Welcome back! I hope everyone had a restful and fun vacation! The kids were excited to be back and get into the swing of things again. I was amazed at how much taller and older they all looked after only one week! Our week started off with a bang!
Room #7 began a new unit in Writer’s Workshop this week! The kiddos became the teachers (and writers) as they learned about informational how-to texts. To begin the unit, I showed an exemplar story to the writers in our room on the topic of building a snowman. After reading it, the kiddos identified a variety of aspects included in the writing: tips, warnings, lots of details, labeled pictures, hooks, or getting the reader excited, and arrows.
Next, the class brainstormed a list of all the things they know how to do. The cherubs did a magnificent job coming up with a variety of topics! Last, they dove right in and started their own how-to stories. It was amazing to see how much excitement and eagerness the kids displayed, and they were totally motivated to start writing! They wanted to show all their expertise! Over the upcoming weeks, they will be immersed in a variety of mentor texts, and our list of what to incorporate in our books will continue to grow! How fun!
We are finishing up stations from before vacation. The mathematicians still love doing stations centered on chicks! Plus, as Room #7 continues to delve into number sentences and comparisons, we are also 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 is 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!
- How Many Eggs? – At this station, the boys and girls picked a number they wanted to work with (between 8 and 15). The recording sheet prompted the children to figure out how many white eggs he/she would have if a certain number were brown. So, for example, if I picked the number 9, and the question said: There are 4 brown eggs, I would need to illustrate those eggs to determine how many white eggs I had! Critical thinking!
- How Many Chicks? How Many Legs? – This engaging book activity required students to stretch their thinking. Each page asked students to draw a certain number of chicks and figure out how many legs in total the page contained. As a result, some kiddos are even starting to count by 2’s! Way to go!!
- Roll, Count, Cover – The game board at this station had eggs on it with various numbers embedded inside. Each child rolled two dice and added the numbers together to find the sum. Then, he/she covered the corresponding egg until they were all covered!
- Tub Game – At this center, students received practice describing a number by its parts. This week, the students worked with the number 10! This was a challenge, but a fun one, where they had to figure out how many cubes were underneath the tub! They then wrote the corresponding number sentence. For example, if I put 5 cubes under the tub, they had to discern how many more would equal ten.
- Building and Recording Block Structures – At this center, the boys and girls were able to explore relationships of three-dimensional shapes and begin to develop a sense of perspective. They first built structures using about 10 different geoblocks and then drew what they saw. What’s interesting about this station is the fact that each geoblock has different faces (a new vocabulary word!). The cherubs only drew the face that they could observe.
- Sorting Shapes on Geoboards – 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 actually 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! Lastly, they had to identify the similarities and differences among the shapes!
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 original 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!
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!
Lastly, we started a new science unit on plants! The class has been immersed with emergent texts on plants that are great resources as well as examples of informational writing. My hope is that many of their features (e.g., table of contents, diagrams, labels, etc.) will be incorporated into the cherubs’ very own informational books in the future!
Have a spring-filled weekend!