Mrs. Kirk’s Kindergarten Class ________________________________________________________________ Mrs. Kirk’s Class April 2024 Constable School April Events It’s hard to believe that April is almost over! We’d like to share some of our class activities that kept us busy this month. Classroom Happenings This month in science, we focused on the weather as spring arrived. We enjoyed several related fiction and non-fiction books. We discussed the different types of weather and engaged in various projects, such as using art materials to create different types of clouds, and making a rainy day picture by adding water droplets to it. A highlight was making windsocks and taking them outside to test them on a lovely, breezy spring day. We also talked about rainbows, and used light and a glass prism to make a real rainbow appear in our classroom! Of course, we had to paint some colorful rainbows as well. Students were excited about the solar eclipse on April 8th. They created a project that illustrated how a solar eclipse happens, and also listened to a book that explained the event. We watched the NASA live stream of the eclipse as well. We also began a unit of study in science on Living and Non-living Things. We learned to tell how something is living and nonliving, and enjoyed a nature walk to observe both living and nonliving things in the natural environment. Since April 22nd is recognized as Earth Day, we took some time to discuss the importance of taking care of our earth, and learned some things that we can all do to accomplish this important goal. Activities included reading literature related to the topic, and identifying small things we can all do to care for our earth, such as recycling, turning off lights, not littering, and conserving water, paper, and other resources. The students enjoyed painting earths and writing about ways to take care of it. Our alphabet study focused on digraphs (th ,sh, ch, wh, ck) and tapping and blending to read short vowel words. We also focused on long vowel sounds in words. Emerging literacy skills were sharpened with the chart poems “It Looked Like Spilt Milk,” and “Smiling Rainbow.” We are also continuing to explore short vowel word families as we work on our Word Family Journals. In math, we have been very busy learning about the concepts of addition and subtraction. We engaged in many different hands-on activities and games to develop our understanding, and we were also challenged to use counters to solve both addition and subtraction story problems. This was challenging because it required the children to listen carefully to the problem and to determine whether it was an addition or subtraction problem. We focused on clue words, such as “more” and “all together” for addition, and “how many are left” for subtraction. We will also soon be focusing on the concept of nonstandard measurement. We will be very busy engaging in various hands-on activities that will give us practice in measuring and comparing size, length, and height. Writer’s Workshop The class has concluded writing How-To books, and demonstrated that they are experts in knowing how to do many things, as well as teach others how to do them, too! We have recently begun writing “All About” books. In this unit, the children pick topics (people, places, things, or activities) that they know all about. They also continue to work on conventions such as spelling, spacing, and punctuation. The class is very excited to showcase their knowledge as they write All About books. A Look Ahead May is sure to be a busy month! We will continue our science unit on living and non-living things. We will learn about the needs of living things, habitats, and how living things can change their environment to meet their needs. We will even have the opportunity to observe some creepy, crawly living things right in our own classroom! More to come… Our alphabet study will continue to focus on digraphs and vowel sounds. We will continue with short vowel word families. In math, we will focus on subtraction. We will also begin to experiment with the concept of non-standard measurement. April Birthdays April 16th: Brayden April 19th: Amaya HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Upcoming Dates to Remember Tentative class trip this month! More info to come May 2nd: our student teacher’s last day (Ms. Candray) May 10th: early dismissal for staff development May 11th: Scholastic orders due. May 24th: Early Dismissal for Staff Development. May 27th: Schools closed for Memorial Day. Now that spring is finally here, I hope you are able to take advantage of the nice weather, and enjoy some outdoor fun with your children! Sincerely, Mrs. Kirk’s Class