For the next two weeks, many of our Math stations will be centered on 100th Day. This is a big deal for the Kindergarteners, and they are eager to visit each station.
- Comparing Numbers – Last week, as a whole group, the class began comparing numbers and determining which was greater, less than, or equal to. We noticed that the greater than and less than signs look like alligators! Those alligators like to eat only the greater numbers. Using these words, instead of bigger or smaller, is very important at this age. In this manner, it helps to alleviate any literal confusion relating to each number’s size. At this station, students practiced using the signs to compare various numbers. They whizzed through it!
- Up and Down the Ladder – At this small group game, the cherubs took turns rolling a pair of dice. The roll on each die determined the number of Room #7 kids to put on the bunk bed. For example, if a 5 and a 2 were rolled, the players took the pictures of seven kiddos and placed five of them on the top bunk and two of them on the bottom bunk. Next, Player Two picked an Up and Down the Ladder game card and everyone rearranged the seven children’s pictures on the bunk bed according to the card’s instructions. For example, if the card said “1 Up the Ladder,” the kids moved one kid picture from the bottom and placed it on the top. Using dry erase boards, each player recorded the corresponding number sentences! The kids really enjoyed rearranging their pictures on the bunk beds to play the game!
- Breaking Down Teens (book 2) - Room #7 has been focusing on learning and remembering how teens are made up of one group of ten and some ones. To help cement this tricky concept, the kids worked extremely hard on another 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!
- Stamp by 10 to 100! - In preparation for the 100th Day, students are counting by tens constantly! At this center, they used various stamps to stamp to 100 in groups of ten! For an extra challenge, they used tally marks to represent each group as well!
- T- Shirt Game - This partner activity required students to put either six or eight buttons on the t-shirt. Next, the first partner closed his/her eyes, while the other student took away a certain number of buttons. Then, the first partner opened his/her eyes and had to determine how many buttons were in his/her partner’s hand! Students used a variety of methods to arrive at the correct answer! The students took turns closing their eyes and recording the answers. They had a great time with this activity and are eager to play again!
- 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!
- 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!
For the last two weeks, the cherubs have been working on understanding and noticing empathy in book characters and their real lives. It is so refreshing and rewarding when students come up to me to share how they were empathetic. Our Empathy poster is getting fuller everyday with kids’ empathy experiences. This week, students made x-ray puppets. On one side, they drew an x-ray person feeling sad with a broken heart, and on the other side, they made the person happy with a full heart. After attaching a popsicle stick to the puppets, the cherubs listened to various scenarios and they had to imagine how the person in that specific situation felt. They then chose the appropriate x-ray to show. This was an excellent exercise to see how/which kiddos are able to imagine another person’s perspective and the act of empathy! Now, hold onto your hats, we are learning another brain grower word next week: resilience!
In Reader’s Workshop, Room #7 Super Readers are using their powers to bring their books to life! This week we focused on reading fluently, or smoothly, so that they made the book more interesting with their voices. They are also starting to notice punctuation and how they should read the sentences differently depending on if there is a period, question mark, or exclamation point at the end. Way to go, readers!
The children and I have been concentrating on saying and hearing the middle sounds in words. This is helping the class develop an understanding of how words are put together. The long vowel sounds, which sound like their letter names (a, e, i, o, u), are the easiest to hear. First, we listened to the sounds without looking at the letters, and, later we began to compare words and connect sounds with letters.
The children are also recognizing words that rhyme (have ending parts that are alike), which is helping them make connections between words that have the same ending sounds. This enables them to understand sound/letter relationships and break words apart to solve them. As they develop sensitivity to the sounds of oral language, they are learning to connect sounds to letter patterns. To further this skill, Room #7 has been reading lots of rhyming stories where the cherubs identify the rhyming words. They love this game!
Here’s a fun game that will assist you in helping your child recognize rhyming words.
• Encourage your child to cut out magazine pictures that represent rhyming pairs of words – house and mouse, pan and man – and glue them on a sheet.
• Together, play “Let’s Go Shopping” using magazine and newspaper pictures of food and other objects. Take the cut-out pictures and spread them on the table face down. Your kiddo turns over a picture and says its name and thinks of a rhyming word to match it – meat and feet or fish and dish, for example. Your child can then ask you to say a rhyming word for each.
Have a ton of fun!!!