice, the more confident they will become.

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.

That’s another week wrapped up in Kindergarten! We can’t wait to see what we explore together next week.