Kindergarten's Week 24: Exploring The Joys of Hands-On Learning!

Dear families,

How have you all been? As for us, we've been buzzing with activity this week! We've spent our days exploring, experimenting, planning, discussing, reminiscing, and, of course, sharing lots of laughs along the way. To help you visualize our whirlwind of a week, we’ll break it down for you below!

Large Group

As you are all familiar with, our large group setting is the time where we set dates, and learn the shape of the day. We also discuss the word of the day, and review important items from our circle time calendar chart. Moreover, there is our weekly topic that we explore every day. This week, our large group topic was 'Even and Odd Numbers’. We introduced the topic after counting to 100, which makes it easier to identify which numbers are odd and which are even. This topic will help them with their math activities next week. It was such a fun topic that they requested to do it every day on the board!

“But if you have 0 chocolate, you can’t give us both one one so it’s not odd yeah” -Adelene

“I know even and odd cause I practiced it with my dad” -Leayene

Literacy

Writing was our main focus this week during our literacy sessions. We did a 'writing words' activity where we all took turns saying a word out loud, and the rest of the class spelled it and wrote it on paper. They all enjoyed this, as they liked sounding the words out loud and writing them down. In our first session, we started with easy three-letter words, but we took it to the next level and challenged our students to spell five-letter words or words with two syllables. They still enjoyed it and approached the whole process as a game.

“It’s so easy and I did it fast” - Abigail

“Cup and cap are the same” -Yeabsera

Math

This week in math, we took the clock lesson to the next level. Since they’ve been telling time using the short hand to indicate the hour and identifying that when it is 12 it's 00 or 12 o’clock, this week they learned about counting the other numbers and how the minutes work. They wrote down the minute numbers beside the actual numbers, starting from 00, 05, 10, to 55. They practiced writing the minute numbers on the board and completed a worksheet where they told time using both hours and minutes.

“After 55 it’s 00” -Junior

“It’s just adding 5 yeah?” -Umar

Science

This week in science, we did some digging to find the tiniest but most important Invertebrate animal: worms. We discussed what worms are, how we benefit from them, and shared some fun facts during our large group session. Later, we went outside with our science kits and tweezers to hunt for worms. We dug and found many of them under the soil in our gardening section. We caught them with the tweezers and safely placed them into the kit, bringing them back to our classroom to observe them with a magnifying glass. This exploration helped our children see and understand things on their own while encouraging them to question everything and be part of the solution.

“Look we brought dead leaves for the worms to eat” Leayene and Tang Tang

“They don’t have eyes but they can see” -Adelene

“Let’s find worms let’s find worms” -Eliyab

Art

Our recent art sessions have been mainly focused on our ongoing projects. Our children come up with ideas on how they want their canvases to look and plan how they are going to execute their vision. Following their own plans, they work on their art projects. For our second art project, the task was 'Painting the Continents' on a large canvas. Sketching was the first step, so our students took turns sketching the seven continents with the guidance of our art teacher. Once they had sketched out the continents, we started painting the rest of the canvas black to represent the water. Our children chose a black background so that each of the continents could be painted in different colors. Using large brushes and with focused minds, we painted the background black and then added the colored continents.

“Let’s paint Africa yellow cause it’s sunny”- Adelene

“Asia is red and yellow because China is red and yellow” -Tang Tang

Clay

Our clay sessions have also been focused on project planning and execution. Our children chose to make a water park with various items and features. We started this project last week, and this week we were able to complete making the water park out of clay. The next step is to fire the clay to make it dry, and then paint it with the colors of the children's choice. This week, we also started creating a few landform models using clay. We made a couple of hills and mountains for our project. Our children enjoyed these clay sessions as they allowed them to express their ideas and creativity clearly.

“I made a valley between two hills” -Hekima

“Look at my swimming pool it has a napping bed inside” -Abigail

Class Project:

Our kindergarten class has started working on projects based on the children's choices and executing them according to their plans. This week, we participated in two projects. The first was making a globe using a blown-up balloon and newspaper. We shredded the paper into pieces, glued it onto the balloon, and left it to dry. The second project involved the water cycle, where we used cardboard boxes. We painted them and began creating the precipitation. The children loved participating in these activities as they were able to do them by themselves and in their own way.

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.

Stay tuned for more amazing blogs chronicling our children’s journey of exploration and growth.