Happy New Year Aspen families!!! Wow…it was so nice to be back in the classroom after holiday break this week! We all missed each other so much and were very eager to see our friends and share our stories from the last three weeks. After a much anticipated class reunion, Aspen settled back into their daily routine and classroom activity choosing challenging work!
This week our thematic topic was all about Snow! The Aspen children learned all about snow; how it is formed, why we have snow, and took a closer look at snowflake ice crystal shapes. Did you know that temperature, humidity, wind velocity, and the route a snowflake takes determines the type of ice crystals a snowflake has? Therefore, the saying that no two snowflakes are the exact same is a true statement. The Aspen children also watched a SciKids educational video about how snowflakes form. Did you also know that the ice crystals in a snowflake attach themselves to particles of dust or pollen in the atmosphere? This helps give a snowflake its shape! Soooo…when we catch snowflakes on our tongue, we are catching dust particles!! The Aspen kids thought this was interesting and disgusting!!
While we discussed snowflakes and the formation of ice crystals we also took the opportunity to talk about liquids, solids, and gases. We learned about these three states of matter and looked at the properties of each one. We discovered that the particles in a solid are tightly packed together giving it volume and a definite shape,the particles in a liquid are free to move around each other but are still attracted to each other, liquids have volume but they do not have a definite shape (they take the shape of whatever container they are in), and the particles in a gas move randomly with little to no attraction to each other, gases have no definite shape or volume. We then used this knowledge to complete an activity gluing beads to represent the particles in these states of matter.
In Kindergarten lesson the kindergarten students were introduced to multiplication with the Stamp Game and explored the process of multiplication in depth. They also reviewed handwriting skills by connecting letters to form words to create short sentences. In Reading Group we discussed the short e sound by practicing our phonics with short e words, and practiced our Comprehension skills.
Next week our topic is all about the Arctic and Antarctic ! We are going to compare and contrast these environments while learning all about the habitats (biomes), animals that live there, and their various geographical characteristics.
Book Share will be on Thursday next week!
