Wow...how time flies!

Summer is almost here. Where on Earth did the time go?! We have learned a lot this year, both academically and of each other. If I should say so myself, we have had a lot of fun doing so!


Our theme for the remainder of the school year is "Under the Sea". We have enjoyed learning about what goes on under water, the animals/mammals that live there, what they eat, how they live, etc. We used our classroom iPads to research our favorite underwater creature. The drawings of these creatures will go into our portfolios. Currently, we are creating our own "Under the Sea" boxes. Complete with seaweed, seashells, our favorite sea creatures, sand and other things, these boxes have been a joy to create! Be on the lookout for them soon.

Under the Sea puzzle!

 

Lucey's Under the Sea box (in the making)!

Our last two letters for Sound of the Week were X and Q. Chanelle was in charge of sharing those letter sounds with the class. She found items from around the room and even printed some pictures so that we could learn all about those tricky letter sounds. The list of words we brainstormed was short in comparison to some of the ones we have made in the past, but we still tried our best and came up with a pretty impressive list.

X and Q sound of the Week

X is for fox

X and Q handwriting

 

Q is for quail

 

 

Recently, in Math, we have begun to learn about symmetry. We learned about three different kinds of symmetry, but focused mainly on bilateral symmetry. Chanelle even drew a line down the middle of her face with a marker (washable of course) to show us an example of bilateral symmetry. We did a painting activity to help us better understand what symmetry is. We folded a piece of paper in half and painted only one half of the paper. We then folded the painted side of the paper onto the clean side of the paper, which resulted in the creation of our very own version of bilateral SYMMETRY!

 

Symmetry painting!

 

Giraffes Can't Dance costumes

 

 

 

We planted different kinds of seeds during Community Day a few weeks ago. When Farmer Joe let us know that it was time for harvest, we, along with our Kindergarten Friends, picked the lettuce from our PK/K garden. It was a lot of work, but we enjoyed doing it.

 

Lettuce from our PK/K garden!

 

 

Popsicles with our Senior Buddies!

 

Field Trip to Brookside Gardens!

 

 

Field Day!

 

 

 

Earth Stewardship Day and More!

The weeks seem to be passing by so quickly as of late. It is hard to believe that we are upon the end of APRIL!! We have been hard at work in PK, enjoying the outdoors as much as the weather permits. Earth Stewardship Day was a lot of fun for us, and has inspired us to pick up trash we see around campus and try our best to be good stewards of the earth. We recently decided to clean out our birdbath so that birds can have a place to cool off on hot days. We brought out the water hose (some of us got a little wet...imagine the laughter!) and cleaned the birdbath, then filled it with water. After that we thought, how about a bird feeder? In the coming days, we will have to see what we can do about that. (I feel a science project coming on!)

Earth Stewardship Day!

 

Leila and Chanelle working in the Garden!

 

 

Cleaning the birdbath!

 

 

Over the last couple of weeks we have had two Sounds for Sound of the Week. Our Friend Owen shared the /R/ sound with us and our Friend Rose shared the /Y/ sound.

Owen brought in a ring, a rock, a ruler, a rake, the color red, Rapunzel, a rabbit, and the name Rose hand-written on a piece of red paper. We brainstormed many words that begin with the /r/ sound, listened to the R song and read the AlphaTales book, Rosie Rabbit's Radish.

/R/ with Owen!

 

 

Our Letter R craft activity? Rabbits, of course.

R is for rabbit!

 

 

We took handwriting to the streets (or the sidewalk) for the letter R. We wrote letters big, small, long and tall all over the sidewalk. It was a rather beautiful day, and we really enjoyed it!

Sidewalk chalk (letter R)

 

 

For the /Y/ sound, our Friend Rose brought in a yogurt container, some yarn, a Yankees baseball cap, the color yellow, and a Yy spin wheel. We read the AlphaTales book, The Yak Who Yelled Yuck, listened to the Y song, brainstormed a list of /y/ words that included words such as yak, yarn, yawn, yum, your, yo-yo, York, yacht, year, yam, you, yesterday, yard, yolk, young, etc.

 

/Y/ with Rose!

 

Y is for Yak!

 

 

 

During handwriting this week we worked on how to properly form the letter Y. We also wrote our favorite word that begins with the /y/ sound. Take a look below.

Handwriting (letter Y)

 

 

Counting Jar!

 

 

Please visit our Life Skills page for an update!

 

 

Outdoor exploration...and other things!

Photo taken by our friend, Suzannah, in Scott House :-)

With Spring comes warmer weather...well, most of the time. With warmer weather comes a lot more outdoor exploration. We have been using our iPads to create Nature books with an app called Book Creator. Once we get them all done and printed out, we will send them home. During Technology, we go outside to take pictures on the iPad of signs of "Spring". Flowers, trees, honeysuckle, plants, and even bees! One of our friends thought we could take a picture of the wind. We tried it, but it didn't exactly turn out too well.
 

Taking photos for our nature books!

Sound sort with W and H was a breeze. We had a hard time keeping the horn and the whistle out of our mouths, so Chanelle had to remind us about how germs spread, and ended up taking those two items out of the sound sort. Oh, to be young and without cares!

W/H sound sort!

 

 



Handwriting practice in shaving cream! So much fun!

 

 

Last Friday we participated in a project called Smart Sacks. We discussed, in class, what it felt like to help others. We also discussed what Smart Sacks was all about. It is an organization that helps to feed children over the weekend, that may only eat when they come to school. We met Fifth Graders in the Dining Hall and put together bags of food for the children in need. We had a lot of fun.

