Transitional Kindergarten News

 

We continued our journey through the African savannah this week!

We read nonfiction books and watched videos about zebras, learning how important their stripes are for camouflage and protection. Students gave their fingers a workout by tearing paper stripes to camouflage zebra heads that they colored. These will be displayed during our Open House. 

We also read books about snakes, focusing on spitting cobras that live in Africa. After watching videos and learning more about these fascinating reptiles, the class worked together to create one giant cobra. Our cobra has three different patterns for you to try to find when you visit our classroom! Students also made individual snakes with beads and designed their own hooded cobra heads.

We read both fiction and nonfiction books about elephants. Students are designing their own elephant inspired by the artist Paul Klee. They used rulers to divide their paper into squares and painted each square a different color. Next week we will use oil pastels to trace and highlight some of the shapes. Finally, we will cut it out and add some details with black oil pastels. This colorful, multi-step artwork will be waiting for you at our TK Open House.

Students were also busy creating their own projects in the Art Center during free time. We saw some amazing creations, including crocodiles, parrots, and warthogs made from boxes, tubes, and other materials.

We finished learning the last letter of the alphabet — Kk! We will continue reviewing letters and sounds throughout the rest of the year.

Materials Request:
We are looking for plastic bottles that taper at one end for a warthog project. The nose area needs to be wider than a water bottle (something like a sports drink or Gatorade bottle might work). If you have a bottle that might work, please send it in!

Thank you to everyone who has already donated cardboard. We are good on cardboard for now, but if anyone has access to very large boxes or large sheets of cardboard, please let me know.

Community Connection:
We are looking for people in our school family or community who have visited Africa and would be willing to share pictures or artifacts with our class and talk a little about their experience. If you — or someone you know — might be interested, please let me know. We would love to have a visitor!

Measuring:
We continued our unit on measuring. This week we talked about different ways we measure things, including height, weight, and volume. Students practiced measuring the length of objects using cubes and were challenged to find items that were 1–10 cubes long and draw a picture of them. They did a great job! We also practiced using rulers and other measuring tools to make straight lines and shapes.

We began learning about the African woodlands, a habitat with more trees and bushes. Students started making parrots and gold-banded forester butterflies that will be added to our African display.

Finally, we talked about the difference between fiction and nonfiction. We looked at several books together and practiced deciding which type of book each one was.

It has been a busy and creative week in TK! 🌍🦓🐘