Literacy
Our snap word knowledge is growing quickly. So
far we know the words a, and, I, is, look, like,
me, my, the, to, see, said, will, went. We are using
these words in our writing and notice them in books, on signs, and all
over the school.
We started a new writing unit this week- Writing True
Stories. This is a wonderful opportunity for us to practice
all that we’ve learned in terms of grammar, stretching
words, and writing snap words. We are writing stories across
three pages, and include a beginning, middle, and end. We are
working to build stamina and are trying to write more than one story
during each writing workshop. In addition to writing longer, more
interesting books, we are also focusing on more conventions. We
know that these help everyone read our writing with ease. Children
are learning to put two finger spaces between their words. They are
remembering to start a sentence with an upper case letter and use
lower case letters for the rest of the words. We have discussed
how a period goes at the end of every sentence (but it sure is tricky
to figure out what a sentence is and where that period goes!). We
are also learning to reread what we’ve written to make sure that we
have all of the words that we wanted to write.
In addition, almost everyone has met his or her first writing goal.
Second goals have been set and students are working hard to add
punctuation, spaces between words, and more. Our writing is really
blossoming!
In addition to reading emergent storybooks using the pictures, we
are also reading pattern books (and really reading the words!). It is
easy to read a pattern book once we know the pattern. The
pictures help us figure out the tricky words so we can read
the book in snap! In both pattern books and storybooks we
continue to look at the characters and think about what
they may be feeling. This is told through the illustration and the
words. We are also thinking about what the problem is and how the
problem gets solved.
Social Studies
We have been learning about December holidays while
focusing on Kwanzaa. We learned that Kwanzaa is a very
family oriented holiday that lasts for seven days. Each
day you light another candle in the kinara. Friends and family greet
each other by saying ‘Habari Gani’ which means, ‘what’s the news?’
We also learned about the traditions, foods, and story of
Hanukkah. We learned that Hanukkah lasts for eight days.
Like with Kwanzaa, there is a candleholder and another
candle gets lit each night. We played the dreidel game and
were excited to taste latkes at our holiday party.
We’ve enjoyed reading Christmas stories and hearing about Rudolph,
candy canes, The Grinch, and Santa Claus. We liked hearing about
Christmas traditions from different cultures and
celebrated with our K-B Photo Booth props.