I hope everyone had a wonderful and restful long weekend! Room #7 is back at it! We are entering the final stretch of Kindergarten: there are less than twenty days of school left, and we are busier than ever! Read on to see all the learning your cherubs have been accomplishing! This will be the last newsletter of the school year. We have a bunch of end-of-the-year activities that the kiddos will tackle, so make sure to ask them what they are up to!
Math:
· Rearrange it – A repeat with a twist! In this activity, each group of kiddos started with a number of cubes (e.g., 26), then they snapped the cubes together to form strings of 10 and determined how many “leftovers” they had. Next, the cherubs were asked to decide how many cubes they had altogether. Finally, they had to find out if they had enough loose cubes to make another ten. This week, though, the boys and girls recorded their answers, discerning how many tens and leftover ones were in their original number! Very tricky, thought-provoking work!
· Yarn – This center targets a variety of skills: measuring, counting, comparing, and writing. Picking 2 pieces of yarn, the boys and girls measured each with cubes. Next, they wrote down how many cubes were needed for each piece of yarn. Finally, using invisible buddy lines, the students determined how many more counters long one piece of yarn was than the other and finally recorded their answer!
· Missing Number Problems – The cherubs became detectives at this station, for they had to figure out how many objects I took away or added to my “pocket”. Next, they wrote the corresponding number sentence! For example, if I had 5 markers, then added 2 more, they wrote: 5+2=7. Just one more way to engage those kiddos into thinking critically!
· Measuring Plants – Our plant unit is drawing to a close! Everyone is super excited to see how their plant has grown from a seed, to a sprout, to a full-grown plant! Using Unifix cubes, the boys and girls measured the tallest part of their plant and then recorded their results in their Plant Journals!
· iPad – Room #7 cherubs LOVE the iPads and being able to choose a Math game of their liking! We have learned a variety of games thus far! What better way to continue their mathematical practice than to have the boys and girls pick the game and skill they want to improve!
· Tub Game – An oldie, but a goodie! At this center, students received practice describing a number by its parts. This week, the students worked with the number 10 (or higher)! This was a challenge, but a fun one, where they had to predict the missing part! For example, if I put 5 cubes under the tub, they had to discern how many more would equal ten. Lastly, they named the corresponding number sentence!
The class continues to learn to recognize common word patterns. This recognition helps the cherubs 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 h-ike, b-ike. The pattern we’ve been studying is the –ike ending in words. Room #7 is 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. Tricky, tricky English!
For the next week or so, the boys and girls will once again be transformed into informational writers. This time around, they will be writing about chicks! To begin, the class and I reviewed our egg to chick unit, breaking it down into 4 corresponding parts: incubation, egg to chick development, the hatch, and finally, the brooder. We brainstormed ideas for each area, making certain to include the new vocabulary the kiddos learned and the pertinent concepts. Next, each cherub dove into writing their very own informational book, checking that all the details needed to inform their readers about chick development were incorporated! The Kindergartners are enjoying this nonfiction project; they love showing off all the information (and new vocabulary) they have learned!
Have fun this weekend! I hope you all have enjoyed reading the weekly highlights this year and keeping up with all that your talented and beautiful kiddos have learned! It has been an absolute pleasure being your children’s teacher!!!