A Peek At Our Week| Ms. Kristen’s Class| Week of February 12th

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This week was full of fun as we dicussed the Winter Olympics and different Winter sports! The children enjoyed learning what the Olympics are and learning what sports are in the Winter Olympics. We have also been tracking how many medals the United States has won so far!

Ms. Mel and Ms. Yao (Ryan’s mom) also shared with us about Lunar New Year! Ms. Mel explained about how each year is represented by an animal in Korean and Chinese culture and that 2018 is The Year of The Dog. She even taught the children how children bow to their elders on Lunar New Year and receive money from their elders and Ryan’s mom shared with us how children in China buy all new clothes to begin year. Ms. Yao also gave the children a red envelope with a chocolate coin and told them that for New Year’s, children in China receive a red envelope from their parents which contain money. So much fun!

We also had so much fun at our Valentine’s Day Party! Thank you to all the parents who brought in the needed items for our party and to those who took time out of their day to help make our Valentine’s Day Party so much fun, including activities for taller and smaller kids, such as the best bounce house for toddlers and many other activities.

Working on the 100 Board from the Math area of the classroom! The child places the numbers from 1-100 on the board and through repetition, discovers the order of numeration.

 

Ms. Mel dressed in a traditional Korean dress!
Ms. Yao read us a story about a traditional Chinese Lunar New Year!
Some of our friends also had the opprotnity to try on some traditional outfits worn on Lunar New Year!
Working on the Parts of The Flower Puzzle from the Cultural Area of the classroom! Puzzles are a great pre-reading material!

A Peek Into Next Week:

-All About Presidents

-Who was the first President of The United States?

-What is the job of the President of The United States?

 

 

 

A Peek At Our Week| Ms. Kristen’s Class| Week of February 5th

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This week we learned all about Transportation! We learned about the different way we can travel through air, on land, or in water. The children enjoyed learning the song, ” Down By The Station” and singing other songs about other forms of traveling. Ms. Mel also practiced some phrases in German during our preschool afternoon group time!

 

Working on the Note Naming material from the Music section of the Cultural Area and learning to name Middle C through G!

 

Practicing her gluing skills by making a Heart Mosaic from Art section of the Cultural Area of the classroom!
Working on the Stone Placement material from the Practical Life Area of the classroom! By placing the one stone on each dash on the paper, the child develops their sense of order, concentration, and coordination. Also, this helps indirectly prepare the child as they begin to count and use materials in the Math Area.

A Peek Into Next Week:

-All About Winter Sports

-What are the Olympics?

-Celebrating Valentines Day

 

A Peek Into Music | January 2018

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January was full of cold and snowy days but we stayed warm and active with Miss Lisa! We focused on rhythm and tempo this month. We used rhythm sticks and scarves to practice these skills.

Here students are using scarves to follow Miss Lisa dancing to the music. This lesson was focusing on the tempo of the music.

 

Here Miss Lisa is collecting rhythm sticks from students. The rhythm sticks help teach students about counting the beats and keeping a rhythm of the song. When they are collected Miss Lisa always encourages them to use their imagination to become an animal with the sticks.

 

A new unit we started at the beginning of January and finished at the end was “Peter and the Wolf”. We learned about the characters, the instruments and the story line of this classic tale.

Here Miss Lisa is introducing the instrument of Peter in “Peter and the Wolf”. Before listening to the entire story, students learn and identify which instruments indicate which character in the story.

 

Here the class is listening to “Peter and the Wolf”. Miss Lisa has illustrations to go along with the music of this tale.
Here is a great view of the wolf. Check with your student to see if they remember what character he goes after!

We had so much fun this month leaning about ” Peter and the Wolf”. The illustrations and music told such a vivid tale we will not forget anytime soon! We also learned about all sorts of instruments. Try listening to this with your student and see what they can identify at home.

A Peek Into Science | Cuyahoga Falls | January 2018

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Absorption – To take something in.

What will happen if we pour water in a container containing paper towels and another container containing Sodium Polyacrylate? What is Sodium Polyacrylate? It is the material in diapers. All the children shouted,  “Ewwww”~ for diapers.

Mr. John took the container with the Sodium Polyacrylate and water, and dumped it out above the children’s heads. No water spilled out! We had fun learning about absorption!

Leak Proof Baggy

Polymers – Polymers chains working together.

“What? You poked holes with a pencil in a baggy filled with water? It didn’t come out?”

Yes! We slowly, but firmly pushed sharpened pencils through one side of a zip-locked bag filled with water. The water doesn’t leak at all!

Why? Plastic bags are made out of Polymers which are long chains of individual molecules, called monomers. So poking the bag with water means separating polymer chains without breaking them.

SCIENCE ROCKS!

Play Dough Shapes

Buoyancy- A force in a liquid pushing against an object in the liquid.

We dropped different shaped (a bowl and a sphere) Play dough in water. The sphere shaped dough sank while the bowl shaped play dough floated. The sphere is dense and cannot push enough water out to stay a float. The bowl is able to push enough water out to equal its weight and therefore, floats!

We made our own slime!!!

We mixed Borax, Elemer’s glue and water. We stirred it with the spoon first and when we felt the long strands of molecules starting to connect, we used our hands!

