Plum Garden Planner – April 21 – May 4, 2010
April 21 – May 4
Kindergarten / Plum Garden Planners
We will continue 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 the sun in order to survive? Why do we need plants? How do plants grow? Why are native plants important to their communities? How do we properly take care of plants? What do you know about edible plants?
Language: We will continue to learn the new lesson—Lesson 5, 悄悄话 / Whispering. The children will learn new words, 子 (child), 也 (also, and, too), 雨 (rain), 悄 (quiet, sad, silent), 里 (inside), 话 (word, language, saying, speech), and 说 (said). We will continue to write our third poem “我会…也会… I can…also can…” The children and I will start brainstorming a story topic. We would like to make a group story. This group story project will continue on until the end of the semester. Each child will make her/his story sentences and they will include picture drawings as well. The story will be based on the child’s oral skills and I will take notes for them and type and put the story together. We will have a topic discussion soon. This is a very good exercise for the children to learn imaginative thinking and reading skills. The children will also learn new vocabulary from our weekly inquiries: “Why do plants need soil, water, and the sun in order to survive?” and “Why do we need plants?”
Math: We will continue to work on the “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, and 2’s respectively. We will continue to learn how to draw a picture to demonstrate a story problem and to use dice to experiment with addition problems within 10. We also will be making a two-sided counter beans book to find the combinations of the sums of 8.
Science and Life Science: The children have learned about worm composting and the anatomy of red wiggler worms and how to prepare the bedding for the worms, what they eat, and what worm casting (vermicasting) is before spring break. They also made their drawing of the worm bin diagrams. We are observing the worm bin everyday. In our classroom, we have a science observe area for children to explore the plants, seeds, roots, tree barks, leaves, bulbs, water, soil, and air. Regarding the Mung bean experiment, the children tasted the Mung bean popsicles before the spring break. Now it’s time for us to check the Mung bean plants. We will make a conclusion of three different ways of Mung bean growth. We also will compare to Pre-K’s Mung bean growing processes to our Mung bean growing processes. The purpose of these Mung bean experiments are for children to find out how the factors of the water, sunlight, and soil can decide the plants’ growths. This year, we have a very unusual result of one of the Mung bean’s growth. We will learn about chlorophyll (叶绿素) and how a plant goes through the process of photosynthesis (行光合作用). Also as result, the no light source contacts of Mung beans have shown us there is no chlorophyll in leaves.
Art: We used two different tools, 6B pencils and Chinese brushes to draw and paint the Campsis Radicans Trumpet Creeper Vine flowers (from our school yard). We will be using recycled magazine paper to make the Campsis Radicans Trumpet Creeper Vine flowers collage. We will make a book about seeds and draw an anatomy of the Campsis Radicans Trumpet Creeper Vine flowers.
Social Studies and PSE: Thursday, 4/22 is the earth day. We will be celebrating this meaningful event by picking up trash in our schoolyard and in the streets outside. The children will see how green they can be and they will be introduced to the 4R’s concept (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Raw). We will learn how to classify different articles of trash. We will also discover the native plants that we can see in our communities in Berkeley, such as the California Poppy (加州罂粟), Coulter’s Lupine (羽扇豆也叫鲁冰花), and California Blue-Eyed Grass (加州蓝睛草). We will learn about how these native plants are vital to our environment and to animals’ habitats.
Singing: We will continue to learn and sing, “Knowing the parts of a plant/认识植物的身体.” We will also learn another new song “Planting a seed/种种子.”
