K Blog 2017-2018, April 1st

Spring greetings!
   To kick off spring we have started to explore what kindness looks, sounds, and feels like. We started our journey of kindness by gathering ideas of how to be kind from the kindergartners, and by making a poster to hang in the classroom. A picture of their wonderful ideas is posted below.

   We have also begun to "catch" kindness in our classroom. If a student sees or hears a friend being kind, they are invited to write or draw what they witnesses and add it to our kindness catcher. I've included a picture of it below, as well. Some examples are "I saw some one help a friend up when they fell."  or "Some one helped clean up a station they were not working in." At the end of every day Ms. Ronquillo reads the kindnesses from the catcher, and we reflect on the day.

   Watching our students participate in acts of kindness, and then celebrate those acts is truly a beautiful and fulfilling event, and we hope that you witness these events in your K's home life as well! 

Whats Happening In K?

Readers Workshop

• Popcorn Words: with, love, get
• We practiced partner reading by listening to our partners and then retelling the story.
• The K's practiced making predictions about what will happen in a story. 
• We learned how to use a story teller voice (reading with expression); If the story was happy, we used a happy reading voice. If a story was sad, our reading voice was sad.

Writers Workshop

• We are continuing our practice of kindness in our writing as well. We used prompts, such as "What is kindness" and "What does kindness look and sound like?"

Math

• We practiced telling time to the hour, and half hour.
• The K's learned what each number on the clock means, and which of the hands are the minute and hour hands.
• They also looked at the difference between analog and digital clocks.
• Please expand on this at home.

Social Studies

We started our unit on maps:

• The K's were asked what they already know about maps.
• We explored what a birds eye view looks like.
• They were shown many different types of maps and a globe.
• The kindergartners mad birds eye view maps of their bedrooms.

Kindergarten Science


Kindergarteners enjoyed the month in science. Students started out nature journaling in the US garden, which is undergoing a lot of change. We will revisit the garden periodically throughout the spring to watch the plants change and grow. We have been studying weather, which has been fun because it’s been raining so much! We talked about the water cycle and made a water cycle in a bag. Our class also discovered that most of the kindergarteners like snowy weather best!

Kindergarten P.E.:

A favorite warm-up for the Kindergarten class is the relay race. It takes many forms, pictured here is the Rescue Relay, where students can practice running together in pairs.

Kindergarten Gardening:

What a great couple of weeks for Kindergarteners in the garden! They have earned a garden tasting party (that will take place after Spring Break), they got to go on a field trip to the East Bay Nursery, and they have begun planting! The snow pea seeds are starting to sprout in the classroom where they will live until they are ready to be added to the Learning Garden.

Thank you, Kindergarteners, for picking up the baby plants for the whole lower school!