Weekly Update 9/27

 Important Dates:

10/7-15: Fall Break - no school  

10/14 & 10/15: Mandatory Q1 conferences (Parent only event)

10/23: Kindergarten Pumpkin Day - please see the sign-up email (sent by class liaisons to help with supplies or volunteering)

10/27: Dress like your favorite book character, Treat Friday, Birthday Book Club

11/11: Veteran's Day - No School

11/12: Music Concert 

11/20: Kindergarten Thanksgiving Celebration - Email is forthcoming and will give much more information

11/27-11/29: Thanksgiving Break- No School

Check out what we learned this week:

Spalding:

Throughout the week, we reviewed all single 26 single-letter phonograms. We also introduced our 1st set of 2 letter phonograms: sh, ee, th, ow, ou. We focused on where our tongue is when we say the sounds for th. One is unvoiced with air, and one is voiced with sound, but our tongue is between our teeth for both. This skill takes a while for some children, so please keep practicing at home. Example: practice saying Thursday, three, the, or this and have them observe where their tongue is in the mirror. Then, have them practice watching where their tongue should be. We also continued to work on finding the syllables and sounds for simple words. We will soon begin weekly Spelling words. 

Literature:

This week, we read Arrow of the Sun, a Pueblo Native American tale. We talked about virtuous characteristics, such as courage and perseverance. We continued our week reading Jumping Mouse and learned about friendship, perseverance, and wisdom. Then we read another Native American Legend called The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush. The class talked about how Native Americans used plants to make colors and dyes for things. For poetry, we listened to the poem One, Two Buckle my Shoe. We acted it out and talked about rhymes and numbers. While studying grammar, we spoke about capitalizing the 1st word in a sentence. We also continued to review retelling a story or part of a longer story. 

Math

This week in math we continued our study of shapes. We have learned all about cones, cubes, cylinders, spheres, circles, squares, rectangles, triangles, and hexagons. We discussed all of the different attributes to the shapes and defined a lot of new vocabulary like faces, sides, and corners. The scholars successfully sorted shapes by many different attributes and had a lot of fun trying to find obscure ways to sort our shapes. Students were asked to explain the difference between a square and rectangle and how putting shapes together can make new shapes. There was lots of hands on practice in class this week and the students were even challenged to draw a picture out of circles, triangles, squares, and rectangles. The students became very creative with their drawings and making different looking rectangles or triangles. They discovered that as long as it had 3 sides and 3 corners it was accepted and had a lot of fun manipulating it to fit their picture.

History

The children traveled to Spain and France this week for the history lesson! We learned about the culture and food. We watched a video on Flamenco dancing, and the children enjoyed clapping along with the music. When discussing France, the children were shocked to hear people eat escargot! One phrase I used is, "Don't yuck my yum." You might not like something, but that doesn't mean it's the same for everyone. We also learned all about the Eiffel Tower. The same person who designed the Eiffel Tower also designed the Statue of Liberty. We also learned there is an apartment at the top. 

Science

In keeping with our previous talks about healthy bodies, we experimented by soaking hard-boiled eggs in various liquids overnight to see what happened. The experiment taught us that some beverages stain our teeth, and some eat away at the enamel, causing cavities. The students were very surprised that toothpaste doesn't always help get rid of the stains, and the only way to prevent cavities is to brush twice a day and visit the dentist.