Borax is the compound that is responsible for hooking the glue’s molecules together to form the putty-like material.

SCIENCE IS FUN!!!

A Peek At Our Week| Ms. Kristen’s Class| Week of January 29th

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This week was so much fun as we dove into learning about the Five Senses! We learned that our senses are Taste, Hearing, Smell, Sight, and Touch.We learned that our senses are very important to helping us discover and learn more about the world around us! We explored our sense of Hearing by playing our Silence Game we normally play during our morning line time. During the game, a candle is placed in the middle of our circle and the children and teachers sit as silently as possible. Before we started our Silence Game this week, I asked the children to close their eyes and, while they were sitting in silence, listen to all the sounds around them. The children also enjoyed taste testing jelly beans and guessing which flavor jelly bean they were tasting. So much fun!

Working on the three part Amphibian cards! This material in the Science area also is great preparation for reading, as the child matches the pictures and the names of the animals!
Working on the Weaving Material from the Practical Life Area. This material helps the child to develop their sense of order, concentration, coordination, and independence. Also, by weaving from left to right, the child is being indirectly prepared for reading!
Proud of her cutting work!

A Peek Into Next Week:

-All About Transportation

-Learning about different ways to travel.

-Learning songs about different ways to travel.

A Peek At Handwriting| Ms. Kristen| Week of January 15

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Durring the past two weeks in handwriting we have continued our study of lower case letters. We have been working on the letters u, w, q, l, b, k, m, h,n, and f. Our Kindergarten student’s handwriting has really progressed and I’m so proud of all of their hard work durring the past few weeks!

A Peek At Our Week| Ms. Kristen’s Class| Week of January 15th

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This week, in our class, we have been learning about Peace Makers and how we can be a Peace Maker as well! We learned that a Peace Maker is someone who is kind to others, is respectful of others, helps others, and takes care of others.  We learned about Martin Luther King and how he believed everyone should be treated fairly. We also learned about Mother Teresa, who spent her life in India taking care of those who were sick and those who were poor. We also learned about Maria Montessori, who believed children were the key to achieving world peace and without whom, we would not have a school. We also discussed how we can be Peace Makers in our school and at home as well!

Proud of her creation using the Pink Tower and Brown Stair together! Both the Pink Tower and Brown Stair are wonderful Pre-Math material, as the child learns to build from biggest to smallest and it is indirect prepartion for counting to 10!
These two friends are working together on the Polishing Sunglasses work from the Practical Life Area of the classroom! This material is designed to help develop the child’s sense of order, concentration, coordination, and independence!

 

Focused on completing the Parts Of The Leaf Puzzle! This material is a great Pre-Reading activity!

A Peek Into Next Week:

-All About Healthy Food

-Learning about the Food Pyramid.

-Learning about the differenence between unhealthy and healthy food.

A Peek At Our Week | Ms. Kristen’s Class | Week of January 8th

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We have had a wonderful week getting back into our classroom routine! We took this week to review our classroom rules and routines. The children also made paper snowflakes to decorate our bulletin board with Ms. Mel and reviewed how to great one another in Korean and learned the names for the parts of the body in Korean as well!

Working on Addition With The Colored Beads! This a a concrete way for the child to practice addition and to begin to memorize some addition facts!
Working on the Parts of The Tree three part cards! By using this work, the child increases their vocabulary and by matching the words and the pictures togegher, begins to prepare their mind for reading!
Working on Pouring Through a Funnel! This material helps the child develope their sense of order, concentration, coordination, and independence!

A Peek Into Next Week:

-All About Peace Makers

-Learning about Martin Luther King Jr. , Mother Teresa, Maria Montessori, and other Peace Makers.

-Learning how we can be Peace Makers too.

 

A Peek At Handwriting | Week of December 11th

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During the past two weeks in Handwriting, we have continued learning the Lower Case Initial Strokes. We focused on the letters r, p, u, w, and s. All of these letters begin with the same initial “swing” stroke of the pencil. I am very proud of our Kindergarten students and how hard they have worked the past couple weeks!

A Peek Into Music | December 2017

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December was filled with lots of practice in our classrooms for our 2017 Christmas Show! In Miss Lisa’s music class we practiced performing our songs and she taught us many popular Christmas carols and songs!


Here is a friend examining a large jingle bell. Miss Lisa brought a variety of different bells for us to practice with. The two main songs we played the bells with were Jingle Bells and Jingle Bell Rock.

One of our favorite games with Miss Lisa is freeze dance! It doesn’t matter what song is playing, we love to dance! The most important skill in this game is listening. We have to listen very closely for when the music  stops so we know when to freeze our bodies.

Here is a picture of a friend waiting patiently to play her tambourine. We all know that instruments can’t play on their own, so we have to wait patiently until Miss Lisa tells us it is time to play.

A new instrument we enjoyed exploring with was the maracas! Maracas are used in many Latin and South American songs. We shook these maracas while singing along to Feliz Navidad.

We had a fantastic month with all of our festive singing! Don’t forget to order your copy of our 2017 Christmas Show DVD so you can hear us singing some of our favorites!