A holiday gift is coming to your family which showcases your child’s diligent work, so if you are planning to leave before vacation officially begins, please let me know; I want to make certain I can get your gift to you in time for the holidays! Additionally, if you have not sent in family photographs, please do so by Monday! They are needed for the gift!
Furthermore, keep sending in those Helping Hands papers! This project coordinates with our Family Unit. Room #7 has been talking a lot about families and how they are both the same and different. If you have not discussed with your child what he/she does at home to help out his/her family, please do so by Tuesday! Thank you for all of your assistance and cooperation, families!
Room #7 has been full of busy bees this week, and the kiddos have been hard at work before vacation. Here are some highlights from the week!
Our family unit is coming to a close. Over the past month, Room #7 has read a variety of books that detail what responsibilities individuals have within families, while discussing similarities and differences among families. This week, I asked the students to identify one difference there is between their families and others. The list was outstanding! The cherubs did a really great job identifying some key differences. For example:
Some families:
- have 2 moms or 2 dads
- have pets
- are big
- are small
- live in different countries
- have adopted kiddos
- only have one parent
- are divorced and/or remarried
- don’t have children
Math:
- Decomposing Number Book – Last week, Room #7 began to learn how teens are made up of tens and ones. To help cement this tricky concept, the kids worked extremely hard on a Decomposing Number Book where they had to show how many groups of tens and ones were in each teen number. They did an awesome job!
- Top-It – This partner card game is similar to the card 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. The kids LOVED playing this game!
- One More Bingo – At this station, students drew cards from a deck of numbers 1-25. After picking a number, they identified what one more of that number was and then everyone marked that number on their Bingo board, if they had it! 4 in a row won!
- Sorting Shape Puzzles – In the original shape puzzle center, the Kindergarteners estimated how many cubes would fit on a shape puzzle, counted, and then labeled them with the correct numeral. As an extension, they then sorted the shape puzzles onto a 1-20 number line! If the puzzle held 11 cubes, they would then place that puzzle piece on the 11 space.
- iPad - Park Math – The kiddos were incredibly excited to learn a new iPad game this week! In the app, Park Math, there are many games. This week, the boys and girls learned about an activity where they ordered numbers from least to greatest. It’s super tricky, though, because the numbers are not in consecutive order. For example, a child might need to order the following numbers: 23, 12, 15, 4, 25, 15, 6. They had fun moving the numbers around until they were correct! This was excellent practice in recognizing numbers and determining if they were more or less than others!
- How Many Does it Hold? - At this station, the cherubs filled specific containers with Unifix cubes so that it was full. Then, they counted and recorded the number of counters in each container. This is a great station for students to start to understand capacity and to visualize how different sized containers hold varying amounts.
Room #7 has been doing a lot of work thinking about what makes their writing readable! After sorting their beginning of the year narrative writing into two piles: Yes, I can read it! No, I cannot, the kiddos brainstormed the reasons why. As a class, we came up with a hearty list of reasons. For example:
- There aren’t any spaces!
- I didn’t stretch my word out enough.
- The letters are all smushed together.
- There aren’t enough words.
After vacation, I will introduce another type of checklist, except this one will be more content based. Did you include who was there? Where you were? What you did? How you felt? These checklists will really encourage my friends to add as many details as possible into their already interesting tales!
Because next week is only three days, I will not be entering a weekly highlight! I hope you all have a wonderful, restful, fun vacation full of holiday cheer and family! See you in the new year!