Hopefully spring will be right around the corner. We will begin this month by tracking the lion and lamb days of March through a study on weather. Will March come in like a lion and go out like a lamb? Each day in our math journals, we will color if it is a lion or a lamb day based on the kind of weather it is. The children will create a little book where they will illustrate the weather for a lion day and for a lamb day. They will then write about what kind of a day they like the best and why. We will also learn about the different kinds of clouds and create a KWL chart on how wind can be harmful and helpful. The girls will have fun experimenting with pinwheels to see wind in action. We will make a book about clouds and learn descriptive words to describe them. We will also read Eric Carle's Little Cloud and find the hidden images within. The girls will learn how and why it rains and the importance of rain for rivers, streams, oceans, plants, etc. They will learn about stormy weather as well. The girls will become little weather forecasters as they track the weather and temperature for one week to see how it changes every day. This unit will also tie into our ongoing study in our STEM lab on the effects of weather.
March is also the month where we will celebrate Dr. Seuss's birthday (March 2nd). Did you know that Theodor Seuss Geisel spent 8 hours writing and drawing every day? Sometimes he couldn't think of what to write. To fix this problem, he put on a funny hat which helped him think. The girls will make this very popular and silly red and white hat worn by the famous Cat in the Hat.
This will be a good review for the girls to recognize pairs of rhyming words; identify the onset and rhyme and separate the sounds by saying each word aloud. They will recognize the language pattern as they play a game where they change the first letter to make a new word within the word family. We will also read some of Dr. Seuss's stories to become familiar with his use of silly imagination to create strange characters and settings.
As we patiently await the coming of St. Patrick's Day, the girls will learn about the shamrock as a symbol of the Holy Trinity (Father, Son, Holy Spirit). They will make Emerald Isle poems (a sensory poem on what the color green feels like, smells like, etc.). We will read the story Little Blue and Little Yellow and find out what new color they make when they mix. We will learn about who Saint Patrick was and the country of Ireland. The girls will also continue to work on their writing skills as they write about what they would do if they caught the leprechaun. As part of our Kindergarten tradition, the girls will have to design a trap that they think will work to catch him. The girls will give an oral presentation of their leprechaun trap that they made at home. They will have to describe how they made it, and how they think it is going to work. These traps are also an incorporation of STEM, as the children are working with their parents to create and design a trap that makes sense for the size of the little leprechaun. After their presentations, the girls will set their trap up in the room in hopes that Lucky the leprechaun will visit our classroom. In previous years, he has turned the room upside down by leaving greeen glitter shamrocks everywhere, gifts of gold candy for the girls, little notes, a "magical" drink of yellow lemonade that when mixed with blue food coloring turns green, and signs that he visited each and every trap but didn't get caught!
*******THE DUE DATE FOR THE TRAPS WILL BE ON MONDAY, MARCH 18TH.
We will also begin to look for signs of spring as we go on a nature walk on our school grounds and use our 5 senses to see what we can find. We will make many little books about the coming of spring and make a web that illustrates signs of spring and things we like to do during this season.
The girls are excited to learn about rainbows and how they are formed. We will learn about primary and secondary colors and how they mix or blend. We will experiment with finding a rainbow inside of bubbles and within a glass of water against the sunlight (reflecting and absorbing colors and white light). We will make a rainbow fruit salad; use Skittles candy to graph the different colors of the rainbow; and make a rainbow necklace using colored beads.
*We will fit in some fun Easter activities as well this month and celebrate with a little get together with our 8th grade big sisters.
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*We will continue with our guided reading groups. The girls are truly enjoying reading their Rigby reading books in our groups, and sharing their progress with their parents. We will continue to review our high frequency words and introduce new ones as well. The girls are always working on improving and strengthening the use of their reading strategies.
*We will continue to work on the structure of a sentence as we write and implement our high frequency words with our knowlege of stretching out words to write the sounds that we hear.
*We will continue to review silent e; vowels within words; bossy r; -ing chunk; ch, sh, th, wh; cl, sl, fl, gl, bl, gl, etc; s or -es (goes); -ed (looked); finding little words within bigger words; review of compound words (rainbow, raindrop, pinwheel).
*We will continue to discuss word meanings as they are encountered in books and discuss descriptive language in stories: identify characters, setting, problem/solution; retelling beginning, middle, end; drawing these story parts as well.
*Use of our Weekly Reader, Science Spin, and National Geographic magazine subscriptions.
*Math, Science and Social Studies concepts will be integrated within our units of study.
In math we will continue to revisit skills learned and also work on simple subtraction using manipulatives, illustrating a number sentence; ABAC patterns; sorting/graphing; sequencing skills; and review of counting beyond 20 and recogniton of number words.
