- In language arts, we practiced the strategy of recognizing the story structure. With our focus book this week, we decided the story structure was beginning, middle, and end. We were also introduced to making inferences. We used our brain and ideas from the book to come up with an idea or answer to a question.
- In writing, we continued writing our "kindergarten style" poems. Many of us wrote poems that have a pattern to them. We also practiced writing a story with a sequence. We wrote about how to plant a seed.
- In math, we worked on recognizing patterns in numbers. We also talked about how a number like 15 has one group of ten and five left over.
- In social studies this week, we focused on Earth Day and recycling. To celebrate Earth Day, we went outside and did some jobs to help take care of our garden. We also learned about some ways to we reduce, reuse, and recycle.
- Our community centers had a few new centers this week. One of our favorites was our recycling center. We sorted recycling materials by plastic, paper, and metal. We also enjoyed our art center where we labeled the parts of a flower. We then painted the flower with water color paint.
- Heart Word of the Week: what
- Special Theme of the Week: Recycling
- In language arts, we practiced retelling stories, connecting stories with previous stories, making predictions, and listening for new vocabulary words. In addition, we also practiced some rhyming by coming up with words in a couple different word families.
- In writing this week, we did some science writing. We did an experiment and compared two cups with lima bean seeds. One cup had only lima bean seeds. The other had lima bean seeds and water. We recorded our predictions the day we started the experiment. The next day, we recorded the results. This experiment was really neat to see how seeds absorb water and grow.
- In math, we were introduced to a new math center called, Beat You to 30 Cents. With this center, we are practicing exchanging 10 pennies for a dime, comparing quantities, counting on, and counting by 10's.
- In science, we figured out a science experiment to test to see if plants have some of the characteristics of living things. We have a variety of baggies with lima bean seeds in them. One of the baggies is receiving sun, water, air, and dirt. Then each of our other baggies is missing one of those items. We are going to see if the seeds will still grow if something is missing.
- During community centers, we have continued with the same plant centers.
- In language arts, we practiced identifying the structure of a story. We also worked on retelling the sequence of events on our nonfiction story.
- In math, we were introduced to a new math center called, Count and Compare Unifix Cubes. With this center we are working on comparing quantities and counting strategies. This week, we also learned about measuring with nonstandard units (cubes).
- In writing, we began writing "kindergarten style" poems. This week, we focused on writing list poems and poems that have onomatopoeias in them.
- We had some great critical thinking going on in science this week. We learned about living and nonliving things. We were introduced to it by viewing different pictures in a power point presentation. We thought critically about each item and if we thought it was living or nonliving. We had to justify our answers. By the end of the presentation, it explained the characteristics of living things. However, some of us disagreed with how the presentation told us plants were living things. We didn't think they fit into those characteristics. We then had a conversation about if we thought the presentation was correct and how we would know if it is correct. We decided to look at another source to see what the characteristics of living things are. This time, we wanted a video and from this video, we saw that all the characteristics matched what was in the power point presentation. The video also explained further why plants were living. We were still a little skeptical that plants are living and have the characteristics mentioned in the power point and video. Therefore, we have decided to do some experiments and study plants to see if they really do have characteristics of living things.
- Our community centers this week had many different plant themed activities. One of our favorite centers is our science center where we explored dirt. Another one of our favorite centers was our flower shop.
- Heart word of the week: said
- Special Theme of the Week: Plants
