Zen gardens, compass roses, measurement tools, and lots of reading… December and January have been busy months.
We have also started handwriting lessons on the lower case letters. Now that we are second semester kindergartners (“halfway to FIRST GRADE!), we are adding some new responsibilities and skills. The main goal of our handwriting is learning to form our letters the same way every time; this leads to efficiency so it won’t be as hard to write down our ideas when we are first graders! The letters are organized and taught according to how they are formed. We have learned the straight letters and are now working on the “c” letters. Did you know how many letters you form by starting with a “c”?
As we are learning to write, we are also seeing patterns in how we spell. We do not know why some things are spelled the way they are in English; they make NO phonetic sense, but we have noticed that if we spell one word, then we know how to spell all the other words in the same “word family”. If you can spell “trick” then you can spell “brick” and “flick” and “Nick” and “wick” and “chick”!
One day in math, we “measured” ourselves in three different ways. Small groups went to three different stations in the room and recorded their temperature, their weight, and their height (try to tell us why height and weight are spelled the way they are!).
Check back soon! The Kindergartners.
