Letter S week was a huge SucceSS! After three days of torrential rainstorms, Mother Nature gifted us with Some Super Sunny days! The Sunshine filled days could not have come at a better time – Letter S is for Spring Week! The students enjoyed long periods of outdoor time that was full of Sunshine – rather than Saturating rain Showers or worse, Snow!
On Monday and Tuesday morning, the students worked on their letter S tracing and identification activity pages. In the afternoon, the students created their Letter S list. Similar to last week, the students ran into some tricky sounds again when words like Circus and Sea were suggested for the list. After hearing circus, the teachers explained that the letter C sometimes makes the same sound as the letter S. Things got even harder to figure out when a five year old added the word “Sea” to the S list. If you repeat the following sentence aloud, you will hear why this was so tricky. “Circus sounds like ‘sssss’ but is really a ‘C’ but the word Sea says ‘C’ but really is an S”. Fortunately, the students were able to think of many words that begin with the letter S that were not so tricky! Here is the list from the Tuesday group!
On Wednesday morning, the students were introduced to a new material – CLAY! The students thought that the clay was gray playdough – that was until they touched it. “This is just like REALLY hard playdough,” the students commented. The teachers informed them that they would be creating clay flower pots. With a little help Softly pinching the walls up, the students scuplted their pots in no time. Here is how they all turned out.
Wednesday was not just any ordinary school day – it was Saint Patrick’s Day. The students arrived in their best green! Later in the day, the students even had an opportunity to get a Shamrock painted onto their hand!
In order to celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day, PPA was paid a special visit by a very Irish guest. Before his arrival, the students attempted to guess who the special guest could be. Here was their list.
In the midst of adding guesses to the list, the students heard the school doorbell ring. In walked…
Mr. Shamrock!
Mr. Shamrock, a native of Ireland (and parent of a student), came to school to teach the students about Saint Patrick’s Day and about his country. The student was beaming with pride as her father, Mr. Shamrock, read the story and led the Irish music inspired dance party.
What a fun and exciting day! We were so thankful to have Mr. Shamrock come in and spend the afternoon with us! We hope he will visit us again next Saint Patty’s Day!
On Thursday morning, the students noticed the new bulletin board behind Miss Jocelyn during morning meeting. Miss Jocelyn explained that it would be the new Spring/Letter S Week bulletin board. After reading the title, “Spring Showers Bring Spring Flowers”, Miss Jocelyn asked what was missing.
One student noticed that the bulletin board needed raindrops! For their morning work, the students spread watercolor paint onto their paper to create their interpretation of a raindrop.
While painting, one of the four year old students stated with excitement, “Look, somebody made the Earth!” Seemingly a little confused, Miss Justine asked what the student meant. He pointed to this blue watercolor paint pot. What a great observation!
Once all of the raindrops had been completed, they were tucked inside a large, heavy book to minimize the amount of curling. When the raindrops had dried (ha!) they were ready to be added to the bulletin board.
On Thursday afternoon, the students began a new unit in Spanish class – La Ropa (Clothing) – where they were introduced to some new vocabulary and learned a new song – The Clothing Song. Here are some of the new words that you will probably hear your child saying – particularly in the morning while getting dressed!
The Clothing Song Sune to the tune of “Skip to My Lou”
camisa – shirtpantalones – pantszapatos – shoesmedias – socksCamisa, pantalones,zapatos, medias.These are the clothes that we wear.
Friday was very exciting! The clay pots from Wednesday had air-dried and were ready to be painted. The students rushed over to the morning work table and quickly the gray clay turned into beautiful and colorful flower pots.
While the students were outside enjoying the sunny day, the paint on the pots was drying quite nicely. By the time rest-time ended, the pots were bone dry. The only problem was- they were empty pots.
After planting their seeds, the students praticed the new vocabularly in Spanish class before heading home – flower pot in hand. We hope our students and their families enjoy caring for their seeds/flowers. Be sure to take photos of the flower pot over the next few weeks as we would love to see what Sprouts!
Well, that is all for Letter S week! As always, thanks for reading and see you next week!
-PPA