We are doing a variety of family-themed projects this month. Thank you to those families who have already sent back the Helping Hands paper. In addition, keep the family photos coming! Room #7 is working on a top secret holiday gift that needs those pictures! Thank you for all of your help with these activities!
Math stations this week were all about measuring, more and less, and a little bit of addition! The cherubs are doing such an excellent job with all this difficult work!
- 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!
- 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!
- 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!
- Nearby Teen Numbers (a different board) – Using various game boards, students placed the missing teen numbers in their grid to complete the “number line”.
- Grab and Count; One More/One Less: A new tricky station! At this center, the boys and girls grabbed a handful of a specific material (we used pompoms, counters, and foam shapes). Next, they counted their material and wrote that number down. Finally, their last two steps were to figure out what one less number was and one more number was from the first number they counted! Not only did the cherubs practice their counting and writing skills but also had to concentrate on what the numbers were before and after! This can be difficult work! Way to go, Kindergartners!
- Build a City – An oldie, but a goodie! This partner activity had students building towers depending on the roll of the die. When their game was over, they had built a “city” of skyscraper towers! This week, the cherubs had an extra challenge. They connected all their towers, counted and decided which one had more cubes and which had less. If students had trouble counting that high, they compared the 2 towers by standing them up next to each other and comparing which one was more or less and by how many!
- 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.
After our highly successful pattern book unit, Kindergarten is returning to narrative writing. Over the next few weeks, the boys and girls will focus on that have happened to them and learn about including a beginning, middle, and end to their narratives. They will incorporate details and descriptive words so that their readers feel as if they are there in the story!
The past two weeks, Room #7 tackled some very tricky sounds – the “h” brothers: “ch,” “th,” “sh,” and “wh” and the sounds they make. The class and I made an anchor chart to show the various ways our mouths look when making the specific sounds, and we brainstormed all the different words that belong in each category. A new game will be coming their way during Word Work in Reader’s Workshop as well as Morning Work. Help your kiddos to notice them in daily conversations and ask your child to tell you all the sounds!
The class continues to practice listening for sounds during Word Work. Next week, independently, the boys and girls will complete a corresponding activity as their “have to” during Word Work in Reader's Workshop. As a class, I have noticed that everyone is really emphasizing the last sound to ensure they can identify it.
The boys and girls in Room #7 are also 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 Read to Self Times! Way to go, Kindergarteners!
I have noticed so much growth in the cherubs’ reading skills over the past few months. Every superhero (and Super Reader) 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)
Have a fabulous weekend!