Smart Sacks with 5th grade buddy!

 

 

 

 

20 ladybugs in the Counting Jar!

 

 

 

Besides our weekly Counting Jar for Math, we began a new pattern. It was not that difficult for us to learn. Once we got the hang of it, we created our own ABBA patterns. Take a look below.
 

ABBA patterns!



 

 

 

Our most recent sound of the week was /Ll/ with our friend, Lucey. She brought in a lid, a lemon, licorice, a ladybug, Leila, Lucey, a letter, a Lego, Lalaloopsy, and a Lollipop. We read the Alpha Tales book, The Lamb that Loved to Laugh, and watched The L Song on video. Our list of brainstormed words included; lion, leap, lovely, lucky, library, light saber, Luke Skywalker, lazy, lemonade, learn, leopard, light, lost, love, lamp, listen, Lori, etc.

/Ll/ with Lucey!

 

 

 

L is for Lion!

 

 



Our friend, Leila, shared the /Hh/ sound with us. She brought in items from home such as a hanger, a hello sign, a help sign, a heart, a hair tie, a hat, a horse, a hairbrush, and Henry Hugglemonster. We read the Alpha Tales book, Hide-and-Seek Hippo, and brainstormed a heap of words, which included, horns, hiccups, hop, hog, hands, her, him, happens, hamster, hive, hummingbird, hose, hook, hurt, hungry, hospital, have, honk, hexagon, etc. We watched The H Song video and danced along, happily. 

/Hh/ with Leila!

 

 

 

Letter H houses!

 

 

 

 

During Community Time last week, we listened to and learned about Latin American Music. We sang in different languages, danced, and some of us even got the chance to play some instruments! 

 Music with Cantare!



 

 

Please visit the Life Skills page for an update!

Spring is Almost here!

 

Where does the time go?! We have been very busy down in Pre-K...identifying and learning new letters and sounds, having fun with art projects, utilizing our counting jar, learning about nursery rhymes and fairy tales (and now into our Everything Grows and Grows unit), planting and growing, and preparing for Spring.

 

M with Rose!

M for Mouse

H with Leila!

 

 

 

 

Our Friend, Ibou, introduced us to the letter sound /W/. He brought in a wallet, a watch, a washcloth, a wheel, a wagon, and a piece of wood. We loved reading the AlphaTales book, Worm's Wagon, and watching a clip of the W song. We made walruses and had a lot of fun doing so.

 

 

 

 

Bryce introduced us to the letter sound /N/. He brought in some nutritious nuts, the number 9, Nike, and a few other items. We watched a clip of the N song and read the AlphaTales book, The Nicest Newt. We also made a nest out of 6 letter Ns and a pattern of eggs.

 

 

We are creative!

 

 

 

In math we have been working hard at completing our weekly counting jar. So far, we've had hexagons, wheels, ladybugs and river rocks. What will be in our next counting jar? We will see when we come back from Spring Break.

 

10 wheels

14 hexagons

17 river rocks

19 ladybugs

 

 

100th day counting!

 

Rose's Family Share: We looked at baby pictures of Rose, Her older sister, Ruby, and her younger brother, Kingsley, and tried to guess which one was Rose. They all looked alike when they were babies! We also played Go Fish. It was a lot of fun.

 

We collected some tiny pinecones from under a tree!

 

 

Last week we planted some seeds. They are in our sunroom getting plenty of light. It has been fun and exciting to watch our plants grow! We learned about the five things needed in order for seeds to grow into plants, flowers, vegetables, etc. They are; water, sunlight, soil, air, and a lot of love.

 

 

After Spring Break we will continue our theme of Everything Grows and Grows, with lots of math and science, as well as outdoor exploration.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Winter Fun

We have had a few snow days over the last couple of weeks, but we are back in the swing of things. This week we began our unit on Fairy Tales and Nursery Rhymes. Our teacher can hardly believe it, but we can tell the story ourselves using our storyteller figurines. So far we have read, The Three Billy Goats Gruff, The Three Little Pigs and Goldilocks and the Three Bears. It is something to see. Hopefully, we will be able to share some stories with you soon.

Our last Sound of the Week was /J/ with Owen. He brought in items such as jewelry, jam, jet, jeep, Jedi, a Jesus book and a Jonah book, photos of Jupiter, a jacket, and juice. Our list of other words that begin with the /j/ had words like Jake, jamboree, jump rope, jelly bean, jaguar, January, jar, jungle, jump, July, Japan, joke, junk, just, jersey, etc. We read the Alphatales book, Jaguar's Jungleberry Jamboree, and sang along to a clip of ABC Mouse's letter J song. Our craft activity was making jellyfish. We had a lot of fun painting and gluing.

 

 

 

 

 

We were also able to complete our S/Z sound sort this week. I believe we are getting the hang of this.

 

 

 

 

 

In Math we continued working on perfecting our ABA pattern, and began on our weekly Counting Jar. This will help us with counting with accuracy and one to one correspondence, as well as identifying numerals and matching them with their quantities.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The highlight of our week, for certain, was our field trip to the Ice Rink! We got to try on some cool hockey gear and learned a lot about hockey from Coach Jason. We also got to check out the fabulous facility, see a Zamboni transform to empty the water and ice that was inside, and best of all, we got to skate on the ice. Some of us were so good at skating that we needed very little help from the friendly staff members.  

 

 

Please take a look at our Life Skills page for last week's lesson.