Good day, mates! Spring is finally here! I love seeing the warm sunshine and the colorful flowers in bloom! This month has been super busy getting ready for the International Festival and learning about all of the different continents and countries. The children also enjoyed our guest speakers from different backgrounds and cultures.

  

(taste testing Chinese food)

  

During the first week, I introduced the seven continents to the children by showing them our continents puzzle. We discussed the four main countries in North America, including The United States of America, Mexico, Canada, and Greenland. The children also learned about our flag, which consists of 13 horizontal stripes, which are red, white, and blue and represent the first colonies and states in the union. The flag also has 50 stars, which represent the 50 states in the Union. The children also learned about Christopher Columbus, the climate, and cultures of North America. We also discussed South America and their famous Andes Mountains, The Amazon, and the Rainforest. The children really liked learning about the four layers, which are the forest floor, the understory, the canopy, and the emergent layer.

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The third week we focused on Asia. We discussed how Asia is the largest continent in the world. We mainly focused on China, Japan, and India. The first few days we learned about China. The children were able to see pictures of the largest Buddha, which is carved in the side of a cliff in china. It took workers about 100 years to carve! They also saw pictures of children at school, the beautiful mountains, their parades that they have when they celebrate new years. The children enjoyed learning about the Huang River, which is the third longest river in the world. It is also called the Yellow River because the yellow soil turns the river waters yellow. They also learned about their traditional clothing, families, and how most Chinese people live on farms and work in fields called Paddies. We also went over how they do not have an alphabet, but instead a symbol called a character. And lastly, we went over traditions, schooling, and how reading short stories or folktales are very popular. The second country we talked about was Japan. We discussed the weather and seasons, cultures and traditions, school and family, and also about country and city life in Japan. The children also learned about their food and how they have fun.

 

We also focused on Russia, the Philippines, and Lebanon. We learned that in Lebanon’s mountains were thick with cedar trees, and the evergreens were highly valuable because they were used for ships and a place for worship. The cedar trees than became the national symbol. We also learned about the different kinds of plants and animals that can be found, how to say hello and goodbye, all about their daily life, and their schooling. It was very interesting to learn how pretty much everyone in these countries all lived in huts and apartments and that the whole family lived together under one roof, so they need to keep this roof in perfect conditions, with the help of The Roof Clinic company. The children also had fun learning about all the different flags from each country and what they represented.

(taste testing Chinese food)

Lastly, we learned about Australia, The Land Down Under. We had fun learning about their different traditions they celebrate, the animals that can be found, like the Emu, kokkaburra, koala, platypus, and the kangaroo. The children also learned about the Australian flag, the Great Barrier Reef, the beautiful different landscapes. And also about the Outback. We had so much fun this month learning about all of the different countries. The children also worked very hard practicing all of their lines and songs! I can’t wait for the International Festival!

Academic Enrichment with Mr. John
In the afternoon lesson with kindergartners we continued our work with grammar. We started by We looked at the adjective which describes nouns and pronouns, the adverb which describes the verb and usually ends in “ly”, the conjunction which connects two sentences or thoughts and acts like a bridge, and the preposition which is a “where” word not a werewolf.

Who thinks adverbs are difficult…our kindergartners don’t!

The kindergarten class count to ten in 27 different languages. Some of them are English, Sign Language, German, French, Greek, Spanish, Italian, Romanian, Russian, Tagalog, Polish, Irish, Welsh, Hebrew, Arabic w/the Lebanese dialect, Japanese, Hungarian, Swedish, Swahili, Korean, Serbo-Croation, Hindi, Flemish/Dutch, Malay, Cebuano, Turkish!

Ms. Ame’s Corner 

5/02: Plant and Butterfly Life Cycle

• Exploring a plant and butterfly’s life cycle
• Variety of activities that show a plants growth
• Parts of a plant
• Parts of a butterfly

Afternoon Group Lesson: Variety of fun books, activities and crafts having to do with plant and butterflies.

5/:09 Sea Life

•  Warm water vs. cold water and types of fish in each environment
•  Sea creatures, different types of Fish
•  Coral Reef
•  Sink and float science experiments

Afternoon Group Lesson: Variety of fun books, activities and crafts having to do with sea life.

5/16: Outer Space

•  The planets in our Solar System
•  Facts about each planet
•  What is Gravity?

