ART

Collage, Drawing, Painting, Sculpting (clay), Woodworking, Printmaking, Papier-mâché, Fiber Arts

LEARNING GOALS FOR ART:

  • Study artists

  • Learn to sustain long-term interest in art projects, working on one piece for several class periods

  • Learn how to correctly use and respect art studio tools and materials

  • Acquire a comfort in taking creative risks and in learning to embrace imperfection

  • Draw from imagination and and sketch from observation

  • Manage and repurpose “waste” by reducing, reusing, and recycling materials such as scrap paper

  • Understand process of and create papier-mâché (make papier-mâché puppets)

  • Begin to understand sculpting process (e.g., clay pinch pot)

Health & Wellness

Core resources:

Brain Gym, Paul E. Dennison & Gail E. Dennison
Toolbox, Dovetail Learning
Yoga Games for Children: Fun and Fitness with Postures, Movements and Breath, Danielle Bersma

BODY HEALTH

  • Make colorful choices at lunch

  • Manage and understand the importance of self-care routines such as loose teeth/lost teeth and hand washing

  • Understand the importance of movement

SOCIAL HEALTH

  • Learn and practice strategies for collaboration & compromise

  • Develop language for creating positive friendships and healthy conflict resolution

  • Develop self-advocacy skills, such as asking for help or expressing ideas

EMOTIONAL HEALTH

  • Introduce the concept of personal identity

  • Name and share feelings

  • Introduce values and be held accountable to these

  • Develop skills to manage big/uncomfortable feelings

Language Arts & Literacy

CORE RESOURCES:

Words Their Way
Teachers College Reading & Writing Project, Lucy Calkins
Units of Study for Primary Writing, Lucy Calkins
Guided Reading, Irene C. Fountas & Gay Su Pinnell
Sounds in Motion, Fran Santore
Developmentally appropriate literature

LEARNING GOALS FOR READING:

  • Develop and strengthen listening comprehension

  • Develop and strengthen phonemic awareness

  • Recognize upper and lower case letters

  • Understand the letters and the sounds they make

  • Tell a story by observing the illustrations

  • Make predictions

  • Make connections

  • Ask and answer questions about unknown words in text

  • Recognize common types of text (ex. storybooks, poems, nonfiction, etc.)

  • Understand features of books

  • Retell stories

  • Identify the beginning, middle, and end of a story

  • Choose reading books at appropriate level of readiness

  • Understand that words carry meaning

  • Follow words from left to right and from top to bottom on the printed page

  • Recognize that sentences in print are made up of words

  • Build sight word vocabulary - read common high-frequency words by sight

  • Develop decoding skills

  • Read emergent reader text with purpose and understanding

LEARNING GOALS FOR WRITING:

FORMS OF WRITING: Fiction; Non-Fiction; Poetry

  • Start to use writing process: draft; revise; edit; publish

  • Understand that writing is a form of communication

  • Understand that writing is putting thoughts and ideas on paper with words and/or pictures

  • Write for multiple purposes (e.g., newsletter, stories, dramatic play, lists, letters)

  • Use phonetic (sound spelling) spelling to convey ideas

  • Draw pictures to convey meaning

  • Begin to use punctuation

  • Participate in storytelling and “share”times

LEARNING GOALS FOR HANDWRITING:

  • Master writing all upper case letters of the alphabet

  • Write lower case letters of the alphabet

  • Use spaces between words

  • Strengthen fine motor development and master tripod grip

LEARNING GOALS FOR LISTENING AND SPEAKING:

  • Listen to and follow directions

  • Be an attentive audience member - practice Whole Body Listening

  • Be an active audience member: ask questions; share comments; offer constructive criticism

  • Generate questions and make personal connections

  • Communicate thoughts and feelings audibly and clearly

  • Develop comfort level for speaking in a group

  • Explain thinking

  • Present work to peers

Library & Information Technology

Learning Goals for Library:

  • Learn the parts of books

  • Demonstrate knowledge of where to check out books

  • Recognize that the library is divided into sections that house different books

  • Select picture books using icons in online catalog

  • Recognize award-winning Caldecott Books and Geisel books

  • Understand how to select the Just-Right-Book from book displays

Music

Learning Goals for Music:

  • Learn about noteworthy composers, compositions, styles, and genres

  • Discover the connection between music and literature through selected picture books and recordings

  • Discover and explore different uses of the voice and body

  • Develop attentive listening skills and aural memory

  • Learn to distinguish musical components: fast/slow; loud/soft; high/low

  • Begin rhythm work (keep steady beat, clap rhythms, etc.)

