Now that we're almost a month into school, we're really starting to get into more of the "meat" of our learning. Some routines and expectations are still a struggle, but this is going to be part of kindergarten for the whole year. Personally, I think it's just as important for a kindergartener to learn proper behavior and expectations as it is for them to learn basic information. But, regardless of this, I'm really excited to get into some new information, especially in science and social studies. I've kinda been neglecting these areas a bit in lieu of learning rules, behavior and expectations.
In science we're starting a huge unit on life processes. At the moment, we're focusing just on things that are living/nonliving, but this will eventually merge into learning about animals, and then plants. We don't finish this whole thing until almost Christmastime. During class we talked about living/nonliving things and how to tell if something is alive or not. We then went on a nature walk outside to look at everything on our campus and try and decide if it is living or not.
In social studies we're beginning to learn about presidents, particularly George Washington at the moment. I'm amazed at how much kids like learning about presidents. Social studies is usually something I think of as a boring subject because there's so much memorization in the upper grades, but my kids love it. They love just sitting around and talking about presidents. Today we read a short story that had George Washington facts then made puppets of George Washington. I was really impressed how much information they retained. Some kids realized GW's birthday was in the same month as theirs and they were ecstatic. While we were making our puppets they were just chatting about GW. It was awesome. Since they had to color him in they were curious what his favorite colors were. Though this is obviously an unanswerable question, it brought up the great question about what the colors of the USA were and why GW might really like these colors. Coloring in GW also let us bring up why his hair should be white, what a wig is, and why he wore them (being from a time a long long time ago and fashion was different.) Who knew we could have this much fun in SS?!
In science we're starting a huge unit on life processes. At the moment, we're focusing just on things that are living/nonliving, but this will eventually merge into learning about animals, and then plants. We don't finish this whole thing until almost Christmastime. During class we talked about living/nonliving things and how to tell if something is alive or not. We then went on a nature walk outside to look at everything on our campus and try and decide if it is living or not.
In social studies we're beginning to learn about presidents, particularly George Washington at the moment. I'm amazed at how much kids like learning about presidents. Social studies is usually something I think of as a boring subject because there's so much memorization in the upper grades, but my kids love it. They love just sitting around and talking about presidents. Today we read a short story that had George Washington facts then made puppets of George Washington. I was really impressed how much information they retained. Some kids realized GW's birthday was in the same month as theirs and they were ecstatic. While we were making our puppets they were just chatting about GW. It was awesome. Since they had to color him in they were curious what his favorite colors were. Though this is obviously an unanswerable question, it brought up the great question about what the colors of the USA were and why GW might really like these colors. Coloring in GW also let us bring up why his hair should be white, what a wig is, and why he wore them (being from a time a long long time ago and fashion was different.) Who knew we could have this much fun in SS?!
Outside talking about how to tell if something is alive.
My class.
Looking at a flower to decide if its living or not.
More observation.
We found an owl and decided he was living.
George Washington puppets.
Some completed George Washingtons.
Marian and GW.
Kinder with their George Washingtons
it rained when we were supposed to go to the playground yesterday, so we played dress up instead.
We're still learning about silhouettes in art. Today we used warm and cold colors to make dinosaur silhouettes.
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