This week we continued to explore the universe. We discovered constellations, astroids, the moon and zero gravity. The class was excited to see astronaut Chris Hendricks teach us how different it is to work, eat, sleep, wash our hair and brush our teeth in zero gravity. They also got to see a space shuttle launch into space and land back on earth. Ask your child if they would ever want to be an astronaut or work in mission control?
Reminders: Save the date: May 27th 11:00-12:00 PK Celebration. Fun Week May 18-22 Monday: Hat Day (Uniform day) Tuesday: Dance Party Wednesday: Wacky Wednesday Thursday:Pajama Day Friday: Free Dress This week in work board Building rockets Skyline Writing Melting Crayons Rhyming stories Counting stars: Space game Elkonin Boxes: Tapping out sounds Writing letters in sand This week we have blasted out of earth and explored our solar system. The class discovered the sun is the only star in our solar system. We have gotten on our spaceship and gone to the four rocky planets finding Venus very smelly with it's poisonous clouds. Then we carefully flew through the astroid belt heading for the gas planets. We enjoyed riding Saturn's thousand rings and avoiding Jupiter's thousand year storm. Ask your child what planet they found to be the most interesting. Next week we will continue to travel through the universe and see what we discover.
Reminders: The week of May 18-22 we are going to have a fun week.
Wednesday, May 27 PK Celebration. We will have a special ceremony celebrating the children. It will begin at 11:00am-12:00pm. The Week in Work Board Fine Motor: Grey Block Writing Skyline Writing Colors Sand Writing Literacy: Mouse House: Rhyming Game Diagraphs: sh, ch, th Buddy Reading Art: Recycled Rockets Science: The job of an astronaut PreK was in full swing this week. We begun the week with our Moulage Drill. It is very important practice for the entire Stevenson community in case we are ever faced with a serious emergency. The children did an EXCELLENT job and it went very smoothly. Thank you for your patience and participation in this activity.
Wednesday was Earth Day and we have spent the duration of the week discussing our beautiful planet and the many ways we can help save it. We are creating a giant paper mache Earth out of newspaper and an enormous balloon. The children are very knowledgable about conservation and protection of our valuable resources and have learned a lot of really important skills in regard to caring for the environment. We encourage the conversation and efforts to continue both at school and home. We LOVE our planet! Activities this week:
Our PreK celebration will be held on Wednesday, May 27th at 11 o'clock. More details to follow. Tonight is the Book Fair family night to kick off our Book Fair next week! This is a great opportunity to mingle, check out books, and children eat for free! We have a donation box located by the sign in sheet in our classroom which will go directly towards buying books for children who cannot afford to buy their own. Thank you to everyone who have already contributed. It is such an excellent message to teach the children. Enjoy your weekend! This week we discovered this class is full of future Oscar winners. We continued to re-enact the story, Three Billy Goats Gruff. The children choose the character they wanted to play and everyday had to wait patiently for their name to be called. They really got into their character and did a great job remembering the lines. Ask your child to tell you about their character from the story.
We also became little farmers. We planted a variety of tomato plants, carrot seeds, bean, and radish seeds. The class has been doing a great job making sure our garden is well taken care of by watering and even weeding. They are excited to have the kalette plants, where they enjoy picking a leaf for a little snack. Tools of the Mind Planned Play time has been keeping us busy. The class gets converted into a Pet Store, Doggy Training School, Vet Hospital, Puppy Care, S.P.C.A., and a grooming station. The class truly enjoys taking care of all of the animals and are becoming great trainers, teaching many tricks. They are also fantastic healers taking care of the hurt and not so well animals. This is a great time of the day. It gives them a chance to make a plan, decide what role they want to take on, and they get to play in an area of the classroom that they have chosen. Reminder Kindergarten Play Ground The Kindergarten class has asked us to please clean up after your children have played on their playground after school. They are responsible for making sure their playground equipment is put away and feel very sad when they have worked hard cleaning up and come back to school with all their things out. The Kindergarten playground is also closed after 3:30 for classes who use it during after school activities. Work board Activities: Literacy Buddy Reading The Day the Goose Got Loose Rhyming Diagraphs: sh Journal One, Two, Skip a Few Fine Motor Wet/Dry/Try Writing Names Math Calendar (writing in numbers) Toss and Count Math book number 9 The PK class has just leaped through the month of March. This week we discovered the world of Frogs through hands on activities along with some great books. The class was excited to learn new vocabulary such as amphibian, cold-blooded (animals), and life cycle. They also really enjoyed discovering that frogs start life as a tadpole, have gills to breathe under water (as a tadpole), then they begin to grow legs, and finally lose their tail and become a frog. Ask your child how a frog catches it's food.
