James Island News

2's The 2's are learning about winter as the new year begins. While reading The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats, the children will explore the curiosities of snow. We will use our imaginations and some fun ingredients to create snow and ice in our classrooms. Our winter unit will lead us into learning about bears and hibernation as caves will be constructed for our hibernating bears. The children will snuggle with their own teddy bears while we read Corduroy, Brown Bear, and We're Going on a Bear Hunt.

3's The 3's are starting out the year by blasting off into space! Our space unit will include topics like the moon and its phases, the planets including their names, shapes, weather, gravity, and the sun. Mrs. Rutherford, a Porter-Gaud Lower School science teacher, will visit us and share lots of neat things about space. We will blast off at the month with a short unit on transportation.

4's In the 4's, we will begin the new year learning about winter through author and illustrator Jan Brett. The Mitten, The Snowy Nap, and Trouble with Trolls challenge our sequencing and comprehension skills. With the help of Dr. Seuss books, the children will practice their rhyming skills and work on word families.

5's Our Kindergarteners will start the year off with a snow study, incorporating the different kinds of weather we have here in Charleston as well! Then, a rock study will have them exploring all over O'Quinn and their own backyards for different types of rocks and minerals. The children will learn to use descriptive words and label diagrams as they write about their findings! Kindergarteners are also busy sounding out words, learning about punctuation, and using their imagination and creativity to write some amazing stories. They will use their number skills to transfer information into graphs and practice solving addition and subtraction problems. It will be a fun and exciting start to 2019 in Kindergarten!

Here's what happening in our classrooms throughout October.

The 2's

The 2's began the school year learning how special and unique we all are. Everyone had a chance to complete a "quilt square" to celebrate families. We explored where we live and who lives with us.

Our farm units provided us with opportunities to learn about farms, what animals live on a farm and the many kinds of foods grown. At the end of our unit, we had a farmer's market on the gazebo with homemade bread and butter, fruits and vegetables, cheese cubes, and "chicken feed" trail mix.

During our shape unit we became familiar with basic geometric shapes and their defining characteristics. We made shape animals and did plenty of coloring!

The 3's

The 3's began their year talking about coming to school and learning the rules and routines of the classrooms. The numbers 0 and 1 were explored.

September was "All about Me" month. The classes explored what makes each person and family unique. The 5 senses was a great unit culminating in a Round Robin with students visiting each 3's classroom to learn about a different sense at visit. The letters M and S and the number 2 were a main focus.

During October, the letter N and the letter P along with the number 3 will be emphasized. Outer space, the moon and the night sky will be the major themes. The children will have lots of activities focusing on fine and gross motor skills as well as small, medium and large designations, AB patterns, counting 1 to 5, following directions, and putting objects in order. By the end of the month everyone should be able to recognize their own names!

The 4's

Our 4's had a great August and September. They identified, provided sounds, and wrote the letters E, e, H, h, T, and t. They worked with the numbers 3, 4, and 5 and learned about ordinal numbers (first, second, third). The classes also sorted by color as they worked with the colors gray, white, black and orange.

The 4's have also been practicing AB patterns and learning the shapes triangle, heart, and cross. In addition to the work they are doing, they read Henry the Hippo, Ellla the Elegant Elephant, The Day I Flew with an Eagle, and The Tiger who Came to Tea.

Kindergarten

In Kindergarten, we began our year by learning about classroom procedures and routines, studying our names and getting to know our friends. We emphasized using eye contact when speaking with someone and listening while others are speaking.

We completed an "All about Me" unit and, while working on our "Me on the Map" unit, we practiced our addresses and learned about our city, state, country and continent. We are currently finishing a more in-depth study of South Carolina.

In Language Arts we are working on recognizing all letters and sounds and reading sight words. We have also learned about nouns and verbs.

Our Math focus began with sorting and graphs. We created a graph of our birthdays, a graph of the number of letters in our names, and another of our favorite kinds of apples. We worked on geometry and went on a shape walk around the school to discover that shapes are found everywhere. We are currently working on patterns.

During art, we read The Dot by Peter Reynolds and created our own version of dots. We made shape art inspired by Piet Mondrian, and we learned about Georges Seurat so we could design our own pointillism Palmetto trees.