It has been a wacky few weeks at school with the snow days, but the kiddos have been super flexible and continue to love our days in Room #7! I hope you all have a wonderful and relaxing break, whether you are traveling or enjoying a “stay-cation”! Here are a few highlights from the week!
The boys and girls of Kindergarten continue to complete addition/subtraction stations as well as centers with a Valentine’s Day theme!
- Valentine’s Day Addition – Using a die, students rolled two numbers and added them together on two broken hearts to make one complete heart! For an extra challenge, students did the work a second time but used two dice to make more difficult number sentences!
- Magic Picture – At this station, the boys and girls had to follow instructions carefully and utilize designated colors for specific numbers when coloring their picture! A Valentine’s Day surprise was revealed after they finished their coloring!
- Cookie Subtraction – After practicing two weeks ago as a whole class, it’s time for independent work! Crossing out the cookies helped the students figure out the end to their number sentence! Yum!
- Clear the Board – As we continue to work with addition, students partnered together at this fun and engrossing game. Each student received a game board and 10 cubes. They placed their cubes on numbers that they thought they would roll. Next, the kids took turns rolling two dice. When the dice were added together and if the kids had cubes on that number, they could remove them. The first person to “clear the board” won!
- iPad – subtraction! - At this iPad game, students worked to finish subtraction number sentences!
- Snap It! – Working with numbers six to twelve, students made trains of cubes. They then “snapped” their trains at various places. Putting part of their trains in front of them and placing the other part behind them, students worked to figure out how many were hidden. In this manner, students are learning to describe a number by its parts. For those tricky high numbers, students used invisible buddy lines as a strategy to determine the hidden number. Fabulous work, cherubs!
- 100’s Chart – At this center, the kids filled in the missing number hearts. Lots of good conversations took place while they were hard at work because many noticed patterns that occurred within their number grids!
Room #7 boys and girls have officially learned another brain grower word: optimism! When one is optimistic, one feels hopeful that risks are worth taking and that problems will work themselves out. Using kid-friendly words to describe optimism, they came up with their own definition - when you do something new, you think, “I can try,” and give it your best shot because that’s how you grow. After reading The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss, our growth mindset thinkers discussed how the little boy is optimistic in the story, and how that helped his brain grow. Moreover, we then brainstormed times of our day when the cherubs can learn to be optimistic! We can’t wait to fill our poster with evidence of the sort!
Have a restful, fun, and relaxing vacation! See you in a week!