We will be having Spring Hunt on Monday, April 6. The children will be looking for plastic eggs if anyone is able to donate 12 filled (with one item) plastic eggs we would appreciate it. Some suggestions to fill the eggs with are stickers, tattoos, and small erasers. Thank you to all that can help. This week in work board: Science:
Literacy:Frog on a log rhyming game
Fine Motor:
Math:
Next week our theme is going to be animals that hatch from eggs. It is ZERO WASTE WEEK! We have had an absolute blast learning about and experiencing what it means to reduce-reuse-recycle. We had no electricity day, which we realized we could extend to the entire week! The class did extensive brainstorming on ways we can conserve electricity, water, paper, and other resources. We found many reusable materials to re purpose in the classroom such as empty jugs for watering and planting, container lids as painting tools, and pine cones as a way to feed birds. Our Junk to Funk fashion show was a hit with our preK class! Miss Jennifer and Miss Jenn walked the catwalk while our very excited class cheered them on. We are incredibly lucky to be a part of such a caring community at Stevenson School and weeks like this really encompass how special it is.
In Workboard this week we worked on........
The PreK team will be leaving Monday, March 23 afternoon for our final Tools of the Mind training in Los Angeles. Tuesday we will have substitute teachers filling in for us. Have a wonderful weekend! This week in PK the class talked about love and caring for others. They are a very caring group and explained what each believe love is, they came up with some very sweet explanations. We continue to discuss the importance of being kind to others. The class enjoyed working with scissors and cutting out various sizes of hearts. They were very surprised to paint a heart and find a secret message under the paint.
We were also joined by students from the high school to talk and read us stories about black history. The class thought the girls were a lot of fun and appreciated their visit. The children also got a taste of some soul food. We got to taste some home made peach cobbler and sweet potato pie, which most of us truly enjoyed. This week in work board
This week in PK our theme was Feelings and Emotions. The children read stories, drew pictures and discussed how different situations make them feel. We even had a lock down drill and they each talked about how that made them feel. They looked at pictures of different people and described how they think they are feeling and why. Love was a big topic of discussion this week and they drew pictures and described what they think love means.
The class is enjoying our new science area of magnets. They find items around the classroom to see if they are ferromagnetic materials. The children are also observing that sometimes the magnets stick together and sometimes they repel each other. They are still trying to hypothesize why that is happening. This week in Work board: Literacy:
Science:
Art:
Math
The PK class has been exploring the world of penguins and winter weather. They have enjoyed making ice burgs in our sensory table for the penguins to climb and slide. The class has discovered from the book, 365 Penguins that penguins may not make the best pets.
The class also learned about Martin Luther King, Jr. and why we honor his birthday. In his honor, Stevenson School had a day of service. We decorated cookies to give to Stevenson's surrounding neighbors and made buttons to wear that stated, "What are you doing for others?" They were all very appreciative of the children and thought it was a lovely idea giving to others. Starting next week we will be sending home a book with your child. It has been a request of the PK Class to check out books to share with their families. Every Monday you will get a book to read to your child and it is to be returned to school every Friday. Thank you to all the parents who donated cookies and decorations for our service day, we greatly appreciate your help. We are sending out a volunteer request to parents, if you have a talent, job or family traditions that you would like to share with the PK class please let us know and we will set a date. This week in Work board:
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May 2015
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