As part of this unit, we'll be growing shiitake mushrooms in the classroom. We need 1 or 2 empty squirt bottles - please let me know if you have any to donate.
We're nearly finished our alphabet books! Every day children add a new page, and we look forward to having these finished by Thanksgiving as well. This unit focuses on paying close attention to starting sounds, in addition to reinforcing recognition of both uppercase and lowercase letters. We also use this unit to develop oral language - children play guessing games in which they give their classmates clues about words that begin with a specific letter, and then call on their classmates until someone gives the correct answer.
Children's book boxes are growing. Every day or two I meet with children, in small groups or individually, to read books as a just-right level. These books are added to their book box for repeated practice. We are beginning to develop routines that support independent reading time as a daily activity. Many children also choose to review their books at rest time. A little later in the year I will invite children to take home a book each night to read at home.
In between writing workshop units we take a break for a Junior Great Books unit. Junior Great Books is a wonderful curriculum that focuses on critical thinking and close reading of text, using high quality classic literature, both stories and poetry. Children have the opportunity to discuss, write about and act out responses to the story. This week we read The Shoemaker and the Elves.
In Hebrew we learned about names of fruits and parts of a tree. Our games also concentrated on learning to say "I like" and "I don't like" and the words for big and small (gadol and katan) while continuing to review letters and numbers. In the next few weeks we will be learning the names of animals, as we study Noah's Ark in Torah. Here is a video of some fruit names in Hebrew - we focused on only some of these: apples, banana, lemon, clementine, kiwi as well as a few not included in the video.
We spent the last two weeks learning about the story of Gan Eden. We illustrated a mural of the garden during explorations, and acted out parts of the story. (We also practiced hearing a story with the word "naked" without completely losing it!) On Friday we read about the snake's punishment, to crawl on his belly and eat dirt. Children imagined how the snake might have moved around before being punished, and then illustrated pictures of this serpent (some flew, some had legs...) in oil pastel.
I hope you are enjoying having a window into our weekly Torah study. My goal is for the homework to be an opportunity to make a connection between school and home and make space for you to "talk Torah" with your child; it's not intended to be a hassle. Whether or not you make time to review it with your child, I would appreciate your returning the packet. This gives me a good sense of how the packets are being used, and also allows me to collect all of your child's packets together to return to you at the end of the year.
Water beads were a highlight of the always-popular light table this week. These little plastic beads expand in water and are mysteriously addictive to handle and play with. (But I didn't take this photo..!)
We spoke a little about the upcoming election. We've voted on a few topics of interest to Kindergarteners, and used this as an opportunity to practice reading tallies and bar graphs, and also to talk about the fact that elections show who most people prefer, not necessarily who/what is better. We'll read books on the presidential election process over the next few days.
New songs include Mail Myself to You and I Will. We had a lot of fun listening to recordings of songs we know on Spotify, so I created a Gan song list which I will add to throughout the year. Those of you who use Spotify can access the playlist here: Not all of these versions are my favorites, but the selection was limited...
I look forward to seeing you in conferences this week.
Amy
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