This week in Aspen it was all about the Seasons! Aspen learned that there are four seasons Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring! We also learned that here in Ohio we are lucky to experience all four seasons! We then discussed the characteristics of each season and our Aspen students shared their observations and talked about their favorite seasons! During Line Time, we used our Painted Globe and a flashlight to demonstrate the reason we experience four seasons in Ohio. Therefore, the Aspen students were able to visually experience the concepts of seasons, day and night, and learned some new vocabulary words ( rotation, axis, tilt, and orbit). Aspen learned we live on a planet called Earth that orbits a star called the Sun. As our Earth rotates and orbits our sun, only part of our planet experiences day and night. The part facing the sun has daytime and the part facing away from the sun has nighttime. The Aspen students had so much fun creating day and night with the flashlight and Painted Globe! We then took our experiment to the next level and discussed how the Earth rotates on its axis and experiences a tilt. We can’t feel the Earth rotating and tilting but we can feel the results of the tilt of the Earth! When Earth’s axis or our part of the world is tilted towards the sun and is receiving lots of direct sunlight, we will experience summer! Lots of sun equals lots of heat! Then something special happens, the tilt shifts the axis a bit giving us less direct sunlight leading to cooler temperatures giving us Fall!! As we experience Fall we eventually tilt receiving even less direct sunlight. Which leads to a significant drop in temperature giving us cold weather with snow and ice! Then something special happens again, as our Earth continues its orbit, it’s rotation, and the tilting of it’s axis the Earth begins to tilt towards the sun giving us more direct sunlight melting the snow and ice while warming us! As a result, we experience Spring! Then the process repeats all over with Summer, Fall,Winter, and Spring! This Repeating process lead Aspen to also discuss patterns and repetition! Aspen also learned that different parts of the world experience different seasons at different times and some do not experience four seasons like Ohio!! This allowed for us to learn two more vocabulary words (Hemisphere and Equator)! It sure was a busy and scientific week in Aspen!
Next week the Aspen students will begin their Botany classification work with the Tree Puzzle! Students will learn how to identify and name each part of a tree. At the same time, they will also learn the function of each part! See you Monday!!
The Kindergarten students continued their work with phonics in Readers’ Workshop and began illustrating books in Writers’ Workshop! In Readers Workshop the Cardinals engaged in more word play manipulating sounds to create words, discussed new Sight Words ( he, she, me, we, I , see, look, you and a). They then practiced following directions completing in class follow -up work. The Chickadees continued their work with the identification of letter sounds and then engaged in multiple in class follow-up work activities. Chickadees then used their knowledge to identify sounds and name things beginning with the corresponding sound! They also practiced writing their name and date on their follow-up work.
Reason For Seasons – Science Experiment! Using our Painted Globe to visually experience the concepts of Day and Night and the Seasons!
Visual Discrimination of color with The Color Tablets! Matching colors for Sensorial fun!
Phonics fun with The Moveable Alphabet!
Handwriting practice!
