The National Lutheran Teachers’ Convocation was a great time of learning for me! Many thanks to everyone who supported us in being able to go. One of the sectional classes that I took was about tinkering. Tinkering is exploring and building with small parts in a way that is process rather than product oriented. To implement more tinkering in kindergarten, I am collecting loose parts. If you have any small parts that you know longer need, I’d love to take them off your hands. Examples: nuts, washers, bolts, screws with blunt tips, plastic bottle caps, dowels, chopsticks, golf tees, popsicle sticks etc.
Kindergarteners have had a busy month! The children continue to work hard and grow every day. We had our first field trip to Deal’s Orchard in Jefferson. We toured the orchard, and apple sorting and processing plant, had a picnic, played in the apple acres, and each child got to pick an apple and pumpkin.
In Religion, we have been learning about Moses. We’ve done lots of games, crafts, and games to back up our learning. The kids are great at remembering these stories!
Calendar continues to be a big part of our morning routine. The children are working on counting how many days we have been in school by ones, fives and tens and learning to spell months and days of the week. We recognize and continue patterns, chart weather and practice our handwriting in personal calendar notebooks.
In Literacy, we are working hard on learning letter sounds. We have learned about labeling and making lists. We’re practicing writing our first names correctly and working hard on improving our handwriting. We started reading our first chapter book, Charlotte’s Web and are enjoying it a lot!
For Math this month, we studied eight 2D shapes: square, rectangle, circle, oval, trapezoid, hexagon, rhombus, and triangle. We learned a poem about each one, practiced drawing them and spelling their name and counted their sides and corners. We just started numbers 0-10.
We read “Leaf Man” by Lois Elhert and then went on a walk, collected fall leaves and other things, and made our own leaf man. They are hanging in our hallway! In science we have been learning all about apples- their parts and their life cycle. Every “Walking Wednesday” we take a walk around the neighborhood to enjoy God’s creation. We work on our walking in line skills, and on observing the world around us.
