February 16, 2024
Dear Kindergarten Parents,
Our Faith Focus this week: Church is Good. This week we learned that the church is not just the building we enter to go to mass. The church is God’s family, the people who gather to celebrate His love for us. We all make up the church. The class learned the finger play “Here is the Church, Here is the Steeple.” We learned the names for different parts of the church building. The class identified the baptismal font, altar, holy-water font, and crucifix. We concluded this unit by singing one of our favorite songs, We Are The Church, and practicing the hand gestures.
We concluded our coins unit in math. The class reviewed identification of the penny, nickel, dime, and quarter and assigned value to each. Our Kinder Mart continued in home living in the afternoons to end our money unit. We priced (pretend) fruits, vegetables, and cupcakes to sell. Our prices went up to one dollar. The children practiced picking different sets of coins to add up to the same price. One dime and two pennies will give us twelve cents but so will one nickel and seven pennies. The children continued sorting coins by word, number and value. Our “Buy Me a Quarter” game became “Buy Me a Dollar” with the same directions but used a different ending value.
Sheep Take a Hike, from our Journeys program, crossed curriculum by not only providing new verbs in present tense but by providing an example of sink and float as well. The sheep got lost and fell into a river. Their snacks and hats float but their compass sinks! This was a great introduction for magnets next week. The letter W brought us Wendell and Willoughby and the Lion. These books helped us focus on friendship and individuality. We also learned about our 16th President with Mr. Lincoln’s Whiskers. Ask your child how he got the idea to grow his famous beard.
We continued using our popcorn words in short sentences and we worked hard to recognize the short a and i sound in the middle of words. Ask your child what our gesture clues are for each of the vowels. Our spelling and decoding skills are getting stronger! Our popcorn words were: every, very, your, did, but.
In science, we learned about simple machines. We used a claw machine to demonstrate levers and a pulley on Thursday to deliver some Valentine treats! The children constructed inclined planes with blocks and cardboard tubing. We placed the inclined planes at different heights to see how the speed of the vehicles would change. The children looked for examples wherever we went. We have inclined panes and a wheel and axel on the playground. In fact, we use simple machines everyday. Forks (wedge), scissors (lever), and the blinds (pulley), make our jobs easier. They recognized the screw tops on our water bottles are simple machines too!
We were officially 100 days smarter on Friday! The number 100 was brought into every area of our classroom. We stamped ten gum balls in ten different colors to give us 100 total. Could 100 water beads sink the boat in the sensory table? You bet! The children even took 100 steps which led us to first grade! The first grade students showed the kindergarteners what it was like to be a first grader.
Next Week: Our letter of the week is J. Letter box presentations will be on Thursday and Friday. There is no school on Monday, February 19.