Welcome Back!

The Kindergarten Kids were full of energy and excitement as they returned to school on Monday after our two week spring break.  They shared their traveling adventures, time spent with family stories, and Roycemore spring break memories with the class.  The weather also cooperated at the beginning of the week and was a great transition into class discussions of the spring season.  We reviewed nouns, verbs, and adjectives and brainstormed words that related to spring.  We also drew pictures of what we can do now that it is finally spring in Chicago.

Buzz, Buzz Bumblebee and  Plants were the titles of the two poems we learned this week.  We are starting a poetry  unit that will take us to the end of the year.  The Kindergarten Kids are learning the mechanics of poetry (line breaks, stanzas, types) and are also recognizing the beats and rhythm a poem may have as well as how we feel when we read the poem.  This week they learned two new poems, completed two different activities with the poems and then put the poems in their poetry folder.

We also started Fine Art Fridays this week!  The idea behind this ongoing unit is that the Kindergarteners will be exposed to different artists, different types of art, and learn to appreciate and understand what the artists were trying to tell us through their art.  We are relating feelings to the art - from the artist and how we feel when we see the art.  This week we learned about Vincent van Gogh.  There is a wonderful children's story about van Gogh, Camille and the Sunflowers, that captured how hard it was for van Gogh to feel accepted.  He found one friend, Camille, who invited him to be a part of his family, and van Gogh painted Camille, his family, his house, and the sunflowers that Camille had given him.  The children loved watching a slide show on the computer that showed Vincent van Gogh's paintings, and they were able to recognize many of the paintings from the story book.  The K-Kids then set off to "paint" (they used crayons for this activity) the picture of the sunflowers.  They used van Gogh's as a guide and practiced using the same type of colors, shapes, and lines.  I loved how the children worked so hard on the paintings, really concentrated on using van Gogh's style, but also all of the paintings were unique and representations of the individual children.  The goal of the art unit is not to exactly copy the artist, but to become familiar with the artwork and artists, to recognize the feelings behind the art work and to talk about how that piece of artwork makes us feel today.  Mark your calendars for Kindergarten Culmination Night on June 2nd from 5:30-6:30pm; we will be hosting an art show for our parents to come view our wonderful masterpieces!

In math the kids were introduced to the number line.  They played a listening game that required them to use the number line to complete math problems (ex. Start at 24, add 7 and take away 12.  What is the answer?).  They also learned a fun game to play in pairs that reviewed more than and less than.  The K-kids also used popsicle sticks to represent three digit numbers and place value (137 would be a group of 100 sticks, 3 groups of ten, and seven ones).  To connect to our art unit, they used pasta to create patterns around a frame.  We will spray paint the pasta frames gold and use these frames to hold our beautiful van Gogh paintings!

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend, and I will see you bright and early on Monday morning.