Summer School 2017

We had about six and a half week of summer school and we used those days very efficiently with the children. We were getting them super ready for kindergarten. We had more in depth discussion about plants (continuing project from before summer school) and we made plot chart on out author study after every book read. For our project, we had more exploration on plants started with it's leaves. We looked at different kind of leaves, we asked children what they know, what they want to know and what they learned (KWL) over a week of observation, which resulted in finding out why leaves are green? what their role? and why they change colors? We then moved on to stem/branch/trunk. We find out that there're are soft and hard branch. We measured some of the stem/trunk that we can find and made closer observation of some of the colors and textures even thorns. We then dug deeper into learning flowers and we learned that bees and butterflies have flowers make their seeds and turn them into fruits, petals come in different colors to attract bees and butterflies and that cactus have flowers too. Before their interest started to wane, we learned one more part of the plants, which is fruit. We examined unusual fruits called horned melon, lychee and peaches. We learned that not all fruits grow on tree, some grow on the vine. We also find out that horned melon tasted like banana, kiwi and cucumber. To see how a plant grow, we got some beans and put them in zioloc bags with wet paper towel then displayed them in the window to get sun light. Some of they grew well and some didn't, nevertheless we did two weeks of observation on how their seeds grow. 
At story time, we looked at three different author that are captivating to the children through out the year and they are Ezra Jack Keats, Kevin Henkes and Mike Huber. We read one of their book at the beginning summer to jog the children's memory then we voted at the end of the week and choose which one we would like to study all summer. The winner was KEVIN HENKES. So we read six of his most beloved character books and we did a plot chart at the end of each repeated read aloud. We discussed who the characters in the story, where the setting, what are the problems and how the characters solve the problems. From the books that we read, we learned about a game of croquet (Chester's Way) and made our own doll (Wemberly Worried) and gave them unusual name. Now check out their summer class and their handy works. 

The books we read this summer are...