The month of March has been very busy in our classroom. We learned about Dr. Seuss, Space, and all about our state of Ohio. The children also enjoyed celebrating St. Patrick’s Day and wearing green and celebrating having the most Box Tops with Silly Sock Day and a Pizza Party! We also had a blast on Pajama and Show and Tell Day!
During the first week, we had fun learning all about Dr. Seuss. The children enjoyed reading “ The Cat In The Hat”, “ Horton Hatches The Egg” , and “ The Alphabet Book”. The Cat In The Hat even came for a visit to our classroom! He showed us how to make Cat masks and read to us from his book! The children also learned that Dr. Seuss’ real name was Theodore Seuss Giesel. We also learned that Dr. Seuss lived near a Zoo as a child, which is where he began to think of all of his imaginary creatures in his stories!
During week two and three, we enjoyed learning all about Outer Space. The children enjoyed learning all the names of the planets in our solar system, learning all about the phases of the moon, and all about constellations. The children also enjoyed watching footage of the first moon landing and they also enjoyed making their own constellations using stickers with Ms. Kim!
We learned all about Ohio during week four! The children learned our state bird, the Cardinal. We learned that the male cardinals have bright red feathers, while the female Cardinals have more brown, dull feathers in order to camouflage themselves and to protect their nest. We also learned that our state capitol is Columbus, and that our state tree is the buckeye tree. We also talked about how our state is a small piece of our country and our city is a small piece of our state.
For St. Patrick’s Day, the children also enjoyed making a shamrock craft with Ms. Kim and reading a story about how St. Patrick’s Day became a holiday. The children really enjoyed decorating their shamrock with Lucky Charms! Also, when the children arrived at school that day, we discovered that a tricky leprechaun had made a mess in our classroom!
During the last week of school, the children had a lot of fun hunting for Easter Eggs outside! Ms. Kim placed Easter eggs all around the playground, and the children enjoyed trying to find them. And let me tell you, those eggs were packed full of candy!
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.
Enrichments (Ms. Kim)
Music
In music this month the children sang hello to Tina the Turtle, Freida the Frog, Jerry the Giraffe, and Bernie the Bernard! We finished up the story, Peter and the Wolf, by listening to the sounds of the instruments on Ms. Lisa’s keyboard. When Ms. Lisa played the sound of an instrument on her keyboard, the children guessed what character from the story it was. We also acted out the characters for fun! The children spent a lot of time this month learning about the sounds and keys of the keyboard. Ms. Lisa showed the children where the high and low sounds on the keyboard are located. We then learned the difference between smooth and jumpy sounds. Next the children noticed that the keys on the keyboard are black and white, and then got to play them!
Science
For our first experiment, Mr. John poured colored water into a liter bottle. Then he added vegetable oil. The vegetable oil stayed on top because oil and water do not mix. Next he asked the children what would happen when he added Alka-Seltzer tablets. Would it bubble a lot or a little? Well we saw it bubble a lot because the Alka-Seltzer tablets created carbon dioxide bubbles when they hit the water. These bubbles floated to the top where the oil was, but then went back down because again the water and oil do not mix. It almost looked like a lava lamp!
For our next experiment each child received a bowl of milk. Then Mr. John went around and added different colors of food coloring to the milk. The children were told not to mix the colors. Next each child received a cotton swab that had been dipped in dish soap. When we were ready, the children carefully dipped the cotton swab into the colored milk. We saw the colored milk quickly move away from the cotton swab and create a rainbow. The milk moved away quickly because the dish soap broke the surface tension.
Art
In art we continued to create projects for our upcoming International Festival. At the beginning of the month we made hands out of clay that we painted henna designs on. Ms. Michele and I helped the children cut their hands out of clay. When the clay hardened they painted with a special paint to make a henna design on them. We learned that in India henna designs are popular.
For the rest of the month, the children worked on a yarn weaving project. We learned that Navajo Indians are excellent rug weavers. The Navajo use wool from sheep for their weavings. The children were given a small cardboard loom with string and yarn to weave. Ms. Michele reminded the children to weave over and under or under and over! It is amazing to see the focus and concentration our young students have for this project!
Finally:
I would encourage you to review with your child what they have learned this past month. Read a Dr. Seuss book together and ask your child to point out some of the rhyming words. Discuss with your child the name of our planet, continent, county, state, and city. Practice naming the planets together and discuss which one you and your child would visit if you could. Ask your child to sing the Planets Song they learned this month as well!
Maria Montessori was quoted as saying, “ The child becomes a person through work.” I am enjoying seeing how your children continue to grow in their independence, laying the foundation for the adult they will one day become. I am so fortunate to have front row seat to watching each of these wonderful children learn and grow and I considerate a joy to come to school and learn alongside them every day!
