What a busy week we have had in kindergarten! This week we focused on the artist Claude Monet. We learned that he was from Paris, France and the style of art he created is called Impressionism. He liked to paint outdoors and often painted boats, ponds, lakes and of course beautiful waterlilies. One of his good friends that he liked to paint with was the artist, Renoir. We looked at lots of artwork by Monet, read several stories about him, and of course created lots of art! We can't wait to show you our masterpieces at the upcoming art gallery! This week we will study the artist, Michelangelo.
One other artist that we learned about this week was actually an artist from Mooresville, NC. Her name is Selma Burke. She is an African-American artist who spent much of her childhood making sculptures out of the clay on the riverbeds near her home. She is most well known for her portrait of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, which is found on a dime. Anytime you have a dime in your pocket, purse or wallet know that you are carrying around a piece of Selma Burke's art work. Very cool indeed! We looked at dimes this week and talked about how much they were worth, about which President is on the dime, and of course that local artist, Selma Burke is responsible for creating the portrait of him on the dime!
In math this week we continued our geometry unit and focused on both two and 3D shapes. We are working on describing shapes by their attributes. We talked about lines and points on shapes, as well as sides and faces. We will do some more exploring with 3D shapes this week. Have your child start to look for 3D shapes all around them. We learned a new poem about 3D shapes that describes a cone, rectangular prism, cylinder, and sphere. We discussed real objects that might look like these things in our everyday lives.
We focused on the high frequency word "do" in our literacy time this week. We created a book that has this word in it several times. We highlighted the word and practiced reading the book. Please have your child practice reading this book at home. We also talked about the difference between a lower case d and a lower case b. These are letters that most kindergarten students tend to reverse when they write. We practiced writing them in shaving cream, as well as a movement activity that crossed our mid-lines to practice which way these letters go. We put up some visual reminders in our classroom of b having a belly and d wearing a diaper to help the students remember which direction these letters should go when they are written or when they see them in print. We are working hard to make sure we use mostly lower case letters when we write, especially in our names (with the exception of the first letter). If you notice your child writing his/her name in all capital letters ask him/her to see if he/she can rewrite the letters using lower case letters, except for the first letter. We are also continuing to build our reading stamina during readers workshop time.
In science we read a book about the Statue of Liberty called, Her Right Foot. We made some great connections in this book to our artist, Monet. The students were excited to find out that the Statue of Liberty was created and first put together in Paris, France. This is the same place Monet was from! We discovered that the Statue of Liberty has a thin layer of copper on her outer "skin." When she was first built she was brown, like a copper penny. However, over time and because she is outside in many types of weather the copper oxidized and turned green. This is why the Statue of Liberty we know today is the color green, even though she is made of copper. We decided to test this out with some pennies of our own. First we made predictions about what we thought would happen and drew a picture of our pennies. Next, we put our pennies in a bowl of vinegar and salt. We are letting them sit in the vinegar and salt while we are out for a few days and will be excited to see the results when we come back to school on Tuesday. We will make our observations and let you know how our experiment turns out!
Important Reminders:
-Don't forget that each child needs to bring in a gallon size bag (labeled with their name) with a collection of one hundred items by Thursday...it's the 100th day of school! Hooray! Also, students may dress like they are one hundred years old.
-Make sure you are working on your Valentine's! February 1st is this week...can you believe it?
-I will be sending out a Sign-up Genius for conferences soon. Because we lost one of our conference days due to snow, depending on how many people would like to conference we will most likely need to offer some alternate conference times. Please know that if you would like a conference and the times fill up or don't work for you, we will make sure to figure out a time that will work, so no worries!
-Please send in your mom and baby pictures as soon as possible.
Upcoming Events:
January 29 - No School, Teacher Workday
January 30 - Lottery Open House, 9:15
February 1 - 100th day of school
February 2 - Sprit Friday
February 6 - Book Fair begins (located in the MS Media Center)
Parent Advisory 9:00 am at the HS
February 14 - Valentine's Day...don't forget your special Valentine's
February 15 - Kindergarten Art Gallery....MARK YOUR CALENDARS (all parents are invited to attend)
February 16 - No School...Optional Parent Conferences
February 19 - No School....President's Day Holiday
February 20 - Field Trip to the Laurels Nursing Home
February 28 - Family Math Night - 6:30 pm
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