This is my favorite time of year. The sights, sounds, and smells of fall and the upcoming holidays are everywhere. The rush of getting the school year started is past. Our class of strangers in August has transformed into a community of friends and we can slow down for a few weeks to focus on friends, family, and all that we are grateful to have. This week, we were fortunate to start the Kind Kids Club with our school counselor, Mrs. Hines. She shared all about how small acts of kindness add up to big buckets of happiness over time for us and others too. Students have the chance to build their awareness of kindness by recording their kind acts over the coming weeks. We learned about the first Thanksgiving, especially the difficult voyage on the Mayflower. We are making turkey hats too. Our feathers are patterns! Here is a fun music video we watched about the first Thanksgiving. The culmination of our study is a STEAM challenge. Tomorrow our class will build their own boats from individual designs out of any combination of foil, craft sticks, paper, and wiki stix. We will test the boats to see if they float and then send them on a "journey" across the our sensory water table "sea" carrying three jelly bean "passengers." We'll learn about buoyancy through trial and error and discuss ways to engineer even better boats after our trials. The highlight of my night was this note send to me from a student. Tomorrow is going to be fun! Check out our class newsletter for more updates from our week together. Happy Thanksgiving!
"Happy 50th Day of TK! We learned all about the United States. We watched a few videos so we could learn everything about the states." -dictated by our TK class Here are two fun videos we watched together about states and capitals. They tied in well with election day and the patriotism and gratitude we feel as we celebrate Veteran's Day tomorrow.
We had minimum days this week for parent conferences. It was wonderful to celebrate each students success and share ways to support further growth for each child. These kids LOVE to come to school each day and I couldn't be happier. In math we spent more time learning shapes and opened the cookie shape matching game at centers.We have been working hard to learn to write our numbers from 1 to 10 too! Here are some other popular center choices this week. Can't wait for next week!
"We earned all of our fluffies and had a celebration for our excellent behavior. We had to work hard for them. When we got all the colors, we earned lunch with our teacher." (co-written by our TK class today) The Book Fair was a big success thanks to many dedicated volunteers and families. I'm so thankful for awesome new books for our class library gifted by families and Book Fair proceeds. We love books!!! We celebrated on Monday too with Halloween fun. My favorite student quote that day was from Ollie who said, "This is the best day ever!" Thank you to all the parents who came and made our day so special. We couldn't have done it without you!! Thank goodness it's Friday tomorrow. These busy kids are ready to recharge. Looking forward to seeing families again next week!
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AuthorHi! I'm Mrs. Benz and I want to welcome you to our TK blog! Here you can find weekly newsletters and fun posts about what is happening in our class. Archives
May 2020
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