Learning fast and loving it

Our youngest students get topics years in advance of regular schools and they love it

Reading, 1st & 2nd grades:
Students did a good job of recording their reading from the week in their reading logs and bringing them on Thursday. This week students learned how to look for certain features in nonfiction texts. They did activities to find sub-heading, captions, and labels in magazines. They also learned about the parts of a dictionary.

Music, 1st – 2nd grades:
Students also listened to music and practiced choreography for the end-of-term performance.

Music, early kindergarten – kindergarten:
They listened to and danced to different songs that incorporated movement. Students also practiced the song for the end-of-term performance.

Reading, early kindergarten – kindergarten:
Students had a nice time reading and looking at books in our classroom reading corner. Students have been doing a great job of borrowing books to take home and bringing them back when they feel ready to read to someone. Reading groups practiced group shared reading and choral reading with short repetitive books to help students learn sight words. Reading groups then practiced reading together and discussing their books.

Science, early kindergarten – kindergarten:
Science this week focused on characteristics of minerals such as color, luster, streak, and transparency.

Handwriting, early kindergarten – kindergarten:
This week students practiced writing the uppercase and lowercase letters they have learned so far in the semester.

Writing, early kindergarten – kindergarten:
Students practiced writing sentences using proper capitalization at the beginning and correct punctuation at the end.

Spelling, early kindergarten – kindergarten:
All students practiced spelling games and other activities in the class. Students will continue to practice the 6 spelling words from the Dolch sight word lists that are related to the phonics they are learning during that week. This week students practiced with the words ‘if’, ‘white’, ‘time’, ‘ride’, ‘like’, and ‘five.’ Next week’s words will be ‘so’, ‘go’, ‘cold’, ‘write’, ‘hold’, and ‘home.’

Phonics, early kindergarten – kindergarten:
One student practiced the letter sounds  ‘l’, ‘h’, ‘e’, ‘f’, ‘d’, and the ‘eg’ family. Six other students worked with long ‘o’, silent ‘e’ words.

…and here’s a snippet from an older group’s learning:

The fifth- through eighth-grade class has been very responsible with taking out their math books and getting started right away. We are working on the following math concepts: perimeter, area & surface area, circles, negative numbers, introduction to algebra, volumes & surface areas, and reasoning & proof.