Wednesday, July 13, 2011

What was the Best Part of Kindergarten Summer School?

Time sure flies by because Summer School has just ended. Everyone had grown physically and academically these past 6 weeks. To add closure to their time together before departing for a few weeks of rest, the keiki offered thoughts of their favorite activity.

Wishing everyone a safe and fun-filled summer vacation!  See you all in August!

Thursday, July 7, 2011

Jack and the Beanstalk

Jack and the Beanstalk is a  timeless folktale loved by children around the world.  The K-1 keiki enjoyed listening to the story and seeing the illustrations from the picture book. But, do you wonder what Jack would look like if you cut and glued parts of his body together with construction paper through the eyes of  a Kindergartener? The students were so excited as they created, collaborated and shared their version of Jack.  They also used their Math skills to measure various parts of his body.

When asked what they liked about this activity, their responses were genuine and spontaneous.

Bastien - Helping my friends doing the things I need to do
Reise - When we measured Jack
Zaffron - When the pants were big and fat
Sydney - When we measured the shirt

Michael - When we had to cut and paste the pieces for Jack
Brooke - Gluing all the pieces to make Jack 
Jake K. - Measuring Jack
Ashley - Everything
Mimi - It was fun because I like to make things.                                                                                Chase - Gluing on the shoes and measuring it                                                                                Stephanie - Doing the head and gluing the stuff on                                                                      Courtney - Gluing the pants and arms
Jake  L. - Measuring all the pieces                                                                                                   Christa - Working together                                                                                                                Aidan - Measuring the body
 



Junie B., First Grader (at Last!) by  Barbara Park is our current  Literature unit of study. This  story has fun plots and bridges the gap between summer school and the new school year that is quickly approaching. Have conversations with your child about their thoughts and feelings of entering first grade.

Friday, July 1, 2011

Where Can I Read?

After reading Green Eggs and Ham  by Dr. Seuss, we created a list of rhyming words.  The list was quite long, which was a good sign. We decided to write rhyming words of favorite places we could read.


Math is filled with  hands-on and collaborative activities.  All the keiki enjoyed  the Shapely Jungle  lesson where they formed animals from plane figure shapes, Scenes of Symmetry where colorful symmetrical shapes were cut to create a picture, and Shape It was an opportunity  to use Play Dough to form solid shapes. Maybe you can practice with your child identifying  objects that have symmetry in your home.

Wishing everyone a Happy 4th of July weekend.