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Ms. Juanita
Urrutia |
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12/1/2008
– 12/5/2008 Unit:
Food The
grand finale! When we came
back from our holiday we were surprised to see how big our beans had gotten! We
took them out of the bag and looked at the roots, the stem, the beans, and
the leaves. We transplanted the beans into cups with soil and made a book
showing how a seed grows into a plant. We will continue to watch our beans
grow. This week we
will finish our unit on food, and will answer all of the questions we had
about food. We will continue to use our five senses to learn about grains and
dairy as we cook and taste different foods. We will make a survey to find out
which foods we like best and which foods we like least. We will make graphs
that show our food preferences. 11/24/2008 – 11/26/2008 Unit:
Food Celebrations:
Thanksgiving On
Monday, we read Feeling Thankful by
Shelley Rotner and Sheila Kelly. We talked about
all the things we are thankful for. We made a turkey and wrote the things we
are most thankful for in its feathers. On Tuesday, we talked about family traditions
and special holidays we celebrate in our homes. We talked about the Thanksgiving
Holiday in the 11/17/2008
– 11/21/2008 Unit:
Food Beans,
Nuts, and Proteins This week we
will look at beans, nuts, meat, poultry, and fish. We will talk about foods
that come from plants and foods that come from animals. Today, we planted
some beans and will watch them grow into a plant. Tomorrow we will make and
eat tortillas and beans. On Wednesday, we will make and eat peanut butter. On
Thursday we will read Stone Soup and
make a vegetable and bean soup to give us enough energy to practice for the
Mini-Olympics. See at the Mini-Olympics where you will get to taste our
delicious carrot cake. 11/10/2008
– 11/14/2008 Unit:
Food Fruit
and Vegetables We will continue
to use our five senses to learn about vegetables and to cook. We will also
set up a play supermarket, a restaurant, and a kitchen area to continue to
learn about food. As we shop, cook and serve different foods we will work on
the following skills: sorting, categorizing, counting, matching numbers to
quantities, making patterns, and writing and reading menus and recipes. 11/03/2008
– 11/07/2008 Unit:
Food Fruit
and Vegetables We started our
unit on food. We began by answering the question, What do we know about food? Next, we talked about the things we
want to learn about food. At the end of the unit, we are going to make a list
of the things we learned about food. This week we are
using our five senses to learn about fruits and vegtables.
We will touch, smell, look, cut, and eat different kinds of fruits and
vegetables. Here is our cooking - eating schedule for the week:
Food Experiment:
Pre-k children are concerned about what happens to picnic food. These are the
questions they wonder about:
To find the
answer to these puzzling questions, we will set up an experiment. We will
have a picnic in the wooded area behind pre-k where there are lots of bugs
and mice. We will set our picnic basket on the grass, to observe and record
how bugs and mice behave when confronted with a picnic basket filled with
food. We hope to find the answers to our questions. We will let you know what
we discover. 10/27/2008
– 10/31/2008 Unit-
Make Believe Play Pretending
to be - Fairy tale characters in fairy tale places. Dressing
up - Making clothes and costumes for our pretend play. Halloween
Fantasy - Ghosts, monsters, witches and bats. We read The Emperor’s New Clothes (literature).
We pretended to be the characters in the story as we acted out the story
(language development). After that, we made our own new REAL clothes! We
decorated T-shirts, which we will wear for our Halloween Fashion Parade
(art). Ms. Wong read us a spooky story and we made a spooky bat. This week we
will finish making our Halloween decorations to adorn our homes on the 31st (art
and fine motor development). 10/20/2008
– 10/24/2008 Unit-
Make Believe Play Dressing
up - Making clothes and costumes for our pretend play. Thank you for
sharing your hats. We red Hats, Hats,
Hats by Ann Morris (literature). We talked about all the different kinds
of hats people wear around the world (social studies). We tried on the hats
the children brought and we pretended to be a different person each time we
changed our hat. The children described the different hats they had brought
and they came up with their own categories for the hats in order to sort
them. After sorting and graphing the hats (math), we read Who Took The Farmer’s Hat? by Joan L. Nodset. We talked
about the story and pretended to be the characters as we reenacted the story.
