Week of April 18 - 21

 Happy Birthday to Youngnim!  Thank you for celebrating with us, sharing the beautiful story and the yummy cupcakes.

We welcomed our Spring Theme with SNOW? ! ?  The children were so confused to talk about what we see, hear, touch, smell, and taste in the spring with the snow on the ground :)


Besides the crazy weather, we started exploring the Spring theme with books, puppets, and lots of art activities.  The Spring homework bags started to go home and everyone received a Spring Detective Scavenger sheet in their mailboxes.  Some of the children have all ready spotted spring things and returned their sheets for a prize... How exciting!

Sara’s dad, Mahdi Zarea, came to visit the Junior Kindergarten class to share his job as a scientist and researcher.  He showed the children that a scientist conducts experiments to help people in the real world.  He showed us some simple experiments that you could do at home such as making a magnet by taking a paper clip wrap it with a wire then take two ends of the wire to a battery and the objects become magnetic.  Also, he made static by rubbing the end of a pen on his head then picking up small pieces of paper and bending a stream of water!  Thank Mr. Zarea for coming to share your job with us and how it helps the community!  

Michelle Ferguson has done a fabulous job in coordinating our auction item during the mornings this week.  Thank you to all of you that have volunteered your time and expertise to create such a unique item!


Centers:
Math Center - counting, exploring, adding, subtracting and patterning with insects!  The children started their math center with a handful of colorful insects.  They counted them, sorted them, and put them in patterns.  Then they listened to word problems such as one red insect flew to the swings and then two blue insects flew over too.  How many in all?  Or, three yellow insects were buzzing around.  The girl shooed one away.  How many are left?


Language Arts Center - Dinner  The children explored the book Dinner.  They searched for popcorn words in the book and were introduced to  "we" and "get"  They talked about the main ideas in the book and what they favorite dinner time meals are.  Then they searched around the room and inside other books for popcorn words.


Fine Motor - Weaving a picnic blanket.  The children made their own paper weaved picnic blanket by following a pattern and listening to direction words: over and under.  Next week they will search for pictures in magazines and cut them out of objects they would take on a Springtime picnic.


Technology - Kid Pix and Reading Blaster


Small Group/Work Time-
The children worked in reading groups reading books at their "right fit" reading level, investigating word patterns, and summarizing the books.


Each child worked on their April Self Portrait.  They have really come a long way in their drawings and details of themselves.


Everyone created a butterfly using lots of collage materials.


The children took turns playing in the balcony area where they have created a Spring scenery with puppets, flowers, and dress up clothes.


The children were encouraged to look at Spring time books and investigate the pictures, read the words, and learn about Spring.


Both seventh grade language arts classes came into our classroom on Thursday to interview the JK kids.  The seventh graders will take this information and create a story in their language arts class.  They will go through the writing process and then share the finished product with the JK kids in a few weeks!


A Peek Ahead - 
Next week we will explore the Season of Spring with our senses, touching mud, seeing new signs of spring including animals and flowers, hearing spring sounds in the listening center, tasting spring treats, and smelling floral scents.  We will be singing songs and playing interactive story telling games.  


Centers will be math, language arts, fine motor, and listening to books on tape.


Our field trip to the farm at the zoo is scheduled next week.  This will give us to chance to explore the outdoors applying what we've learned in the classroom about Spring and to kick off our Farm unit for the following weeks.

Week of April 11 - 15

Welcome Back from Spring Break!  The children were all so happy to see each other on Monday.

  We resumed with our Community Helpers study and Hikaru’s Mom, Mrs. Noriko Yasohama, came to the JK room to talk about her job as Japanese Language Teacher.  She told the children that her job helps people communicate in other countries like Japan.  She said that when you know a foreign language like Japanese, you can experience new books and films.  She told them that characters like Pokemon come from Japan and if you speak Japanese then you can watch those shows in another language.  She read a story about a boy who is bilingual and speaks English and Spanish.  This boy, Tito, helps a firefighter understand a man who only speaks Spanish.  Tito translated for the fire fighter that he smelled smoke in the apartment building. Mrs. Yasohama also read a book about spring, once in Japanese and then in English.  Thank you so much for coming in and sharing how your job helps the community!

Lily’s father, Kyle Edwards, came to the Junior Kindergarten classroom and talked to the JK students about his job as a banker.  He taught the students about how important saving money is and when you save money you can buy the things that you want!  The students got to ask Mr. Edwards questions about what he does at his job and then each student made a small piggy bank to start a collection of their own at home.  Thanks Mr. Edwards for showing us how your job helps the community!  


To continue our study of what community helpers do to keep us safe the children helped create a Safety Town with the trikes and scooters on the playground.  The children made stop lights and signs and interacted with each other to follow the directions.

Centers this week:

Math - counting and adding with toothbrushes and toothpaste.  The children were each presented with a toothbrush that had different amounts of dots on them.  They had to find the number on the toothpaste that matched the array of dots.  The lesson was differentiated so that children were able to count objects, identify numbers, and add numbers together.

Language Art - This is a Peach was the popcorn word shared this week in the Language Arts center.  The children worked on tracking the words on the page, identifying old popcorn words, and learning new words, describing and summarizing the story after we read it.

Fine Motor - writing popcorn words in salt.  In this week's fine motor center the children worked on writing past and present popcorn words in salt.  Feeling different materials is not only fun but great for their brain development as they make connections with reading, writing, and feeling the grainy salt.

                             

Technology - computer fun.  The JK kids all had an opportunity to work on Kids Pix or Reader Rabbit on one of our two computers. 

 Enjoying the Beautiful outdoors!

The class helped Rhett celebrate his birthday this week!  Happy 5th Birthday Rhett and thank you for the yummy cupcakes!

Reading Buddies!  Both 3rd and 7th grade came in on Thursday and Friday.  We missed them so much and were so happy they came.

A Peek Ahead:

This weeks center activities are:

Math, Lanugage Arts, Fine Motor, and Technology

During "small group, work time" the children will be meeting in reading groups, drawing their april self portraits, making butterflies, playing in the Spring dramatic play area on the balcony with spring time puppets, flowers, and dress up cloths, and reading the new spring time books.

During circle time we will be using our senses to talk about the season of Spring.  We will be reading books and learning new interactive songs and poetry.

We will not be in school on Friday and there is NO EDP.