10/15 Kindergarten Blog

10/15 Kindergarten Blog

 

Dear Kindergarten Families,

 

This week we learned new games in Hebrew, Math, and P.E., sang new songs and old favorites, and are continuing to make friends with each other. In our Morning Meetings, we introduced two new songs: Down By the Bay, and This Land Is Your Land. We shared our favorite movies, books, places, and songs, and began a class-wide conversation about daily rotating student jobs, which will be introduced next week. 

 

As we continued to set up our classroom for the year each child made their own batch of playdough, carefully following directions to mix together the dry ingredients and then the wet ingredients and then combining them in a plastic bag and smashing them together until they made playdough.  We also did paper weaving to create placemats for lunch and snack.

 

In Phonics we introduced the names that start with N- all four of them!  We studied Noa, Nava, Nitzan, and Nathan.  We noticed that all four of them also have an A in them.  We noticed that Nathan and Nitzan each have six letters.  We also observed that Noa is the only name that has an O, Nava is the only name that has a V, Nathan is the only name that has an H, and Nitzan is the only name that has both an I and a Z.  Lots of good observations. 

 

In Math we learned a new game called Top It, which is similar to the card game War, as we continue to work on the numbers from 6-10.  We also began to decompose numbers, recording the various combinations you can have if you have four counters and some of them are red and some of them are yellow.  We also played the game “I Am Thinking of a Number,” which requires three questions about the number before guessing it. 

 

In Reading children were each given a bag, known as their Book Baggy, with books that are a good level for where they are in the process of learning to read. Children will read these books in small groups, one on one with a teacher, and independently.

 

In Handwriting, we learned how to write N and M (our toughest one yet), completing our “frog-jump” letters! Children practiced all their letters, growing more and more comfortable with consistently writing them the Kindergarten Way.

 

In Science, now that we’re familiar with the scientific method, we’ve begun our unit on the five senses. This week we focused on hearing, coming up with sound observation words like “soft” and “loud” among others. We played guessing games where we listened to the sounds of different locations and tried to guess what we were listening to. Then in pairs, children took turns shaking opaque paper bags of classroom materials for each other to guess. There were some surprising results and we learned that scientists’ hypotheses are wrong all the time and that’s how we learn new information!

 

In Hebrew, children learned the rest of their colors: varod pink, shachor black, lavan white, and afor gray! We read a story called “Ma’asah b’chamisha balonim”, a story about receiving five balloons in different colors. When some pop, new balloons in new colors are added and we talked about the characters’ responses to the balloons popping and how we might feel and respond in the same scenario. New phrases were introduced that all started with “Ani rotzeh/rotzah” (I want…). The children are growing more comfortable counting in Hebrew, writing their Hebrew names, and knowing their schedules for the day in Hebrew.

 

In Judaic Studies, we reviewed the first day of Creation, and moved onto the second day, learning the words shamaim (sky), yahm (sea), and yabashah (shore/dry land). This week’s torah portion is Lech L’cha.

 

Shabbat Shalom,

 

Atalya, Dawn, and Anat