Math stations over the next few weeks will center mostly on addition and subtraction! The boys and girls are cementing their knowledge of these two tricky operations! Additionally, our Math stations for the past two weeks have focused on the concepts of more and less, how many more, and we’ve been practicing the skill of changing numbers (e.g., how many do you have to add to go from 5 to 8?).
- 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!
- Dr. Seuss (1 More/1 Less) – Using three dice, students rolled and counted to see how many dots they had in all. After recording that number, they then had to determine what was one more and one less than that number. Challenge! Some students used 4 dice! Holy moly!
- Cookie Subtraction – After reading The Duckling Gets a Cookie by Mo Willems last week, the mathematicians learned all about subtraction. This week, they practiced it! Picking a just-right recording sheet for them, they worked on finishing subtraction number sentences. They rocked it!
- ipad – Subitize Tree –The students were reintroduced this week to the word, subitize! Subitize means that one immediately knows how many items lie within a visual scene. For example, when one rolls a die and it lands on six, one would not need to count each individual dot; he/she recognizes that it’s the number six right away. At this game, the kiddos picked a number range to work with, and quickly, an image appeared. They then needed to click a number that accurately represented the image they saw. This was a terrific game for subitizing practice, and the boys and girls were able to make the game trickier as they continued to play! Definitely a fan-favorite!
- Addition Crossout – With a partner, a cherub rolled two dice. He/she then added those two dice together (counting on!) and crossed out that particular number on his/her sheet. The partners went back and forth until all the numbers were crossed out. The partner who crossed out the final number won!
- 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!
- Grab Bag Subtraction – At this partner game, the students decided what number they wanted to work with (10 or less). They then put that number of counters into a bag. Next, a partner reached into the bag, took out some counters, and showed what he/she had taken. Finally, they wrote a number sentence to demonstrate the subtraction that occurred. This is tricky work!
The cherubs are also learning about blends at the beginning of words in reading and writing. In Reader’s Workshop on Wednesday, we chatted about how blends are two letters that are glued together but one can still hear both sounds. We explored various words with beginning blends in a book we are reading and then, the kiddos wrote down the two sounds they heard. This is tricky work! Many began by only writing the one sound, but once I said, the word is “stones,” not “sones”, they began to understand what I meant. As soon as they went to read from their own book bags, the readers were excited to discover that they had words with blends in their books! As we continue to work on this important noticing, I’m excited to see this skill transfer from reading into writing! Point blends out when you say them in conversations at home too!
Room #7 has officially begun our chick unit! Next Monday, all three Kindergarten classes will receive eggs for our Egg to Chick unit. The kids couldn’t be more excited. On Tuesday, after reading the book Chickens Aren’t the Only Ones by Ruth Heller, the class discussed a new vocabulary word: oviparous! This fun word to say means to hatch from an egg. Then the class did a sort of various animals and insects to decide which were oviparous and which were not. This conversation segued into which creatures are mammals AND how one can tell what a mammal is. Ask your child to tell you which animals are mammals and which are oviparous! You’ll be surprised by their answers.
Additionally, in order to prepare for this, on Wednesday, I introduced the different parts of the incubator and explained why each one is important to the development of the chicken embryo. The cherubs were fascinated and enjoyed illustrating the incubator in their Chick journals! They cannot wait for the eggs to arrive!
Enjoy your weekends!