Hello everyone!
It was another fun-filled week of learning! Here’s the scoop…
Science:
We began by finishing up our study of the sun with an experiment, putting a candle in a jar to show how fire needs oxygen to burn, and will burn out when it is cut off from air. This helped the kids understand that the sun isn’t really “on fire,” as we understand fire, since there is no air in space. Rather, the sun produces light and heat through the reaction of the gases that are colliding within the sun (nuclear fusion, but we don’t expect them to remember that term!). The kids loved the experiment, and also thought it was really cool that we couldn’t smell the smoke from the candle until we opened the jar… that the scent molecules were trapped inside until then.
From there we had an overview lesson on how all the planets orbit the sun at different distances from the sun. We talked about how the earth is the “Goldilocks” planet… not too hot, not too cold, but just right! And we learned that there is a dwarf planet named Ceres hiding in the asteroid belt between Mars and the gas giants, and that in addition to Pluto, there is another dwarf planet named Eris orbiting the sun in the far-distant Kuiper Belt. Something else really cool is that some planets have MOONS that are bigger than the dwarf planets, but that what makes a planet a planet (or a dwarf planet haha) isn’t just the size of the object, but also that it has to orbit the SUN.
We also learned some neat facts about the planet Mercury…. that it is a small, rocky, hot planet, that is the closest to the sun. We learned that gravity and weight vary from planet to planet, and that a child who weighed 50 lbs on earth would weigh about 19 lbs on Mercury, because the gravitational pull there is less. Cool!
Literacy:
Workstations and reading practice continue at full-steam! In addition, we did some fun games this week, reading and spelling CVC words for some of the students, and unscrambling sentences and getting more familiar with sentence form for other students (ie, how questions vary from statements, how a sentence has to be a complete thought, but can be a short thought OR a long thought, etc).
For Writer’s Workshop, we did a fun writing task around the prompt “I’m going to the moon!” The kids had to imagine that they were going to the moon tomorrow, and that they had just told someone important to them. They had to decide how that person might respond to them…. ie, would mom say “NO WAY!”? ;P Would she say, “have fun, and don’t forget your astronaut helmet!”? Would brother say, “No fair, I want to come!”? All of those are paraphrases of some of the cute and funny responses the kids came up with…. We will be putting them together into a class book to start making the rounds home with the kids next week. :)
Math:
A “timely” week in Math! This week we continued to focus on clocks. To say the children are becoming experts in telling the time to the hour is an understatement. They are amazing!! The clock write the room to the hour has been a speedy Math Station due to their knowledge.
This week we introduced half past and looked at both the digital and analog representation of time. We know that when we see :00 after an hour, such as 12:00, it represents time to the hour and that when we see :30 after an hour it represents time to the half hour.
We played a fun game with a large clock mat where we had to roll the dice and make the time, moving the hands on the clock! We found that in order to make it say half past the long hand, also known as the minute hand, has to be on the 6 and the short hand, also known as the hour hand, has to be in between the hour it’s gone past and the next hour.
We will continue to revisit the fact that the long hand is known as the minute hand and that the short hand is known as the hour hand.
Our Math Stations this week included:
In other news:
We had a great session in the computer lab, learning how to use Microsoft Word to create illustrations of the sun. This involved not only understanding the sequential steps to do so, but also a lot of coordination with the mouse, clicking and dragging, etc. It was an exciting challenge! We hope to have another session soon, to keep practicing these new skills through creating illustrations of the planets as well.
Friday was pretty special, as the Kindergarteners had the chance to showcase some of what we have been doing lately during our EL Assembly. Each Kindergarten class sang a song from our class plays, and then sang “I Think You’re Wonderful” (a song from our Grandparents’ Day show) to Mrs. Zupancic, whose last day as our librarian was also Friday. (*sniff sniff*) The students did an awesome job!
Big thanks to our Academic Helper this week, Ana’s mom Samantha! She did an awesome job helping some of the kids with a sentence unscrambling activity. Thanks also to our parent helpers during lunchtime Wednesday: Ana’s mom Samantha (Super Volunteer for the week! ;P), Luke’s dad Mark, and Naviyd’s mom Tameka.
Have a great weekend! :)
Below, some pictures from a fun clock lesson with Mrs. K. Be sure to check out Shutterfly for lots more photos!
It was another fun-filled week of learning! Here’s the scoop…
Science:
We began by finishing up our study of the sun with an experiment, putting a candle in a jar to show how fire needs oxygen to burn, and will burn out when it is cut off from air. This helped the kids understand that the sun isn’t really “on fire,” as we understand fire, since there is no air in space. Rather, the sun produces light and heat through the reaction of the gases that are colliding within the sun (nuclear fusion, but we don’t expect them to remember that term!). The kids loved the experiment, and also thought it was really cool that we couldn’t smell the smoke from the candle until we opened the jar… that the scent molecules were trapped inside until then.