Then, we made farmer’s hats, which we will wear for our Halloween Fashion
Parade (art). 10/13/2008
– 10/17/2008 Unit-
Make Believe Play Pretending
to be - Fairy tale characters in fairy tale places. Dressing
up - Making clothes and costumes for our pretend play. Thank you for
sharing your extra pairs of shoes with us. On the 13th, we read Shoes, Shoes, Shoes
by Ann Morris (literature). We talked about all the different kinds of shoes
that people wear around the world (social studies). Then, we sorted the shoes
we were wearing into two groups, tennis shoes with Velcro straps, and tennis
shoes with shoe laces. We made a graph of the types of shoes we wore. This
whole week we will sort and graph different kinds of shoes (math). We will
also read The Shoe Maker and The Elves (literature). After reading the story, talking bout
it, and pretending to be the characters as we reenact the story, we will make
our shoes, which we will wear for our Halloween Fashion Parade. 10/10/2008 Unit-
Make Believe Play Dressing
up - Making clothes and costumes for our pretend play. Thank you for
participating in Pretend Day. The children stood in front of the class to
talk about their outfits. They told us who or what they were pretending to
be, and described what they were wearing (language development). As we are
talking about costumes, clothing and accessories we learned some new words
related to clothing (vocabulary). We changed into our PE uniforms and when we
came back to the class we got dressed up again. We graphed the kinds of
costumes we were wearing (math). 10/7/2008
– 10/9/2008 Unit-
Make Believe Play Pretending
to be - Fairy tale characters in fairy tale places. We read The Three Little Pigs (literature). We
identified the characters, the setting, the problem and the ending. We
pretended to be the three little pigs and the wolf. We reenacted the story.
We also tested different materials (a feather, straw, a stick, a cork, a
coin, a wooden block and a rock) to see if they would blow easily (science).
After we took turns blowing the materials we sorted them into categories
(light/ easy to blow, heavy/ hard to blow (math). We then pasted different
materials of our choice on paper houses and talked about whether or not the
wolf would be able to blow them. We also categorized our houses as either
light/ easy to blow, or heavy/ hard to blow (math). 10/2/2008
– 10/6/2008 Unit-
Make Believe Play Pretending
to be - Fairy tale characters in fairy tale places. We read Goldilocks and The Three Bears. We
identified the characters, the setting, the problem and the ending
(literature). We pretended to be the three bears and
Goldilocks. We reenacted the story and completed a book called The Three Bears (language
development). We talked about Goldilocks and how she behaved. We concluded
that she was a rude character and each of us came up with an example of
something she did in the story to support our opinion (social development).
We sorted the bears and the things that belong to the bears according to size
(small, medium, and large). In addition, we either drew or made the three
bears with play dough. Our picture or our models needed to show the size
difference between the three bears (math and art). 10/1/2008 Happy
Children’s Day! We celebrated
this special Guatemalan holiday in school today (social studies). We made hot
dogs, popcorn, cupcakes and icing (science). We ate the food we cooked and
played together with the children in kindergarten (social development). We
also ate popsicles, danced, and blew bubbles (gross motor development). Ms. Sherman and Mr. Combs came to visit us
and to congratulate us on our special day. We had a lot of fun! 9/18/08 Unit: Making Things Topics:
Shapes, textures, colors and materials & Vehicles and transportation. During the next
two weeks we will be talking about transportation and vehicles and we will
make cars, airplanes, boats, trains, and helicopters (social studies). Today we read Alphabeep: A Zipping, Zooming ABC book about
different kinds of vehicles. We talked about the letters of the alphabet and
the sounds they make (literacy development). 9/17/08 Thank you to all the parents who helped us celebrate
9/5/08 and 9/16/08 Unit:
Making Things & Guatemalan Traditions. Topics:
Shapes, textures, colors and materials. During the next
two weeks we will be speaking about Guatemalan Traditions in preparation for
our Guatemalan celebration on September 17 (social studies). You will receive
an invitation for this special event tomorrow. We are making papier mache decorative piñatas
to celebrate 9/2/08
and 9/3/08 Unit:
Making Things Topics:
Shapes, textures, colors and materials. Yesterday
we read Mouse Paint (literature).