Afternoon Group Lesson:  Variety of fun books, activities and crafts having to do with outer space.

5/23: Outer Space

•  Constellations, the Sun
•  History of the space shuttle, Kennedy Space Center
•  Astronauts, Neil Armstrong

Afternoon Group Lesson:  Variety of fun books, activities and crafts having to do with outer space.

5/30: All About Insects

•  What makes an insect?
•  How are insects different than spiders?
•  All about bees and ladybugs!

Afternoon Group Lesson: Variety of fun books, activities and crafts having to do with insects.

Letters of the Week: Try to find objects that begin with each letter wherever you go with your child.

5/04- 6/01: Review

rhyming words of the Week: Try to find each word in books as you read to your child.

5/02: Bee
5/16: bright
5/23: blue
5/30: sun

Things to do at Home this Month to reinforce our themes:

•  While reading a book have your child point to all of the letter of the week she/he can find. Have them do this with the sight words as well. Play I‐Spy using things that only start with the letter of the week/ sight words.
•  Make fish sugar cookies together! Read Rainbow Fish and create an underwater scene in your child’s bedroom (use blue saran wrap to cover the windows and create fish out of paper).
•  Visit the aquarium in Cleveland. Create a story about all of the Fish and Mammals you saw!
•  Make a telescope out of paper towel rolls, tape, markers and crayons. Talk about the constellations you see!

March was a busy month for us. The children had fun talking about Dr. Seuss, learning about different artists, and exploring the Rainforest. We also had fun celebrating Saint Patrick’s Day.

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The first week was all about Dr. Seuss. Throughout the week the children came to school dressed in crazy & mismatched socks and hats and Wacky Wednesday! The first few days we concentrated on rhyming activities; the first activity was a rhyming ball game. I placed different words onto a ball and the children had to throw the ball to one another. When a friend caught the ball they were able to pick out a word and identify another word that rhymes with it. The children loved this activity! During the second activity, I wrote out a number of sentences from The Cat In The Hat and placed note cards at the end of every other sentence. The children had to guess what word was under the note card that rhymed with the last word of the sentence. I was super impressed at how well they knew the rhyming word! Throughout that week we went down in the kitchen and cooked green eggs and ham and then had a taste test, for this we used the best cooking utensils and knives from https://www.all-knives.org. We then graphed who liked what better. For the last activity we focused on four sight words, “I, and, the, & that.” Four students came up at a time. As I was reading The Cat In The Hat my four friends had to keep a tally on the sight words that we were looking for. At the end of the book we counted up the tally marks to see which sight words were used most in the story. At the end of the week the children made a Cat In The Hat hat to celebrate Dr. Seuss’s birthday. It was a very fun week!

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The theme for our second week was, Art Appreciation. This week we focused on different artists and their works. The children were able to create their own works from the artists they learned about. The first day we learned all about Claude Monet. We discussed landscapes and why he chose to only draw them. We also learned about oil pastels and how to blend them. The children then created their own landscape while using oil pastels. On the second day, we discussed Pablo Picasso and his different Periods. The children learned about his Blue period and how he was very sad. We also talked about his Rose period where he fell in love and became very happy and all of his paintings were a rosy hue. We then went over his angry period, where all of his paintings were a bit scary. I showed them how he would drew faces in a different way and how all of his drawing were different. The children then drew self-portraits of themselves, cut their pictures up and created their own Picasso with Ms. Ame. The next thing we learned about was Vincent Van Gough. The children learned the history behind his art, they were also able to explore his different paintings and why he painted certain paintings the way he did. The children then created their own 3D Sunflower portrait! They also had a lot of fun learning, exploring, and doing different types of art with Ms. Ame!

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Then we had fun exploring the Rainforest. The children learned about the four layers of the rainforest which are The Forest Floor, The Understory Layer, The canopy Layer, and the Emergent Layer. The children learned about which animals and creatures lived in which layer. We also went over the insects and animals they would find and why they are becoming extinct. Throughout this lesson we also talked about things that we use that come from the rainforest such as wood for our furniture, fruits, coffee beans, and rubber to make rubber bands. For the preschool lesson, Ms. Ame did awesome rainforest art projects! We also had a very special leprechaun visit our room. The children had so much fun going on a shamrock hunt and finding all of his gold coins he left for them!

