Kindergarten News

May 4, 2009

Dates to remember

Monday – Prayer service, May crowning, gym

Tuesday – Mass, book order due, book mobile

Wednesday – early release

Thursday – gym

Friday –

I hope everyone enjoyed the Spring Concert.  The children worked very hard and it really showed! Last week we studied our last letter of the alphabet, ‘O’. We will be doing review and other skills for the rest of the year. We also concentrated on the Ocean.

Reading/Language/Phonics:

We worked with the O sound last week. This vowel sound is one of the easier vowels to learn. We worked with both the long and short sounds of the letter.  We worked on rhyming, sequencing and nouns as a person, place or thing. Our reading series book for the week was called Hush!  We talked about the differences between nursery rhymes, fairy tales and lullabies but we concentrated on lullabies. The story Hush! was about a Mom from Thailand who was singing to all the animals around to hush so her baby would go to sleep.  We talked about what a lullaby is and why it is usually spoken or sung in a different type of voice then when we read aloud or play outside. Our class book for the week is about the ocean.  Each of the children went for a swim in the ocean and wrote about what type of animal they swam with.  We also worked in our journals and we are using complete sentence with our kindergarten writing. The kindergarten writing is where the children write down all the sounds they hear in the words.  I am very pleased with the writing, for the most part I can read almost all of the sentences being written.  We also talked about what a live play is and some of the things that are done to make it more realistic.  We were very excited to go see Jack and the Giant.  They did a great job! 

Math:

We have finished our chapter with money and time.  We will continue to review time and money through the end of the year because these are both complex subjects for kindergarteners to grasp. We also dealt with the concept of morning, afternoon and evening and what happens during these times and where the sun is to help us decide what time of day it is.

Science:

We learned a number of things about the ocean last week.  We talked about where the oceans are located and we found them on the globe and on our world map. We talked about the different animals found in the oceans. We read about and made a number of projects about the different types of animals that live in the ocean. The wall above the coat racks has been converted into an ocean wonderland.

Other fun stuff:

·        We made octopuses out of the letter O. They are hanging in the ‘ocean’.

·        We talked about finger plays and sang the song “Where is Thumblin” using our fingers.  I hope the children sang it for you with the finger actions.

·        We worked very hard decorating coffee filter that were turned into corsages for our grandparents on Friday.

·        We traveled to West Bend and watched the Community Theater put on the play Jack and the Giant.

·        We made some very cool Orca whales for our ocean display.