For this week in social studies, we will be discussing the life cycle of humans. How we are babies and then eventually grow to adults. To start the lesson off, we will begin by having a ‘guess the baby’ game, where students will guess which student matches the baby picture. They will then discuss how they have changed as babies and draw a picture of themselves in the past in their ‘How I Grow and Change’ book! We will continue to add pages in our books as children, teens, adults, and as elderly people. While we discuss how we change or how we think we will change, we will practice using past, present, and future tense verbs. 

We will begin this week with a quick lesson about eclipses and then we will get to see the solar eclipse from our playground! Don’t worry, families! We will have eclipse glasses and will discuss the importance of wearing them while looking at the sun. Feel free to talk to your kindergartener about that at home as well! 

For the rest of the week, students will be preparing for their research project at the end of the year, by practicing informational writing. To start, students will write step by step instructions on how to blow bubbles. We will do this as a class and then they will choose their own topic to describe the steps (how to paint nails, how to make a sandwich, etc). 

With our unexpected shortened week, we will be starting this week where we left off last week with… consumers and producers! At the end of the week, we will practice what we learned by giving students consumer and producer jobs in our classroom shopping center! 

This week, we will be introducing economics! You might be thinking “wow! That’s so cool! How are you going to do that in kindergarten?” Well, we’re so glad you asked! We will first start by reviewing what are needs and wants. Then, we will dive into how people purchase items (with money) and take a closer look on how we should spend our money (be mindful of our needs before our wants). Then, things get crazy. We introduce what are goods and services and make puppets to pretend to purchase a good or service! Next week, we will continue with some more economic excitement! 

In Science this week, we will be exploring how humans change their environment to meet their needs. We will determine what humans (living things) need to survive and then take a look at changes made by humans to meet those needs.

We are starting Chapter 11 this week! In Chapter 11, your student learns about two-dimensional shapes. At first, your student explores shape attributes, such as curves, sides, and vertices. Then your student uses those attributes to define shapes. For example, your student defines a

triangle as a shape having three sides and three vertices. Then your student sorts and

classifies shapes by identifying which of several shapes is a triangle, rectangle, square,

circle, or hexagon.

Have fun with the following activities to practice with two-dimensional shapes:

• Play a guessing game. Take turns. One player secretly thinks of an object within view that has the shape of a triangle, rectangle, square, circle, or hexagon, for example, a dinner plate in the shape of a circle. The other player tries to find out what the secret object and shape are by asking only yes or no questions, for example, “Is the object hanging on the wall? Does it have a square shape?” Set a limit of 20 questions for each player's turn.
• If you have access to old magazines, work with your student to cut out photos of objects that are shaped like triangles, rectangles, squares, circles, and hexagons. For example, you might find a photo of a building that has rectangular windows and/or a triangular roof, or you might find an advertisement for a circular watch or ring. Suggest that your student trace over the shapes with a marker or crayon to make them stand out. Then sort the photos by shape.
• Have your student draw two-dimensional shapes by tracing objects. For example, your student might trace around the bottom of a can to draw a circle, or around the base of a box to draw a rectangle.

This week, we are starting a new 2 week unit in Science. We will be exploring how plants and animals (including humans) can change the environment to meet their needs. To do this, we will be taking a deep dive into different animals (and then humans) to see how they change their specific environment.

This week in social studies, we will continue to learn about the lives of Black men and women in history. This week, we will learn about Barack Obama, Elijah McCoy, and explore how the biscuit has been transformed through the ages through the work of Black chefs and inventors! 

This week in social studies students will explore the lives of Black men and women in history. A few of the people we will be introducing are Ruby Bridges, Clementine Hunter, Harriet Tubman, and the HBCU drumline. 

As it is the start of the New Year, we will be exploring how people celebrate the New Year all over the world! Specifically, we will be learning about Lunar New Year, Nowruz, Rosh Hashanah, and Diwali. 

On Friday, we will introduce Martin Luther King Jr and discuss how he changed history. We will continue to discuss the life of Martin Luther King Jr the following week.

For this social studies unit, we will be discussing homes around the world and why homes are important. We will be exploring this through various texts and our own writing.