From there we had an overview lesson on how all the planets orbit the sun at different distances from the sun. We talked about how the earth is the “Goldilocks” planet… not too hot, not too cold, but just right! And we learned that there is a dwarf planet named Ceres hiding in the asteroid belt between Mars and the gas giants, and that in addition to Pluto, there is another dwarf planet named Eris orbiting the sun in the far-distant Kuiper Belt. Something else really cool is that some planets have MOONS that are bigger than the dwarf planets, but that what makes a planet a planet (or a dwarf planet haha) isn’t just the size of the object, but also that it has to orbit the SUN.
We also learned some neat facts about the planet Mercury…. that it is a small, rocky, hot planet, that is the closest to the sun. We learned that gravity and weight vary from planet to planet, and that a child who weighed 50 lbs on earth would weigh about 19 lbs on Mercury, because the gravitational pull there is less. Cool!
Literacy:
Workstations and reading practice continue at full-steam! In addition, we did some fun games this week, reading and spelling CVC words for some of the students, and unscrambling sentences and getting more familiar with sentence form for other students (ie, how questions vary from statements, how a sentence has to be a complete thought, but can be a short thought OR a long thought, etc).
For Writer’s Workshop, we did a fun writing task around the prompt “I’m going to the moon!” The kids had to imagine that they were going to the moon tomorrow, and that they had just told someone important to them. They had to decide how that person might respond to them…. ie, would mom say “NO WAY!”? ;P Would she say, “have fun, and don’t forget your astronaut helmet!”? Would brother say, “No fair, I want to come!”? All of those are paraphrases of some of the cute and funny responses the kids came up with…. We will be putting them together into a class book to start making the rounds home with the kids next week. :)
Math:
A “timely” week in Math! This week we continued to focus on clocks. To say the children are becoming experts in telling the time to the hour is an understatement. They are amazing!! The clock write the room to the hour has been a speedy Math Station due to their knowledge.
This week we introduced half past and looked at both the digital and analog representation of time. We know that when we see :00 after an hour, such as 12:00, it represents time to the hour and that when we see :30 after an hour it represents time to the half hour.
We played a fun game with a large clock mat where we had to roll the dice and make the time, moving the hands on the clock! We found that in order to make it say half past the long hand, also known as the minute hand, has to be on the 6 and the short hand, also known as the hour hand, has to be in between the hour it’s gone past and the next hour.
We will continue to revisit the fact that the long hand is known as the minute hand and that the short hand is known as the hour hand.
Our Math Stations this week included:
- Writing a calendar journal page with Mrs K and finishing our very own clocks. We made sure that we had a different colored minute hand and hour hand to help us remember the difference, then added fasteners so we can change the time on them.
- Roll a Time - where the children rolled two large dice, one with a number for the hour and one with the representation of time to the hour and half hour. After rolling the dice the children then changed the hands on a large clock mat to match what they had rolled.
- O’clock Write The Room - where the children had to go around the room and record the times they found.
- Odd and Even Street - where the children made a neighborhood with two sides of the street, one Odd and one Even.
- Roll a quarter - where the children rolled a quarter ten times and recorded how many times it landed on heads or tails using tally marks.
- Go Spaceman - where the children played a space version of go fish with astronaut and alien number cards.
- Subtract a spaceman - where the children had a dry erase game board with two spinners. They used the spinners to help write a subtraction number sentence and then used manipulatives to find the answer.
- Computers - this week the children played a counting game where they had to find a set amount of objects, they got to choose from honey, bees and butterflies!
In other news:
We had a great session in the computer lab, learning how to use Microsoft Word to create illustrations of the sun. This involved not only understanding the sequential steps to do so, but also a lot of coordination with the mouse, clicking and dragging, etc. It was an exciting challenge! We hope to have another session soon, to keep practicing these new skills through creating illustrations of the planets as well.
Friday was pretty special, as the Kindergarteners had the chance to showcase some of what we have been doing lately during our EL Assembly. Each Kindergarten class sang a song from our class plays, and then sang “I Think You’re Wonderful” (a song from our Grandparents’ Day show) to Mrs. Zupancic, whose last day as our librarian was also Friday. (*sniff sniff*) The students did an awesome job!
Big thanks to our Academic Helper this week, Ana’s mom Samantha! She did an awesome job helping some of the kids with a sentence unscrambling activity. Thanks also to our parent helpers during lunchtime Wednesday: Ana’s mom Samantha (Super Volunteer for the week! ;P), Luke’s dad Mark, and Naviyd’s mom Tameka.
Have a great weekend! :)
Below, some pictures from a fun clock lesson with Mrs. K. Be sure to check out Shutterfly for lots more photos!