Welcome back! I hope everyone had an enjoyable and restful vacation and a very happy New Year! It was so wonderful to see all of the cherubs’ smiling faces on Tuesday morning; they were full of great stories and excited to be back in school! It’s been a terrific two weeks; here are some of the highlights!
We are extremely lucky! We have a new student to join our Room #7 family! Please join me in welcoming Connie Guo and her family to our classroom!
A new month, a new self-portrait! For January, the boys and girls of Room #7 utilized a mixture of mediums to create their unique self-portraits. While reading ABC, I Like Me! by Nancy Carlson, the boys and girls focused on completing the borders to their newest self-portraits. They worked so hard to write each uppercase letter of the alphabet beautifully. Next, using the same fancy marker, they outlined and then colored in themselves. Lastly, employing an abundance of vibrant watercolors, the cherubs painted in their borders. The results are nothing short of gorgeous! Moreover, the kiddos had a blast using their art creatively to make their self-portraits one of a kind!
The students of Room #7 were also hard at work on their January calendars. On Wednesday afternoon, we read Caralyn Buehner’s Snowmen at Night, and the kiddos loved brainstorming all the activities their snowmen could possibly do at night when everyone else is asleep! After our discussion, they created their very own “droopy” and “melting” snowmen using construction paper and crayons. Some of these snowmen certainly had a fabulous time when it was dark! Lastly, everyone wrote what their snowmen did at night to make them look so “tired” the next day!
We are back in the routine with Math in Room #7! Because of the snow days, we had the same math stations for two weeks (seven days), students worked diligently and did a fantastic job with measuring, adding and subtracting, and continuing to practice more and less!
- Bump! - A new addition partner game! Working with a friend, each student took 10 cubes of the same color (e.g.: Player 1 = green, Player 2 = blue). Next, Player 1 rolled the two dice and added them together. That player then put a cube on the circle with the matching sum. The game continued in this manner; however, if someone achieved a sum that was already marked, that player could “bump” the cube off the game board. Players could also “freeze” a number by rolling the same sum twice. Once a cherub used all ten cubes, the game was over! So much fun!
- 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!
- Counting on Cup – (an oldie, but certainly a goodie!) Wow! It’s awesome to see how much easier this station is now for the mathematicians of room #7! I remember that just a month ago, this was super tricky work. Now, it’s no problem! In this game, a cherub 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, they count on to get the final answer of how many in all!
- 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.
- Estimation Station – The Room #7 mathematicians have been hard at work at estimating. It is a tricky skill! At this center, they examined what 5 pebbles looked like and what 20 pebbles looked like. Next, they filled a small cup with rocks and dumped them out. Using the visual of what 5 and 20 look like, they estimated how many they had in their cup. Finally, the cherubs organized their pebbles onto ten frames to determine the actual number. Everyone loved this station and enjoyed the challenge!
- One More Bingo - 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!
As the children become more aware of the sounds in words, they learn to separate and identify the last sound they hear. This ability is the foundation for connecting sounds and letters beyond the first letter, knowledge that will help the children begin to solve words and also monitor and keep track of their reading as they read a whole story. They’re learning that
- You can hear the last sound in a word.
- You can say a word to hear the last sound.
- While you’re going about your daily activities with your child – driving, shopping, cooking – say a word and emphasize the ending sound.
- See if your child can think of other words that end the same. So you might say, beet; then you child would think of words that end the same: pot, hot, mat, sat, and so forth.
Room #7 boys and girls are also learning to recognize words that rhyme and make connections between the words. This is helping them take words apart to solve them and understand sound/letter relationships. The class is learning that:
- Some words have end parts that sound alike. They rhyme.
- You can make rhymes by thinking of words that end the same.
On Thursday, the writers of Room #7 shared their finished pattern books with their book buddies! They were incredibly proud of all their hard work! So were their buddies (as am I!)
We are done with our Super Reader unit! To celebrate, each student made their own Super Reader cape. The Kindergartners then quietly paraded to the office to show off the books they can now successfully read due to all the powers they learned! Holy moly! What growth in such a short time!
Stay warm this weekend!