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The last week of March we had fun learning about our five senses. The first day the children learned about hearing and how the ear works. We also listened to an awesome cd that played different environment sounds where the children had to guess what the sounds were. We then learned about touch and the children had to place their hand in the mystery bag and guess the item that they were touching. We also had fun learning about taste where the children got to taste something sweet, salty, sour, and bitter! We then played a take away game that explained all about sight, and lastly the children had to place a blindfold on while smelling different smells such as bananas, vanilla, lemon , peppermint, orange, and cinnamon. I loved seeing all the children’s facial expressions!

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I hope everyone has a wonderful and safe spring break! See you in April!

Academic Enrichment | Kindergarten
In March we began our focused reading groups for our kindergarten students.  Kindergarten students are meeting with Ms. Kate on Monday and Wednesday mornings. Students read through a classic work of literature, discuss and have activities each week. These activities have included dramatizations, creative writing and art projects. It has been a wonderful program, our students are gaining so much!

Ms. Kristen begins our afternoon academic enrichment lesson with handwriting lessons and practice.  Students have been doing wonderfully!

We capped off our lessons in geometry by learning our geometric solids (Cube, sphere, cone, rectangular and triangular prisms, ovoid, ellipsoid, cylinder, square and triangular based pyramids.

The kindergartners started their section in Language. We will be learning about the parts of speech until the end of the year. We went over vowels/consonants, and nouns and verbs. A noun is a person , place, or thing. A verb is an action word or something you do. We the learned there are three articles. They are A, An, The. We learned rules when we use those articles. A hooks up with consonants, an hooks up with vowels, and the hooks up with anything.

The Kindergartners now can count to 10 in twenty six languages…English (that is our native language), Spanish, Sign Language, German, French, Japanese, Greek, Arabic w/Lebanese dialect, Italian, Romanian, Russian, Hebrew, Swedish, Korean, Polish, Hungarian, and Tagalog, Polish, Irish, Kiswahili, Welsh, Dutch/Flemish, Serbo-Croatian, Cebuano, Malay, Hindi.

Ms. Ame’s Corner

In Music last month Ms. Lisa reviewed the story of Peter and the Wolf. The students continued to identify the names of the different instruments used and were able to identify which instrument sound was each character. They all enjoyed the story with the accompaniment of Ms. Michelle’s clever artwork to go along with it. One week she brought in her keyboard and the students identified the animals with their instrumental sound. They acted out each part along with the music. Ms. Lisa also demonstrated with her various instrumental sounds for the students to recognize. She also reviewed the Baby BumbleBee song, ask your student to sing it with you at home. Ms. Lisa brought her synthesizer piano another week and had the students listen and guess the different noises it could make. We also played one of the students favorite games, Cat and Mouse. This game has the students listening to different sounds to know when their animal can enter the house. The students also got a chance to play the white and black notes on the piano, what a treat!

In Science last month Mr. John had the students participate in some fun experiments that had the students using their scientific thinking skills. He started the month off with a groovy lava lamp experiment. Mixing water, food coloring and oil, Mr. John created a lava lamp! Then the students created a hypothesis about what would happen if they added an alka seltzer tablet. Ask your student what happened to the bottle. On St. Patrick’s Day Mr. John did an experiment exploring surface tension. The students came up with a hypothesis of what food coloring would do in milk,and what would happen when soap was added. Before Spring Break Mr. John did an experiment with corn startch and water. The students created a hypothesis about what would happen. The 2 mixed together created a substance that was liquid when there was no pressure,but when squeezed it turned into a solid! Check your child’s folder on Thursdays to see the directions to repeat the experience at home and to see you child’s hypothesis.

In Art last month Ms. Michelle taught the children about art from around the world. This month all of our art will be used at our International Festival. Please leave these wonderful creations on our art rack. Michelle started with India. The students colored an intricately designed elephant while taking turns having their hands cut out of clay. Using water colored with the spice turmeric, the students decorated their clay hand mimicking Hena designs. Ms. Michelle also took the kids on a trip to parts of North America and introduced them to Native American weaving. The students worked on creating their own weaving project with some help. The weaving was a little difficult for our tiny fingers, so it took a couple weeks to finish this project. Look in the hallways as Ms. Michelle will be displaying her weekly art projects along with a description.