March 31 – April 20 Kindergarten Planners
March 31 – April 20 Kindergarten Planners
Our new theme is about 小小园丁／Little Gardener. Five weeks, from 3/29 to 5/7, are the total number of learning weeks for this unit. The subject will focus on Language, Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, PSE, and the Arts. The central idea is about how plants and human lifestyles are interdependent.
The inquiries are:
* Worms and compost / 蚯蚓和堆肥
* A tiny seed / 一粒小种子
* What are our native plants? / 什么是原生种植物？
* Yummy edible plants / 美味又可食用的植物
We would like to inquire about the growth process of plants and learn that plant and human lifestyles are interdependent. Here are my questions for the children to reflect upon: What is worm composting? How does the body of a red wiggler worm work? Why do plants need soil, water, and sun in order to survive? Why do we need plants? How do plants grow? Why are native plants important to their community? How do we properly take care of plants? What do you know about edible plants?
Language: We will begin a new lesson next week—Lesson 5, 悄悄话 / Whispering. Children will learn new words, 子 (child), 也 (also, and, too), 雨 (rain), 悄 (quiet, sad, silent), 里 (inside), 话 (word, language, saying, speech), 说 (said). The children will also learn new vocabulary from our weekly inquiries: “Worms and compost” and “A tiny seed.”
Math: We will start the chapter “Introduction to addition”. We will learn addition with manipulative numbers, number lines, math sentences, and math signs (plus signs, equal signs, etc.), story problems, adding groups of 10, ordinal numbers, recognizing and counting with and writing numbers from 1-30, months of the year, and counting by 10’s and 5’s. We are also getting ready to learn to count by 2’s. For our first introduction to addition, we will learn how to draw a picture to demonstrate a story problem.
Science and Life Science: The children are very excited about our class worms. We have 75 red wiggler worms in our class. We will learn about worm composting and the anatomy of red wiggler worms. The children will learn about how to prepare the bedding for the worms, what they eat, what worm casting (vermicasting) is, when to harvest the worm cast, and how we’ll use the worm cast for our garden. We have last observed our sweet potatoes before the previous Thanksgiving. We were excited that one of the sweet potatoes is actually sprouting. It sprouted just in time for the Plum Gardeners to discover the life cycle of a potato. We will continue to review our sweet potato diary and conclude the sequence of sweet potatoes’ life cycle. The children will be introduced to the different parts of a plant. We will discover a few types of common roots. We will compare their differences. We will have different kinds of seeds for the children to observe in the classroom. They come in different shapes, sizes, species, and colors as well. The children will be also experimenting about how water, soil, and sun affect a plants’ growth. We will grow Mung beans in three ways in three different cups. We will place one cup of Mung beans in an outdoor area, which provides direct sunlight, we will keep one cup of Mung beans indoors, and the last cup of Mung beans will be placed indoors with a box covering it without any light source. Then, we will explore how light affects the germination process of a Mung bean.
Art: We will make an Easter basket to celebrate Easter. The children will draw the parts of a flower and also learn about how to paint flowers with brush ink techniques.
Social Studies and PSE: We will learn that plant and human lifestyles are interdependent. There are many kinds of plants on earth, which make our world colorful and diverse. We need to be more appreciative to these plants and cherish them. Plants have contributed greatly to human and animal habitability since many millions of years ago. We will discover why plants are so vital to human and animal lives. We will learn about how we rely on plants everyday. We will also learn about the differences between herbaceous plants and woody plants.
Singing: We will continue to learn and sing “Spring dawn / 春晓.” 春晓, an ancient poem from the Tang dynasty written by the famous poet, Meng Haoran / 孟浩然. We will learn a new song called “Knowing the parts of the plant/ 认识植物的身体.”
