…..Because the month of JANUARY aka assessment month is over!!!
I know your kindie has come home exhausted and sick this whole month, so I just want to say, PHEW it's over! When we got back to school on January 5th from a LONG and needed holiday break, we really hit the ground running with academics! We SO hope all the families loved receiving their child's first report card. Your kids have worked so hard all year in Kindergarten and I could not be more proud of them!
I am so glad everyone loves the Instagram account!! I am happy to hear how "easy" it is to keep track and how "fun" it is to see multiple updates a day of your child's work at school. I love Instagram because it is FAST and easy and I can post videos and photos in less than 5 seconds! Instagram definitely helped us ALL during January. Take a look through this post to see in depth what we have learned throughout this crazy busy month...
During theme, we learned about the sun, moon, stars, and the night sky. First, we wrote down what we KNOW about the sun….
then came together to discuss what we KNOW with friends...
We knew that…
"The sun is hot."
"The sun is bright."
"The sun makes our skin tan."
"The sun makes me sneeze!"
"The sun is far away."
"The sun is yellow and can be pinkish reddish at night sometimes."
"I need sunglasses to look at it."
After lots of discussion and sharing of ideas, we came up with things we wanted to LEARN about the sun.
We want to learn…
"How hot is the sun?"
"How far away is it?"
"What is it made up of?"
"Where does the sun go when it's dark out?"
"Is the sun a planet?"
We also talked about how the sun does not change throughout the seasons and that even when it's winter time and cold out, the sun can still be out!
We learned that...
The sun is NOT only out when it is summertime.
The sun is a giant hot ball of burning gas.
Did you know the sun is actually a star?
It is the biggest star in our galaxy!
The earth and our planets rotate around the sun.
Without the sun, there would be no life.
The sun in 93 million miles away from the earth…..wowza!
It rises in the east and sets in the west.
It is approximately 10,000 degrees F on the sun!
The sun could hold 1 million Earths.
We also learned about the stars and moon.
After we discussed, we realized we didn't know a whole lot about the moon and stars.
We know that stars are different sizes, are far away, can be yellow and they sparkle.
We know that the moon is far away, is white, and made of dust.
We read lots of lots of books about the night sky to figure out some really cool facts!..
These are a few of our favorites:
The moon is made of rock and dust.
It rotates on an axis.
There is no life on the moon!
It revolves around our Earth.
There are craters/holes on the moon.
It reflects light.
It is smaller than Earth.
There is no air on the moon.
The moon can be full or a crescent shape.
Check out our awesome star and moon paintings. We sprinkled glitter over to really make them shine!
In math, we worked hard on creating combinations to 5, 6 and 7. We learned that 1 and 5, 6 and 0, 2 and 4, and 3 and 3 all make combinations to 6. We used unifix cubes and slates to help show this in a concrete way. Some of us we ready to use our fingers as manipulatives. Others were ready to think in our heads to get the answers.
We also worked hard on our shapes. We named them, described them, and even used different shapes to create bigger pictures! We made a house using 4 squares, 1 trapezoid, and 1 triangle..Do you like our FROGGY PATTERN?...
Reading has been so exciting in KL. We have ALL grown SO much as readers! It is so amazing to see each of the kids use all kinds of strategies to figure out unknown words. With our book bags full of JUST RIGHT BOOKS for us, it was time for us to work on our FLUENCY…(As a fluent reader, we read with expression, pay close attention to accuracy, read smoothly with careful regard to punctuation, read with a natural pace, and comprehend what we are reading.)
To practice our reading to others….I had the kids choose a stuffed animal who they would read TO as they practice how to be a fluent reader.
They LOVED this activity during Readers' Workshop!…So did I :)
We also talked about and sorted letters vs. words in one of our reading groups...
Oh my! Snow, snow and more SNOW! We were ALL wiggly and so excited after two days off from school to get back and PLAY and EXPLORE in the snow. On Friday, we had an extra long recess to just EXPLORE outside. Play is SO important in school and the kids (and their teacher!) absolutely loved trekking through our playground through the waist high mounds of beautiful, white snow!
Have a wonderful weekend!!!!!! Check out instagram to see our snow video!
