Room #7 families: Don’t forget! The class is presenting at All School Meeting next Friday, the 28th!
We began discussing the importance of employing a standard measurement tool in order to determine an object’s length. After reading How Big is Your Foot?, the students figured out why it is necessary to utilize a ruler as opposed to an arbitrary object. To emphasize this point, we traced the students’ feet and used them as tools to measure objects around the classroom. The kiddos soon discovered that using one’s foot as a measurement device was not consistent because everyone’s feet are different sizes. Keep reading to discover what other math concepts we honed in on this week!
Our measurement and addition/subtraction unit is coming to a close! Stay tuned for more information on our next unit: think 3-D shapes!
· Comparing Cube Train – After getting a cube train of 10 cubes, students explored the classroom to find four items that were shorter than the train and four items that were longer than the train. The cherubs certainly put their thinking caps on for this one!
· Part-Whole Bingo – Now that the bunk bed and apple box investigations have come to a close, a new game, Part-Whole Bingo, was introduced to allow children to continue to explore arrangements and equivalence. This game promotes decomposing and composing numbers by letting the cherubs cover equivalent arrangements, not just a match to the roll of the number cubes. Students paired up and rolled 2 dice. The roll of the two number cubes combined determined the number of cubes that each player could place on the board. For example, if one player rolled a 5 and a 2, the child took seven cubes and placed them on his or her board. That player decided independently where to put the cubes. He/she could have covered all seven on the 7 track OR covered the 5 and 2 tracks. The objective was to eventually cover the entire board! Lots of flexible thinking in this game!
· Attribute Spinner – thickness and color – We have been talking a lot about attribute blocks over the last three weeks in Room #7. There are so many attributes (or characteristics) one can sort by: color, shape, size, thickness, number of sides, etc. Using 2 different spinners, one for thickness and one for color, students spun and then had to find the corresponding shape. This is a great way for kiddos to use their math vocabulary and practice identifying the various attributes!
· Dr. Seuss (1 More/1 Less) – Using a double dice and regular 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 2 double dice! Holy moly!
· A Ten Shape and More: Subtraction – At this tricky new station, each child took a ten frame and one other shape and wrote the total number of cubes needed to fill both shapes (always a teen number). Next, the kids rolled number cubes to determine how many Unifix cubes to take away and finally, recorded the corresponding number sentence. This is a multi-step process that required a lot of brain power to complete!
· Guess My Number – At this center, Mrs. Bellaire described a number (e.g., this number is 2 less than 14), and the kiddos wrote the corresponding number on white boards.
· Spill the Beans – As another follow up to Apple Boxes, the cherubs were each given a container full of double-sided Bingo markers. After shaking their container and dumping out its contents and sorting by color, the kiddos recorded how many of each color they had. Next, they wrote a corresponding number sentence! They remembered not to repeat the same combinations. Way to go, boys and girls!
In Room #7, we’re beginning to connect words to their meaning. As the children learn more words, they’ll want to use their expanding vocabulary in their writing. We’ve worked with common concept words that name colors and are now exploring numbers. The cherubs are learning that numbers have names that they can read and write, and they’re beginning to recognize these words in texts.
The class also continues to recognize common word patterns. This recognition helps them learn about writing words they already know and solving new words as they read. As the children break down words into patterns or parts, they can easily hear the break between the first part of a word and the rest of the word, such as h-and, b-and. This week we have been studying the pattern that belongs in the –and family! Everyone loves writing words that have circle words hidden inside them!
Room #7 is embarking on a new Social Studies unit - Community Helpers! On Monday, the class and I talked about the features that encompass a community, and we discussed all the communities in which we are a member (e.g., town, Hastings, Room #7, sports teams, family, etc.). Next, the kiddos brainstormed all the different community helper jobs that exist at Hastings; and oh what a list they created! Then, we took a lovely walk around the Hastings community, taking pictures of all the community helpers we found. The boys and girls absolutely loved this activity! When we got back to the classroom, I informed the children of the next part of this new unit! Each Kindergarten classroom will interview three of the community helpers in our school! Our class will interview: Ms. Salvucci, an office community helper, Ms. Breslin, the crossing guard, and Mrs. Knight, the assistant principal! Next week, the kids will split into groups, brainstorm questions, and then interview! The final product will be posters displaying all that they learned! How fun and exciting!
This is our last week of “How-to” stories. In order to celebrate all of their very hard, meticulous work, the Kindergartners shared their efforts with other Kindergartners! Each Kindergarten class split into thirds, and each group visited a different K classroom. From there, the cherubs read their story to their friends! So much excitement! Up next is the writing aspect of our Mo Willems author study. Yay!
I’m hoping for some more lamb days this weekend! Enjoy!