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 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-portrait. 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 water colors, 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 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! This week, students worked diligently and did a fantastic job with measuring, adding and subtracting, and continuing to practice more and less!
- Fix-it Strips – At this center, students encountered a new and tricky concept of “changing numbers”. Independently, the kiddos received a fix-it strip. Using cubes, they built a tower that represented their first number. Next, they changed that tower to match the second number. I asked them to articulate what they did by telling me if they added or took away cubes and how many. The pictorial representations really enabled the students to visualize what they had to do. I was super impressed with how quickly the students caught onto this skill!
9 --> 3 --> 6 --> 2 --> 4
- 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!
- 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!
- 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!
- 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 a month ago, this was super tricky work. Now, it’s no problem! 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.
Room #7 has been doing a lot of work thinking about what makes their writing readable! After sorting their beginning of the year narrative writing into two piles: Yes, I can read it! No, I cannot, the kiddos brainstormed the reasons why. As a class, we came up with a hearty list of reasons. For example:
- There aren’t any spaces!
- I didn’t stretch my word out enough.
- The letters are all smushed together.
- There aren’t enough words.
In a week, I will introduce another type of checklist, except this one will be more content based. Did you include who was there? Where you were? What you did? How you felt? These checklists will really encourage my friends to add as many details as possible into their already interesting tales!
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.