Kindergarten
May 2008
Dear Kindergarten Families,
We hope you had a good Pesah and vacation; during our last two months of school we have many exciting things planned. The email last week informed you of some changes in dates. We didn’t want to take the class to Eaton Canyon when the air was so unhealthy, so we will go on May 21 instead. We are all glad that the fire is out. We sent letters to the firefighters to thank them for their hard work. The library changed our May 8 date to the following Thursday, May 15. We also have planned a special outing to a local petting farm called Danny’s Farm in Altadena for May 27. We will meet New Horizon Kindergarten there.
Meanwhile at school we hope you are finalizing your Science Project with your child. Please send in your proposals. We give you a calendar to help pace the work so no one is stuck at the last minute. Science projects are exhibited at The Science Fair/Art Show. Please plan to attend Thursday, June 5th 6:30-7:30 pm. The WASC accreditation committee will be visiting our school May 12, 13 and 14. Mark your calendars; this is a busy time of year!
We continue to see marked progress in children’s daily journal writing and reading (simple words to simple and more complex sentences). At the end of the year you will receive all of their journals. They will give you an extensive view of your child’s development with writing. They may also give you a window into their thinking, as they are able to write about their current interests. We have completed a unit of study combining literature and social studies about transportation. We worked on things with wheels as well as other forms of transportation.
We re-visited some of our study of maps with a collaborative project about Israel in conjunction with Yom HaAtzmaut and our middah, Am Israel Hai…”Israel Our Community”. We reviewed some of the major cities, bodies of water, and land features. The children were excited learning the dance for the program. We hope you enjoyed it. We also made Israeli flags. In addition we learned a little about our neighbor Mexico, honoring Cinco de Mayo, making ojos de dios, “God’s eyes”, and a flag of Mexico.
In Hebrew the children learned about the flag of Israel, the symbol of Israel, and looked at a map of the country. They made Israeli flags to use on Yom HaAtzmaut. They learned a new poem for the program entitled “Who Has a Birthday?” They have also learned some traditional Israeli folk songs such as “David Meleh”, “Hava Nagilah”, and “Shalom Alekhem”.
Our focus in math has continued to be number families. We are working on numbers 10-20; both how to write them correctly and what numbers combine to equal these numbers. Also we are working quite a bit on time. We want children to be very comfortable telling time to the hour and half hour. We made clocks to practice with. Our next unit of study will focus on the farm, culminating with a visit to Danny’s Farm.
Sincerely,
Ellen Dinerman, Lori Serna, and Shula Soffer