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 Stations:
· Addition and Subtraction Playing Cards – A new station! Here, the boys and girls drew cards and made both addition and subtraction sentences with the cards drawn. However, Room #7 had to pay attention! When they made their subtraction sentence, they had to remember to put the greater number card first! Tricky, tricky!
· 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 wrote the corresponding number sentence!
· Two Number Shapes – This week, the boys and girls worked on their subtraction skills at this center. Each cherub started by filling the number shapes card with counters of one color and then rolling the dice to determine how many cubes to take off. After taking away the indicated number of cubes, he/she colored in his/her recording sheet to match his/her number shape. Finally, he/she wrote the number sentence to match his/her recording sheet!
· Part-Whole Bingo – This game is a spin-off from the kiddos’ work with apple boxes last week. After partners chose a game board, they rolled 2 number cubes. The roll of the number cubes combined determined the number of connecting cubes that each player could place on the board. For example, if a cherub rolled a 5 and a 2, each child took seven connecting cubes and placed them on his or her board. Each player decided independently where to place the cubes, and the two players’ choices could be different. This game promoted the exploration of equivalence, and of decomposing and composing numbers by allowing the boys and girls to cover equivalent arrangements, not just a match to the roll of the number cubes. Because the objective is to cover the entire board, there is a built-in incentive to think about a variety of equivalent expressions.
· Addition Dice – At this engaging, new station, the boys and girls worked with two types of dice: dot dice and number dice. On their recording sheet, everyone had to fill in the missing spaces using one of the dice. Next, they received practice counting on by adding the two numbers together!
· iPad – kids’ choice - 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!
The class is learning to recognize common word patterns. They were pumped to learn about another word family this week! This recognition helps the children learn about writing words. 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 m-an, pl-an. The pattern we’ve been studying is the –an ending in words.
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!!!