Kindergarten Chronicles- Week 22, 100 Days Edition!

Dear Family, we hope you all had a productive and enjoyable week! As usual, ours was filled with plenty to celebrate, appreciate, and recognize in the most fun and exciting ways possible. Read on to find out more…

Large Group:

This week, our large group sessions began with our usual question: “How was your weekend?”. This is when everyone gets expressive and excited to share how they spent their weekends with loved ones. For the remaining four days, we focused on our weekly topic and activity highlights. Our topic this week was “Blueprint,” as we are currently working on art, science, and creative individual and group school projects. We discussed how to translate their plans into sketches and written ideas. Everyone was very eager to share their concepts and collaborate on creating plans on paper.

“The papers have to be blue always?” Leayene

“Let’s make a blueprint for our shoes” Umar

Literacy:

This week, our literacy session took place in our Cafeteria room. As a kindergarten team, we designed this café to serve as a learning center for everyone. We entered together as a class to experience the space and work on our communication, social-emotional, and numeracy skills as a team once again. During our second literacy session, we engaged in a literacy question-and-answer journal activity. We prepared a booklet with various questions for the children to read and respond to in writing. The first question was "Write a few things about yourself?". Our children did an amazing job sounding out words in their heads and writing thoughtful paragraphs about who they are and what they like. It was a truly wonderful and engaging moment.

“Now our cafe kitchen looks like a real one” -Leayene

“How do I write Jersey?” -Lucas

“M M M M M Mufasa” -Eliyab

Math:

This week in math, we introduced subtraction as the concept of "taking away" to our children. We first practiced it together on the board, and once we felt confident that everyone understood, we moved on to a paper activity. Each child received a worksheet with simple subtraction questions, and they completed it quickly and accurately by using drawing sticks to represent the numbers and counting how many were left after taking away the next written number. It was fun and easy for everyone!

“I finished first like Lucas” -Junior

“This is so easy so so easy” -Abigail

“Understanding understanding” -Eliyab

Science:

This week in science, we introduced a new topic: the “Water Cycle”. Since we’ve been studying life cycles, including the apple and butterfly life cycles, we thought it would be exciting to explore how rain is formed, especially since the children love the sky, rainbows, and clouds. We asked them how rain is formed, and their answers were surprising and awe-inspiring! We then discussed the formation of rain and learned new vocabulary: Evaporation, Condensation, and Precipitation. The children drew the water cycle on the board, and in the next session, they participated in a cut-and-paste activity where they placed the pieces in the correct order.

“God made rain, cause God made everything” -Leayene

“Rain is a kid of Cloud” -Umar

“From sky and clouds” -Adelene

“Mr. Wind is sun’s friend so he help him” -Lucas

Library:

As usual, we took our first library session outside by the treehouse, making our mat cozy with pillows and favorite books. The children read books individually or in groups for a few minutes until we brought out a surprise family guest. Junior's dad, Yared, came over and greeted them. They were all so happy and excited to meet their friend's father and invited him to read them a story, which he gladly did. Our children were captivated by the story of Detective Ted and gave Yared a group hug when he finished reading. He also shared the treats he brought, and they enjoyed them together with love and gratitude. Thank you once again, Yared, for joining our class and taking such good care of our children.

“They are the same, Junior and his dad” -Umar

“Thank you for the chocolate Jr., you’re the best” -Adelene

“Guys guys, come get closer to my dad” -Junior

“Yeabsera did you invite Junior’s dad for your birthday?” -Abigail

Clay:

This week, we had an amazing and team-spirited clay session. As mentioned earlier, we put our blueprint lesson into practice by drawing our ideas for building a “Water Park” with clay on paper. After finalizing our designs, we took the large chart paper to the clay area and presented it to our art teacher, Asnake. We began by working on the surface (foundation) of our project. We took a good amount of clay, placed it on the table, and started flattening it using the big clay roller. Everyone took turns doing this, and once the foundation was ready, they divided the remaining parts of the plans and started working in two groups. It was a fun and successful process, and we will continue this project next week.

“I will make the gate” -Lucas

“I will make the unicorn” -Adelene

“Let’s work together like them guys” -Yeabsera

“I want it to be big and beautiful Asnake” -Leayene

“I will make the swimming pools with Umar okay” -Hekima

Cooperative Game:

Since we celebrated 100 days of the school year this Monday with handprints on a big board by the bike lane, we decided to leave it up until the end of the week. On Friday, we teamed up to clean the board and remove the prints using wipes and wet towels. It was a fun activity that also provided great motor exercises. We worked together to get the board ready for Monday!

“Look my sponge turned all red” Hekima

“Wash wash wash” Eliyab

Shout out: HAPPY BIRTHDAY YEABSERA! We love you so much!

Weekly schedule:  

Monday – Math, Literacy

Tuesday – Literacy, Science, gym

Wednesday - Library, Math

Thursday - Science

Friday - Cooperative game

Specials:

Monday- Art

Tuesday - Gym

Thursday - Ethiopian center/ clay

Friday - Football

Reminders and notes:

• Make sure that our children are wearing suitable clothes on Monday as we have art class and activities get messy sometimes.

• Every Wednesday and Thursday is library day. Our children will be bringing home a book of their choice in their library folder, so please make sure to read the book with them over the weekend. Return the folder the following Wednesday so they can get a new one.


• Every Tuesday, we have gymnastics, so please ensure that our children come dressed in comfortable and loose-fitting sports attire to facilitate their exercise.

• Every Friday, we have football, so please make sure our children wear their football jerseys if they have them, or any comfortable shorts.

We hope you enjoyed reading our blog, and found it interesting. Stay tuned for more!