Peek into the Cherry Blossom Classroom - week of 10/3/22

Our Focus Lesson:

This week we started talking about Animal Classification! We introduced Vertebrates and Invertebrates. We learned that Vertebrates have a backbone and are classified into 5 main groups – mammals, reptiles, amphibians, birds, and fish. We learned that Invertebrates do not have a backbone and are classified into many groups. We introduced some of the groups, but will focus on insects and arachnids this school year.

We added Vertebrate and Invertrbrate Cards to the Science area so the children could sort animals into their appropriate classifications. This Kindergartener completed some Copy Writing to share some information about Invertebrates.

Preschool Lesson:

Our younger Blossoms learned about spiders this week! They talked about the life cycle of a spider, the parts of a spider, they counted spiders, and made spider books. We were very excited to make the connection between our Invertebrate lessons and our Spider lessons! And there was a visit from a friend of Mr. John’s…

We added spiders to our Ten Frame Counting work this week. This preschooler found a spider web on the playground and was so excited to see an egg sac in the middle of it!

Mr. John brought Charlotte, the Chilean rose tarantula, down to our classroom so we could observe the parts of a spider. We enjoyed getting a close up look at how the spider moved and pointing out the legs and spinnerets. We found out that Charlotte uses her venom to turn her cricket dinners into a goo like applesauce!

Kindergarten Lessons:

Mr. John introduced Kindergarteners to Land and Water Forms this week. My favorite landform is an island… somewhere warm. Ms. Tonya introduced our older Blossoms to curve cursive letters this week, practicing a, d, and g. Then they surprised Ms. Tonya by writing cursive words all week long!

In Reader’s Workshop, the children continued to be sound detectives to sound out words and reviewed color sight words. In Writer’s Workshop our young authors completed their first writing unit where they learned to be writers and learned how to make books! We wrapped up the unit by sitting in the author’s chair and reading one of our books to the group!