To celebrate Earth Day, Room #7 read The Lorax. We then brainstormed a variety of suggestions that we can implement to help keep the earth clean and healthy! After the kids wrote down their fantastic ideas, they completed the art component of this activity. Using a little blue and green paint, marbles, and a shoebox, they created their very own unique worlds. To top it off, we took pictures of their cute mugs with a Lorax moustache on them! Check out our back bulletin board to see their priceless results!
The kiddos have been hard at work learning about 3-D shapes and noticing them in their environment. On Thursday morning, the cherubs were able to make their very own 3-D shapes using balls of clay and toothpicks. They loved experimenting with the structures and seeing what they could create. We have been talking a lot about how 3-D shapes are fat, not flat, and that each 3-D shape has different faces. These conversations helped the kiddos form their own. Moreover, one student remarked to the class, “You have to build a 2-D shape first in order to make a 3-D shape.” What a great comment for the kids to hear in order to help mold their shapes!
Math stations this week are mostly about geometry! We are investigating shapes, both 3-dimensional and 2-dimensional. Have your child try to find the following shapes in the real-world; they are everywhere: cones, spheres, prisms, cubes, and cylinders. Ask them to tell you about what we found in the classroom!
· Pattern Block Puzzles – The purpose of this station was to give the cherubs the opportunity to explore relationships of shapes and determine how many ways the shapes can be arranged in a particular space. Using pattern blocks, the boys and girls filled in a particular puzzle shape in several different ways and recorded the number of blocks used each time!
· Geoblock Match-up – This week, the students observed some three-dimensional geo-blocks. We talked about how these blocks have faces. The faces are common shapes that the students see every day (squares, triangles, and rectangles). In this game, the students received a geo-block game board. Their job was to reach in the basket, pick out a block, and determine if any of the faces matched a shape on their board. The complicated part of this game was that many of the shapes had different shaped faces. For example, some triangular shaped geo-blocks had rectangular faces as well. It was tricky!
· Geoboard Designs – At this center, I built a variety of designs and shapes on a geoboard for the boys and girls to observe and copy. This station really helped them be more analytical about the various parts of a design or shape and its position on the geoboard. The kids thoroughly enjoyed this station, especially when the designs got super complex!
· 3-D Shape Color - The boys and girls did an outstanding job recognizing what each shape was called at this center and then coloring that shape accordingly!
· Ones Ladders – At this center, the boys and girls picked an activity sheet that challenged them. Then, they filled in the missing “rungs” on the ladder with consecutive numbers! Each rung had different visible numbers, so the cherubs had to think very carefully to figure out which numeral came before and after!
· Bump – An oldie, but a goodie! Working with a friend, each student took 10 cubes of the same color (e.g.: Player 1 = green, Player 2 = blue). Next, Player 1 rolled the two dice and added them together. That player then put a cube on the circle with the matching sum. The game continued in this manner; however, if someone achieved a sum that was already marked, that player could “bump” the cube off the game board. Players could also “freeze” a number by rolling the same sum twice. Once a cherub used all ten cubes, the game was over! So much fun!
· Recording Designs and Creations – at this inventive station, the boys and girls learned to analyze positions and notice lengths and quantities. The cherubs created designs using various pattern blocks and then copied those designs by gluing down paper shapes that matched the blocks. It was most important that they built with the blocks first and not simply created a design using the paper shapes. In this manner, the challenge in this task was in the reproduction. Everyone came up with really neat and sometimes complex designs!
This is our last week with how-to stories. For a bit of a twist, the cherubs started a different kind of how-to: how to be a community helper! After reading the book, How To Be by Lisa Brown, the class brainstormed a list of several community helpers and what each one needs to be and do in order to help the various types of communities. Then, the kiddos worked hard to accurately depict the community helper they picked to describe. This was a great integrated Social Studies and English Language Arts project that Room #7 enjoyed creating! They can’t wait to share their books with you!
The class continues to learn to recognize common word patterns. This recognition helps the children learn about writing words and solving new words as they read. As the children break down words into patterns or parts, they can easily hear the break between the first part of a word and the rest of the word, such as t-ake, b-ake. The pattern we’ve been studying is the –ake ending in words. The boys and girls are learning that some words have a vowel and a silent e at the end, and that the vowel sound is usually the name of the vowel. It is really exciting to see them make these connections outside of our Word Work time as well!
Additionally, the cherubs are learning to solve new words by making connections to words they already know. In class, we’ve been changing the last letter or letters of a word to form a new word, such as: in to if. This understanding is helping the children take words apart as they read and spell as they write. You can do this at home too! Ask your child to change the last letter of a word to form a new word. Here are some examples, but feel free to use words that work for your family: cup, hat, cat, bed, bag, bus, pig, pen, pet, hug. Challenge your kiddo and ask your child to read the word pairs to you!
Have a wonderful April vacation! See you in a week!