Week Two: Fruits & Vegetables

Welcome to week 2, this week we began our unit on healthy foods! This week was devoted to fruits and vegetables. We used a lot of our natural play environment to conduct lessons, here are two pre-k students busily engaged in an imaginative kitchen:

Though both student groups focused on the concept recognizing and understanding what fruits and vegetables are are in English, the pre-K set modified their work to one fruit and one vegetable per day.  A deliberate effort was made to select the fruit/vegetable based on phonic awareness. Example: A for Apple or B for Banana. All students enjoy colouring and this helped our younger students in particular build a bridge between what was learned in week one colours and the unit theme of foods.

The Kindergarten cohort, already familiar with the names and characteristics of many fruits and vegetables in Russian and Tatar languages was able to extend their vocabulary and expression much farther in English. We did this creatively through making fruit and vegetable baskets. When the student needed help knowing what a certain fruit or vegetable looked like or what colour it was they could use the toy models as an example. This activity took two class periods and was  quite the success and enjoyed by all.

Both the pre-k and Kindergarten group have the ability to express their thoughts about our week`s theme. However, developmentally the younger group was more apt to do this through direct modeling of actual objects. In the process practicing fine motor skills. The below picture illustates some of their work.

The Kindergarten group strengthened their analytical abilities and vocabulary with the theme worthy game of fruit dominos:

The Kindergarten group strong in their verbal and recall abilities was challenged on Friday to express in English their likes and dislikes. For example: `I like apples` `I dislike eggplant.` This cohort did a wonderful job with this! I am very proud of them:

 Happy Birthday!!!
This week we celebrated the birthday of two lovely students in the pre-k cohort. Academics aside for an afternoon the party was enjoyed by all!