  • Build repertoire of songs to create foundation for later melodic and rhythmic learning

  • Develop performance skills

Physical Education

LEARNING GOALS FOR PHYSICAL EDUCATION:

  • Demonstrate sportsmanship

  • Develop locomotor skills (e.g., running, hopping, sliding)

  • Develop non-locomotor skills (e.g., bending, twisting, stretching)

  • Develop body awareness

  • Develop hand/eye coordination

  • Develop foot/eye coordination

  • Develop balance

  • Engage in creative movement and fitness activities

Science and Engineering

THEME: Observation

UNITS:

Investigation and Experimentation
Cycles: Monarch Butterfly Life Cycle, Nutrition and Body, States of Matter

LEARNING GOALS FOR SCIENCE:

  • Record observations by drawing a scientific sketch

  • Ask scientific questions

  • Begin to read and examine scientific literature

  • Recognition of mistakes as an important part of learning process

  • Describe physical properties of objects

  • Five senses

  • Major lifetimes of plants and animals

  • Earth is composed of air, land, and water

  • Weather

  • Landforms

  • Resources from earth are used everyday...

Mathematics

CORE RESOURCES:

TERC Investigations in Mathematics, Pearson
Bridges in Mathematics Second Edition, Math Learning Center
Context for Learning Mathematics, Catherine Twomey Fosnot
Math for All, K-2, Hal R. Melnick, Marvin Cohen, Babette Moeller, Karen Marschke-Tobier and Linda Metnetsky
Math Solutions, Marilyn Burns

LEARNING GOALS FOR MATHEMATICS:

NUMBER SENSE AND OPERATIONS

  • Demonstrate one-to-one correspondence with up to 30 objects

  • Recognize number up to 100 and write numbers up to 30

  • Count to 100 by 1’s, 5’s and 10’s and to 20 by 2’s

  • Compare numbers in multiple ways

  • Understand concept of addition and subtraction

  • Create and solve story problems using addition

  • Understand concept of a number sentence

  • Find the sum or difference of two whole numbers up to or from 6

  • Begin to understand place value (ones and tens)

  • Solve number mysteries and identify hidden numbers

ALGEBRA AND FUNCTIONS

  • Sort, classify, and order objects by size, number, and other attributes

  • Recognize, describe, and repeat patterns

GEOMETRY AND MEASUREMENT

  • Identify and name: circle; triangle; square; rectangle; rhombus; oval; hexagon; trapezoid

  • Identify 3-D objects: cubes; spheres; cylinders

  • Use non-standard units of measurement for comparison

  • Understand the need for standard units of measurement

  • Compare and order height and length (shortest, longest, and the same)

  • Demonstrate an understanding of concepts of time (e.g., morning, afternoon, evening, today, yesterday, tomorrow, week, month, year) and tools that measure time (e.g., clock, calendar)

  • Begin to develop a sense of time (e.g., length of one minute, five minutes, one hour)

  • Recognize time to the hour on an analog clock

  • Know the seven days of the week and twelve months of the year and their order

MONEY

  • Recognize and name the value of penny, nickel, dime, and quarter

  • Make and exchange pennies for nickels and dimes; pennies and nickels for dimes; and nickels for dimes

STATISTICS, DATA ANALYSIS, AND PROBABILITY

  • Pose questions, gather data, and record results

  • Represent data using concrete objects, pictures, and tally or bar graphs

  • Answer simple questions related to data representation; reasoning & communicating an understanding of results

PROBLEM SOLVING

  • Apply and adapt a variety of appropriate strategies to solve problems

  • Use manipulatives and pictures to create and solve problems

  • Develop estimation skills

Social Studies

Units:

Study of Self (Name, Physical Identity, Interests, Areas of Strengths, Areas of Growth, )
Community Study
Activism & Community Service

Learning Goals for Social Studies:

  • Develop and follow classroom, community, and school expectations

  • Recognize individual and community strengths

  • Share and work cooperatively with others

  • Take turns

  • Compromise

  • Recognize ways to positively impact the community & world around us

  • Identify what makes each of us unique beings and what unites us as human beings

Please note: Curriculum Guides are an articulation of the core aspects of the academic program at Wildflower Collaborative and The Sweetgrass School; it is not intended to capture every concept and skill that is taught. Moreover, this Curriculum Guide does not reflect additional topics of study, which are emergent and inspired annually by student interests, teacher creativity, and current events.