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, and we have almost completed the art component! 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!
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!
· Nearby Numbers – An oldie, but a goodie! Using various game boards, students placed the missing teen numbers in their grid to complete the “number line”. The Kindergartners are becoming naturals at this!
· 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!
· 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.
· Highlight Teen Numbers – At this independent work station, students drew cards from a deck of numbers and had to discern if that number were a teen number. Then, they got their detective eyes on and searched for that number in a large grid of numbers. As they found the numbers, they highlighted them! What a fun way to practice number recognition and identification!
· Counting on Cup – In this game, one person turned over the top number card and put that number of counters in the cup. Next, he/she rolled the die (+1, +1, +2, +2) and placed that many counters next to the cup. Finally, he/she decided how many counters there were in all and filled in the record sheet.
· Count on 1 More – Independently, students turned over a number card and represented that number with buttons on their “work board”. They then counted out one more in their head and used counters to represent this number on their “work board”.
· Domino Concentration – At this fun memory game, the students turned over dominoes and number cards to find matches! We started talking about subitizing at this station, the act of glancing at the number of items presented and knowing immediately the corresponding number. They loved using the new language! We also chatted about counting on. After subitizing, they could then count on to determine how many dots total there were on the domino!
To get ready for our pattern book Publishing Party on Friday, the boys and girls worked diligently to publish their work! The students each received an editing checklist. When they went through their books, they had to make sure they checked each page for the following:
· Neat printing
· Circle words are spelled correctly
· Every word has as many sounds as they can hear
· Finger spaces
· Each sentence begins with an uppercase letter
· Each sentence ends with a period or some form of punctuation mark
After they checked each item off, they began to add color to their illustrations. Room #7 is full of pride with all their hard work! Way to go, cherubs!
The class continues to practice listening for ending sounds during Word Work. Independently, the boys and girls completed a corresponding activity as their “have to” during Word Work in Daily Five. They are doing such great jobs with this. Everyone is really emphasizing the last sound to ensure they can identify it. On Tuesday, I introduced a Bingo game they will play next week during Daily Five. In this game, the Kindergartners match the last sounds of the words in the pictures. After every card they draw, the students say both words (the picture they draw and the picture on their game board) to show if their ending sound matches. This is great practice!
We learned about a new Unthinkable on Friday with Mrs. Grubs - Rock Brain! Check out the Social Skills tab to learn more about this pesky character who makes us get stuck! You will also glean some great strategies to defeat him!
I hope you all enjoyed the Publishing Party! Have a wonderful weekend!