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 Wednesday morning; they were full of great stories and excited to be back in school! It’s been a terrific week; here are some of the highlights!
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 Friday morning, 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. 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!
Math stations this week:
- Counting Collections – Similar to a math launch activity the mathematicians participated in two weeks ago, students again counted various collections of objects. At this station, each person picked a bag full of some type of manipulative and then counted how many there were. After recording that number, paying special attention to directionality of his/her written numbers, he/she could choose to count another! Everyone really took their time when counting, using learned strategies to ensure that they had 1:1 correspondence!
- 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.
- 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!
- 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 the lowest. The child with the lower number card won and took the two cards. The kids LOVED playing this game!
- iPad – Park Math – At this popular station, the boys and girls 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!
- Race to Trace – At this independent station, students had a deck of ten frame cards. Each card represented a different number, from eleven – twenty-two. As the children turned over the cards, they had to find the numeral that matched that number and then they practiced writing it. Students received a lot of practice recognizing what various higher numbers looked like when represented on ten frames!
- Roll, Write, Count – Another counting on activity! After rolling a die (a teen number die, a 20’s die, or (!) a 30’s die – challenge!!), the mathematicians wrote that number on the snowman. Next, they counted on and wrote the next four numbers! Tricky work, but our math experts rocked it! They even used tools around the room to ensure that all of their numbers were written in the expected way!
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.
Stay warm this weekend