Our Kindergarten students are enjoying their blended learning program as they continue to work at home three days per week with one-hour classes each of those three days and meet at St. Vladimir’s two days per week for in-person instruction. Not only are children focused on growing their understanding of phonics and mathematical concepts (such as 1 addition families and 2 addition families), the curriculum, also, involves instructing students about proper manners, and we encourage them to put these manners to practice in their interactions with each other (such as ‘Listen carefully when others speak.’ and ‘Say please, thank you, and you’re welcome.’ and ‘Do not interrupt when others are speaking.’). Aside from using songs to learn the alphabet, the days of the week, the months of the year, the seasons, and spelling various colors, we start off each day reading about the Saint of the Day from a children’s Synaxarion (published by Potamitis Press) and talking about the date, the weather, and how many days we have been in school for the current year.
Each week we focus on a different book for our discussions and crafts, which pertain to various topical subjects. An example of some of the wonderful literature that students have enjoyed reading over the past several weeks include ‘Frederick’ by Leo Lionni, ‘Follow the Dream’ by Peter Sis, and ‘Ox-Cart Man’ by Donald Hall. Our Kindergarten students are on their way to completing their first of four phonics workbooks and are preparing for their first set of assessments involving reading and writing common words (such as I, an, and, is, his, than, and that), as well as consonant-vowel-consonant words with short vowel sounds (such as cat, rat, hat, fan, ran, ham, and ram). Having only begun formal phonics instruction a few short weeks ago, students are already beginning to read their first short stories independently.
Please continue to keep us in your prayers as we strive to offer our children a quality, Christ-centered education in the classical Christian tradition!
