The kindergarten class has been busy actively learning, because they love to learn, according to Kindergarten teacher Toni Rieker. She says that they also love creative attention grabbers. “They just have to have a little fun, and act a little silly! They love Mystery Science episodes, also,” says Rieker.
The list of their areas of concentration is long: they are learning basic reading and math skills, letter recognition, letter-sound association, blending sounds together to form new words, the rules that are necessary in order to learn to decode words, patterns, number recognition, the value of numbers, counting sequentially, ordinal numbers, calendar skills, and much more. The kindergarten students have also been working with sound waves or vibrations for science to see how they travel. They experimented with how the sound waves can bounce off of walls and objects, or get blocked or softened by different objects. Mrs. Nickell helped the class experiment with soundwaves in music with the different types of drums.
Some of the goals they have set are to read independently and to answer all math problems presented to them. According to Rieker, they also strive for beautiful penmanship. The kindergarten students spend their free time coloring, singing, and looking at library books. “They have been having fun learning many words in sign language as well as Spanish,” Rieker said.