Weekly Update 10/4

 

Enjoy Fall Break -See you at conferences

Important Dates:

10/7-11: Fall Break - no school  

10/14-10/15: Mandatory Q1 conferences 

10/23: Kindergarten Pumpkin Day - please see the sign-up email to help with supplies or volunteering

10/25: Dress like your favorite book character, Treat Friday, Birthday Book Club

11/12:   Music Concert 

11/11: Veteran's Day - No School

11/20: Kindergarten Thanksgiving Celebration - Email is coming with information

11/22: Spirit Wear Day, Treat Friday, Birthday Book Club

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, oo, ch, and ar. 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 finished our study of shapes and used those shapes to talk about patterns. 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. Once we were finished sorting our shapes, it was time to make patterns with them. Since we had practiced sorting in many ways the students were thrilled to see how many ways they could make patterns.

History:

The children traveled to Italy and Greece this week for the history lesson! We learned about the culture and food. The children decorated a map of Italy using pasta one of the common foods in Italy and learned there are about 600 different shapes of pasta. In Greece, the children learned about some of the ancient Greek ideas that we still use today. They also decorated a vase to take home, and enjoyed using stamps and paint to create their designs. 

Science:

We finished our quarter by reviewing our five senses and discussing how to stay healthy. The students enjoyed using a popcorn popper to use all their senses to observe what they were hearing, smelling, touching, seeing, and finally tasting it. We learned that popcorn on its own does not have much flavor but all the goodness comes from the butter and salt. Next quarter, we will begin a new unit for science and learn about plants and animals.