Kindergarten Blog 6/2

Dear Kindergarten Families,

It was another busy week in Kindergarten. Our butterflies emerged from their chrysalises, we have almost finished our last stories, and we started our map of Smith Street. On Friday, we had our final whole Lower School Kabbalat Shabbat and end of year Tekes, in which we sang two songs to the lower school: Parpar (a Hebrew song about butterflies, and Are You Living? (a Science song about living things).

We came in on Monday morning to a cage full of butterflies! The Kindergartners spent time carefully sketching the new butterflies, recording data on their behavior, and learning about butterfly migration.

In Writing Workshop, the Kindergartners are finishing up their stories in preparation for our final publishing party next week. They are working on adding details, coloring in our stories, and making covers.

We took a trip out to the front of the school to draw detailed sketches of the buildings on both sides of Smith Street, noting their names and how many floors they had.  We then added what we saw on the sidewalks (trees, signs, bike racks, etc.).  We then started making a map of the whole street on butcher block paper, using construction paper to create the buildings.  

Next week we will begin to talk about the end of kindergarten and plans for the summer.  Children often have mixed feelings about the end of the year and we will acknowledge all of those feelings as well as do some reflecting about the year.  

This week in Hebrew class, we read the book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, which is about a caterpillar who eats everything in sight and eventually emerges as a butterfly. Each student explained a day of what the caterpillar ate including the amount it ate. The book teaches the students days of the week, as well as learning vocabulary of the different fruits the caterpillar ate. We also played a memory game while reading the book. The students were given a card with a picture of the fruit, and they had to identify which fruit it was and on what day the caterpillar ate that specific fruit. 

The students then learned about their bedrooms and the furniture they have in their rooms. Each student described their bedroom and what they have in their room using Hebrew words such as mita (bed), karit (pillow), smicha (blanket), shulchan (table), aron (closet), menorat layla (night light), and vilon (curtain). They started their sentences with “yesh li” (I have) or “ein li” (I don’t have).  

The students learned the following vocabulary words:

ביצה egg

עלה leaf

זחל caterpillar 

פקעת cocoon

פרפר butterfly 

Shabbat Shalom,

K Team