Room #7 has been full of busy bees this week and the kiddos have been hard at work before vacation. Here are a few of our highlights from the week!
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!
· Pan Balance Activity – This week, the students measured a specific number of particular items on the pan balance and then determined which one was heavier! Everyone loved predicting which item would be heavier, and they were often correct! The kids’ favorite aspect of this activity was choosing their own comparison!
· Memory – In this fun game, the class matched a number represented only on ten frames to its counterpart with a number sentence. This was very challenging and will definitely be a repeat station so that the students can become more comfortable in recognizing the pictorial representations of a particular number!
· Top-It – 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. The kids LOVED playing this game!
· Missing Teen Numbers – Let’s fill in those missing teen numbers! Given a starting and ending number, the cherubs filled in the missing numbers and paid extra attention to forming their numbers correctly!
· Memory – At this fun game, the students turned over domino and number cards to find matches! The kiddos remembered to subitize: (from last week) the act of glancing at the number of items presented and knowing immediately the corresponding number. They continued to love to use the new language! The boys and girls did a fabulous job counting on. After subitizing, they could then count on to determine how many total dots there were on the domino!
· One More One Less – In this activity, the children were challenged to name a number that was one more or one less than a given number without counting. Each kiddo started with a cube train of any length (e.g., 10), and continued to add or take away cubes and name how many cubes were in their train after each addition or subtraction.
· Roll and Write Teen Numbers - Using a spinner with all of our teen numbers represented in 10-frame form, the kiddos spun, then practiced writing that number on their board. They always had to remember: “Numbers in the teens start with a ONE!”
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
· only have one parent
· are divorced
· don’t have children
And many, many more! When I asked what’s the most important part that is the same about families, the response was in unison – “They All LOVE each other!” So sweet!
On Friday, a new Unthinkable, Was Funny Once, was introduced to the class. When Was Funny Once invades people’s brains, he makes them get the giggles or sillies! He makes them get carried away and not be able to get back on track with what the rest of the people are doing. In order to defeat Was Funny Once, we can use different strategies. Taking a break is a great one to try, whether it is taking deep breaths, getting a drink of water, resting on the bean bag, or doing wall pushups. Another strategy is to look at what everyone else is doing. If the rest of the class is being serious, that helps the student(s) remember that he/she/they should be too. All of these strategies help us “get back on track.” In addition, I have hung up a Silly Scale! Our one to five helps the class name where they should be. For example, one is for when we are being super serious whereas five is out of control laughing. As a class, we generally stick to a two or three, as long as we can remember to “get back on track”!
During our Word Work time, the children continue to notice letter features and letter names as they work with some very special words: their own names. They’re paying close attention to the letters in their names, noticing the shapes and saying their names.
Additionally, the boys and girls in Room #7 are beginning to match letters to the initial sounds in words. This matching is helping the children learn to take words apart. In class, we’ve been sorting pictures and matching them to their initial letter and to the word. For example, the pictures of a ball and a bug went into the Bb column, with the words ball and bug written below them. The kiddos had fun with this whole group activity, and many of them made some great connections to this activity during our Writing and Read to Self times! Way to go, Kindergarteners!
Have a restful, relaxing, and FUN break! Happy New Year!