Three mice play with three jars of paint and discover how primary colors make
secondary colors (art). After we read the story we made baker’s dough with
flour, salt and water (science). Then we used the dough to make 6 mice. Today
we mixed primary colors and made secondary colors. We used the paint to paint
our mice. The mice will come home tomorrow after they dry and we make them a
mouse house. 8/25/08
and 8/26/08 Unit:
Making Things Topics:
Shapes, textures, colors and materials. On Monday we
read Color Zoo and talked about how
the illustrator used different shapes and colors to make animals. We reviewed
the names of 6 shapes - square, oval, triangle, rectangle, rhombus and
circle. We also talked about straight lines and curved lines (math). We chose
two shapes and traced them. After that we cut the shapes and learned to keep
all of our papers together with a paper clip. Today we looked
at a tray with cut up shapes and identified the shapes we found. Then we used
the shapes we had traced plus the shapes in the tray to make an animal or a
collage. 8/21/08 Unit:
All About School We introduced
activity tables. There are three tables. Each table has a different activity
for children to complete. Ms. Rosemary sits at table 1 with 4 children, and
does a teacher guided activity. I sit at table 2 with 4 children, and do a
different teacher guided activity. Four children sit at table 3 and complete
a self guided activity. After about 15 minutes children switch tables.
Children sitting at table 1 go to table 2, children at table 2 go to table 3,
and children at table 3 go to table 1. We follow the same procedure until
children have completed all 3 activities. On some days, our activities will
be longer and it might take us 3 days to complete all 3 activities. Today we had
simple activities for them to do as we wanted them to practice working at the
tables and rotating. Activity at
table 1 – Make a friendly face. Activity at
table 2 – Make your friends and family book. Activity at
table 3 – Decorate your Safe Center Box. We will formally
introduce the 8/20/08 Unit: All About School We
practiced doing our jobs and listening to others while they are doing their
jobs. We will continue to work on these skills. We
are also working on…
Writing
is a developmental skill. Children will learn to write their names at their
own pace. We don’t expect mastery of this skill until the end of the year.
You will notice that children will do their best effort to write their names
on their own. We accept all efforts and are able to recognize each child’s
writing even if it does not yet follow conventional spelling or letter
formation. We want children to feel comfortable when they write and to think
of themselves as writers. We also want to foster independence. We ask
children to write their own names on their papers. When they say, “I can’t”,
we say, “Let’s try. What letter in your name can you write?” We wait and
accept what each child writes as a complete, readable name. We praise them
and thank them for writing their name. Please
note that my web folder is still under construction and that I’m still in the
process of revising, editing and changing information. Thank you for your
patience. 8/19/08 Unit: All About School Today children
were assigned a job. Each student is responsible for doing his or her job and
for listening to others while they are doing their jobs. Students must use
polite words at all times. Each student has been assigned a job and will be
responsible for that assignment for one month. After one month, jobs will be
reassigned. Job assignments for the month of August: Calendar Director:
Lucas Circle Organizer:
Ashley Song Maestro: Brinley Care Specialist: Viggo Line Leader and Line Caboose: Danny and Andres Materials Managers: Min-Ju and Valentina Folder Administrator: Mariano Time Keeper: Henry Librarian: Felipe Center Supervisor: David Job Descriptions: Calendar Director:
Circle Organizer:
Song Maestro:
Care Specialist:
Line Leader and Line Caboose: 1.
Line
leader and Line Caboose set the example for safe moving in the hallways. 2.
Line
leader stops at designated areas and makes sure everyone is following. 3.
Line
leader opens the doors. 4.
Caboose
makes sure that everyone stays in their spot and that no one is left behind. 5.
Caboose
stops to wait for people who need to tie their shoes. 6.
Caboose
closes doors. Materials Managers:
Folder Administrator: In the
morning the folder administrator:
At the end of
the day the folder administrator:
Time Keeper:
Librarian: 1.
Distributes
books after recess. 2.
Collects
books and puts them back on shelf. 3.
Holds
class book during story time. 4.
Helps
materials managers. Center Supervisor:
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