I have noticed so much growth in the cherubs’ reading skills over the past few months. Every superhero (and Super Reader) occasionally runs into trouble when reading. As part of our reading curriculum, the boys and girls in Room #7 have adopted and use a variety of “powers” to help them defeat those challenges in both their reading and writing. Some of those powers include:
- Pointer Power!
- Sound Power!
- Reread Power!
- Partner Power!
- Picture Power!
- Snap Word Power! (reading circle words in a snap)
- Persistence Power! (or perseverance)
Math stations this week:
- 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. The kiddos 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.
- 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!
- Decomposing Number Book – Room #7 is learning that 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!
- One More Bingo – An oldie, but a goodie! 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!
- 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!
- 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.
- iPad – Park Math – At this popular station, the boys and girls of Room #7 got to try out a new activity within Park Math! In the game, the students have to figure out how to balance a seesaw. On the seesaw are different amounts of cute mice. Through trial and error, the kids either added on or took away mice to balance the weight! What a great connection they were able to make to our pan balance as well!
The boys and girls in Kindergarten worked extremely hard on their pattern books. It is just phenomenal to see how much growth they have made in such a short amount of time. I hope you were able to come in and check out all the different types of pattern books they have created: one pattern, a pattern with a twist, and seesaw patterns! It was fabulous to share their work with you!
I hope you all have a wonderful, restful, fun vacation full of holiday cheer and family! See you in the new year!