A Hard Day’s Night
It’s been a hard day’s night. I never really understood that title or what it actually meant but it goes hand in hand with the weather we had in November. It was seventy degrees one week and twenty degrees the next. I’ll take anything over fifty degrees in November. The great thing about this is that the children were able to go outside for many recesses, a rare thing in November. Now it is the home stretch to Winter break. Ahhhh, I can feel me catching up on sleep now and recharging my batteries for the second half of the year. And The Ohio State University Buckeyes 42- ttun 13!
Line Time lesson:
At the end of the third month of school my classroom is running like a well oiled machine. Children are advancing nicely in math, reading, and their social skills. Sabrina, Kathleen, and I are pushing for more “Thank You”, Please, and You’re Welcome.” When we call a name we are expecting a “Yes, Ms. Kathleen or How can I help you Ms.Sabrina?” rather than “What? or Ya?” I want to tell the parents of the older children in the classroom… “Be Proud!” They are taking a leadership role like I’ve never seen. They are helping younger children and helping each other with more challenging work. I wanted to once again thank Sabrina and Kathleen for their hard work and dedication. They step up and just do what needs to be done without me asking.
After learning about the five major classes of animals we looked at some creepy crawlers. We studied insects and arachnids. These were the first animals that were not classified as vertebrates instead they are called invertebrates. We discovered most have an exoskeleton. We now know insects have six legs, a head, thorax, and abdomen and arachnids have eight legs. Also, we know that all bugs are insects but not all insects are bugs!!!
The class went back in time and studied dinosaurs. We learned the names of 5 dinos (T-Rex, Triceratops, Stegosaurus, Pterodactyl, and Brachiosaurus) and if they were meat eaters (carnivores) or plant eaters (herbivores). We learned when they lived and I introduced the phrases “extinct” and “fossils” what they meant. We read “Dad is a Dinosaur”, and Dinosaurs go to School”
We then learned about Pilgrims and Thanksgiving. How the Indians helped the pilgrims with hunting, growing crops, and living off the land.
Cultural Subjects:
We can count to 16 in ten different languages. We can count in English, Spanish, Sign Language, German, French, Japanese, Greek, Arabic (with the Lebanese dialect), Italian, Russian, Romanian, Swedish, Tagolog, Hebrew, Korean, and Hungarian.
Academic Enrichment: Kindergarten Students
The kindergartners have learned how to tell time. We ended our section of telling time by learning how to tell time to the minute. We have done many worksheets, use flashcards, and used a toy clock with movable hands to help us learn to tell time. Then we delved into everyone’s favorite thing…money. We learned about coins; what they look like and how much they are worth. The kindergartners learned how to count coins when presented with multiple coins of different denominations. We went over bills including the ever elusive two dollar bill. We ended November with learning the parts of plants, flowers, leaves. And learned about the parts and characteristics of the mammal, reptile, amphibian, bird, and fish.
The kindergarten class can count to ten in 17 different languages… English, Spanish, Sign Language, German, French, Japanese, Greek, Arabic (with the Lebanese dialect), Italian, Russian, Romanian, Swedish, Tagolog, Hebrew, Korean, Hungarian, and Polish.
Art:
A couple of things the children had fun learning and doing this month were reviewing past concepts, such as primary and secondary colors but this time they used different materials to recognize the colors. The children learned about lines and the variety of forms they came in – straight, curvy, zig zag etc. This lesson tied in very well with our cursive and print writing presentations! Ms. Michele also began a mosaic project with the children using paper, glue, yarn and later, little pieces of foam like material.
Music:
The children have been very busy practicing their Christmas songs in Music Class this month, with Ms. Lisa. Both children and teachers are not just working hard on the songs, but also on some cute and fun movements, which are incorporated together with their songs.
Science:
The experiments that were introduced to the children this month were: Surface Tension – A property of a liquid keeping an object from going into the liquid, Buoyancy – A force in liquid pushing against an object in the liquid, Absorption – To take something in, and Skittles/Gobstoppers Candy Run – Water Soluble Materials. They certainly did enjoy all of these age appropriate experiments with Mr. John.
