It has been amazing first week of school! We have been trying so many new things this week. We talk often about how God expects us to try and it looks different for all of us. We also talked this week about how God made us all unique and we love each other despite our differences. We are all God’s children and are all amazing! It truly is a joy teaching your children! I am so proud of the hard efforts this week to adjust to all the new and unique things in kindergarten. We are doing well with our masks but it is still a work in progress:)
Here is just a quick peek into some things we did in kindergarten this week. Each morning we begin our day with devotions. I use “Veggie Devos” from Veggie Tales. It has a focus verse, short application, thought of the day and prayer. It is just right for kindergarten. This week we enjoyed getting our hearts ready to hear God’s word and our minds ready to think about it. I always love the discussions that devotions bring! This week we also introduced the fruit of the spirit. It was perfect to begin with love as our ZCS theme this year is Lead with Love. We also read a devotions about love this week as well! It was amazing to see how everything connected. We will continue to focus on the fruit during our Bible time for the next two weeks.
We went outside and read the book The pigeon has to go to school. This led to a great discussion about how we were feeling about the first day of school. Most of my friends were excited and a few were a bit nervous. We also then drew our very own pigeon!!
Another big thing in kindergarten is learning routines! We worked on hanging up backpacks, taking out lunches and red folders, moving our magnetic lunch name on the white board and standing in line! They have come so far in just four days!
We have also started to work our way through the alphabet. We are learning letter formation (handwriting) and practicing letter sounds. This is a research based method we use at the beginning of the year. I have enjoyed the excitement the class has for this “work.”
Next week we will begin a social studies unit on classroom community. We celebrate the differences and notice similarities we have. We do this through a project called “My Book of Friends.” For each friend, we write his/her name, draw his/her and learn something about him/her.
Our afternoons our a little busy with specials and purposeful play. We know that play is purposeful because we can see children develop social skills during this time of communications, creativity and compromise. I set out and open up a few play areas then draw names to determine who chooses what to play first.
On Friday afternoon we had a little fun coloring masked boys and girls that looked just like us! They loved it.
