Mrs. Rachel's Kinder Prep: Under the Sea!

We had a “whale” of a good time this week studying the ocean!

We enjoyed reading about and learning about many ocean animals this week, including dolphins, whales, sharks, fish, sea turtles, sea horses, and octopuses! To go along with our theme, we did several fun ocean crafts. We made a paper bag jellyfish and paper plate jellyfish to practice our scissor skills, had fun comparing numbers with shark teeth, painted our own water color ocean paintings, and even created beautiful Cheerio starfish!

We definitely learned a lot working in our centers this week. We practiced measuring and adding using the Great White Shark that swam into our room! We "fed" our shark numbers on fish and also used a variety of objects to measure how long the shark was. We worked on our graphing skills (as well as comparing numbers) with a fun ocean animal bar graph game. We practiced reading two ocean sight word books, independently looked at and read the library ocean books in our room, worked on rhyming with our treasure chest rhyming game, and matched/wrote the initial sounds of ocean animals. We were so busy learning!

We also had a lot of fun with science this week! See if your child can remember what makes a shark float in the water! We also did a fascinating "walking water" experiment to learn about primary and secondary colors as well as water absorption. See if your child can tell you about it! To go along with our conversations about the ocean levels, we looked at and discussed our very own "ocean in a jar" that our Bridge friends made for us! Finally, we made a class graph of our favorite ocean animals and compared these numbers.

We also had a lot of fun with science this week! See if your child can remember what makes a shark float in the water! (We used oil, water, and shark balloons to discuss how the sharks oily liver helps them float.) We also talked about the word density and had fun guessing if items would sink or float in our "ocean in a jar"!

We moved on early to our March Bible focus: Follow Jesus! Our new verse is Matthew 4:19: "Come and follow me," Jesus said. We talked about a cool guy in the Bible named John the Baptist!

This week, see if your child can...

1. Go on a letter hunt in your pantry!

2. Tell you what helps a shark float.

3. Read the "Great White Shark" poem with you and the ocean sight word book added to poetry folders.

4. Write their last name in some kind of sensory material (salt, sand, shaving cream).