Week 23 and Still Making Our Mark In The KG Class!

Dear Family, we hope you all had a great week. Here in the Kindergarten class, we’ve had a productive week focused on brainstorming, teamwork, and project planning. This allowed us to assess our children's skills in planning and implementing ideas collaboratively. We're excited to share our experiences with you, read on to find out more!

Large Group

In addition to setting the date and learning daily words and phrases, our large group sessions each week focus on a specific topic. This week, that topic was "Land Forms”. We started by discussing Earth's various features, prompting the children to share their ideas about what Earth contains. They readily identified common features such as mountains and oceans, after which we introduced and discussed various land forms in detail. Each child had the opportunity to share what they had learned about each land form, and we incorporated a song to enhance the learning experience.

“If we put two hills side by side the flat one is going to be Valley” -Leayene

“I can sing the song by myself it’s easy”- Lucas

“Mountains have ice color” -Umar

Literacy

In literacy this week, we focused on reviewing digraphs. We revisited each digraph covered last term, reinforcing the children's recall of their sounds and spellings. To further support their learning, we engaged in a digraph coloring worksheet activity. Our second activity involved introducing the concept of phonograms to the children. Phonograms are letter combinations, sometimes called 'word families’, that represent a sound or a sequence of sounds. For example, '-at,' '-op,' '-ing,' '-ight,' and '-tion' are all common phonograms. By recognizing these patterns, children can decode words more efficiently, which improves their reading fluency and spelling accuracy.

“Look, ‘which’ has two digraphs so should I color the first ‘sh’ blue and ‘ch’ green?” - Adelene

“Jr. is a digraph?” -Junior

Math

Math class was all about time this week! We dove headfirst into "Time," "Time Telling," and the wonderful world of the "Analog Clock”. We started by getting hands-on with the clock, identifying the hour hand (the short one!) and having the children practice telling time just by looking at the numbers. They were so engaged, which we are always happy to see! Next, we tackled minutes, learning clever counting methods. The best part? They got to practice using a real clock, twisting and turning the hands to see how minutes tick by. It was a fantastic teaching opportunity, especially when we related it all to their daily routines and discussed timely activities!

"Home time is when? 3:30?" -Hekima

" I have the same like this clock at home" -Yeabsera

Science

This week in science, we dove headfirst into the water cycle with some amazing experiments! Our first adventure was all about evaporation. We took our learning outside, where the children became artists, painting the ground with water. It was so fun to watch them explore! They painted on shady spots, sunny metal, and even filled up their toys, all to see where the water would vanish the fastest. 'Which one will disappear first?' they wondered. We even had a little race between a wet paper towel left out in the sun and another trapped in a plastic bag. The children were fascinated by the tiny water droplets clinging to the inside of the bag! Next up: condensation! With a little help from the adults, we carefully poured hot water into cups and trapped the steam with another cup on top. Then came the magic: ice! As we placed ice on the top cup, the children gasped as they watched the steam turn back into water. It was like a science magic trick!

"Lets try the gate" -Tang Tang

"Look mine is raining, WOW" -Adelene

"Jr. look look at droplets in my cup" -Leayene

Art

Our ongoing art project took a step forward this week! After painting a canvas black and adding a sprinkle of glitter last week, it was time for the main event: hand and footprints! We moved our studio outdoors, creating an open space where creativity could flow freely. The children were so excited to leave their mark. With each foot stomp and hand press, they added their own special touch to the canvas, creating a truly collaborative piece of art filled with joy and individuality.

"It looks like the night time sky" -Abigial

"My feet is big guys like my dad" -Junior

Clay

Our clay water park is really taking shape! This week, we dove into the details, adding all sorts of fun features to the inside. We built twisty water slide pipelines, a colorful ice cream shop (yum!), and even a magical unicorn gate, just like we planned. It was amazing to see the children working together, sharing ideas and helping each other bring their visions to life. Their teamwork is what's making this project so special!

Story Time with Mr. Tesfaye

We had another fantastic guest reader this week! A big thank you to Mr. Tesfaye (Leayene's dad) for bringing "Polite Cat" to life for us. Our children loved the story and our follow-up discussion and Q&A. We truly appreciate you taking the time to visit and share your love of reading with us!

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.

Thanks for joining us on this creative adventure! We can't wait to see what we create next week.