Kindergarten Blog 3/11

Dear Kindergarten Families,

We were pleasantly surprised by the warm weather this week, and though the cold returned, we are all excited for Spring!

This week in Science, we exercised our scientific observation skills by trying to notice all the little details of seemingly random objects. We discussed how a big part of what scientists do is try to group different kinds of things together so we can understand the world better. For example, over the last weeks we talked about living vs. nonliving, but within the group “living things” are the groups “animals”, “plants”, and “fungi”. Kindergarteners then had fun trying to come up with our own unique groupings of the random items in front of them, and trying to guess others’ rules.

In Music class, Kindergarteners have continued to learn about the instruments of the orchestra. So far, they have learned about the instruments of the string section, the woodwind section and the brass section. They are also continuing to learn solfège through the song Do Re Mi, from the Sound of Music.

In Hebrew/Judaics, we are continuing to learn all about Purim, this week focusing on the four mitzvot (matanot l’evyonim, mishte, mishloach manot, mikra megillah), as well as all the characters’ intentions in the Purim story, as well as integrating Hebrew vocabulary into the stories. The kids practiced retelling the story themselves. We are also learning Purim songs.

We are continuing our Shabbat unit, talking about different traditions. This week we talked about parents’ blessings on their children.

In Writer’s Workshop we read a story called Jabari Jumps and sketched out the beginning, middle, and end of the story.  We also noticed all the different feelings that Jabari had, including being happy, scared, excited, proud, and brave.  We talked about showing  how we are feeling in our stories. Here is the story if you would like to listen to it at home.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfpIivqO3ic

In Phonics we reviewed the many snap words that have been introduced and practiced writing whole sentences using mostly snap words.  For example, using  my, see, like, I and and you could write “I see my cat and dog.”  Children worked with different lists of words.

In Social Studies we continue to create families different from our own out of Model Magic. Some children added clothing this week, and next we will create places that the families like to be. 

Shabbat Shalom,

Atalya, Anat and Dawn