Who? What? Where? When? Why? How?

The Kindergarten room was full of questions this week as we began our last unit - newspapers.  The Kindergarteners are very busy learning about newspapers - the different sections, the purpose, and the reason why we have newspapers.  The ultimate goal of the unit will be for the Kindergarteners to create their own class newspaper!

Reporting the facts!

We started the unit by learning about question words.  The kids learned the 5Ws and one H and practiced asking questions.  They worked on identifying sentences that were either statement sentences or question sentences and putting the correct punctuation at the end.  The Kindergarten Kids listened to the well-known story, Little Red Riding Hood, and used the 5Ws and one H to report the facts of the story.  They did a great job!

In math this week, the K-Kids finished their ladybug unit by creating a Grouchy Ladybug clock.  They each chose a time out of the book, created an analog clock to match the time, and then wrote about what animal the Grouchy Ladybug met at that time.  At the end, they sequenced the times and retold the popular Eric Carle story.  They also learned about the "Function Machine."  The Function Machine is used throughout first grade as well, and is a tool to help the kids visualize how a rule associates each input value with an output value.  Numbers go into the machine and come out the machine following the rule.  The Function Machine is great because it is so easy to differentiate the work for the students by changing the rule!

Fine Art Friday was a lot of fun this week as the kids experimented with Jackson Pollock's style of painting!  They learned about his childhood and how he loved art work but found he had a hard time drawing and painting pictures.  He began working with paint in a new way and expressed his movement and energy into the paintings.  He did not use a traditional easel and canvas, but instead he used his whole body to paint on large canvases on the floor.  The kids loved splattering, flinging, and dropping paint onto their own canvases, and the artwork really turned out beautiful!  We are excited to share this art along with our other works at our Art Show on June 2nd.