It has been a wacky few weeks at school with all the snow days, but the kiddos have been super flexible and continue to love our days in Room #7! I hope you all have a wonderful and relaxing break, whether you are traveling or enjoying a “stay-cation”! Here are a few highlights from the week!
The boys and girls of Kindergarten continue to complete 100th Day stations as well as centers with a Valentine’s Day theme!
· Valentine’s Day Addition – Using a die, students rolled two numbers and added them together on two broken hearts to make one complete heart! For an extra challenge, students did the work a second time but used two dice to make more difficult number sentences!
· Color the Numbers – At this station, the boys and girls had to follow instructions carefully and utilize designated colors for specific numbers when coloring their picture! A Valentine’s Day surprise was revealed after they finished their coloring!
· Towers, Towers, Towers –This activity provides the children with an opportunity to see number relationships while they practice counting. Given prepared towers, students figured out how many cubes were in each tower by using invisible buddy lines and the knowledge they already have. For example, if they knew that one tower had ten cubes in it, they could then figure out that the other one that had one less cube had a total of nine! Room #7 is full of math detectives!
· Race to 10 – This is another game that gives the kiddos practice in telling the difference between the plus and minus signs and performing the corresponding operation. Each player started with an empty working-space paper. First, he/she rolled a die to determine how many counters to put on the paper. Secondly, he/she spun the spinner to determine whether to add or to subtract. Lastly, he/she rolled the die again to see how many counters to add or subtract. The kiddos did a really fabulous job with this multi-step center!
· More or Less Counting Stories – At this fun center, everyone told stories that fit the scene illustrated on their particular story board. The boys and girls worked to create stories where they used plastic animals and identified which animal was more or less in their stories. As an extra challenge, the boys and girls used invisible buddy lines to determine how many more or less!
· Top it – Using new domino cards, this partner card game is similar to the game, War. Each student put down a number card, and together they decided which number was greater. The child with the greater number card won and took the two cards. As an extra challenge, the boys and girls could choose to engage in Addition Top-it where they added the two cards together. This is super tricky work, but the cherubs used the skill of counting on to help them work through it! They LOVED playing this game!
· iPad – a new game: subtraction! - At this new iPad game, students worked to finish subtraction number sentences!
During writing this week, we were finally able to embark on writing some opinions! After discussing the many Mo Willems characters, the boys and girls identified which character was their favorite. Then, they thought about why! Each kiddo needed to name at least two reasons. As a class, each student listened to their peers as they orally explained their reasoning! Finally, they set off to write their opinions! We will continue with this type of structured writing the week after vacation as well!
We’re working on syllables together. The children are learning that:
• We can hear and say the syllables in a word.
• We can blend syllables together.
The boys and girls are thinking about the parts of words and how we blend syllables together to make up words. This ability to analyze words into their separate parts will help the children become successful readers.
Moreover, the cherubs are learning to solve new words by making connections to words they already know. In class, we’ve been changing the first letter or letters of a word to form a new word, such as cat to bat. This understanding is helping the children take words apart as they read and spell as they write. Challenge your kiddos to do this at home as well by practicing with the word families we’ve already reviewed in class (-at). Have some fun with it!