Well, spring has sprung both inside and outside Room #7. We have officially begun our unit on planting, and the kids are pumped. The boys and girls and I have chatted a lot about the differences that are occurring outside due to the change in seasons. This week, the cherubs were able to sow their very own seeds! From beans and radishes, to marigolds and sunflowers, the children each received a few seeds to plant in their individual planter. Over the course of the coming weeks, part of the students’ daily routine will be to water their plants and watch them grow! Additionally, the kiddos will be recording their plants’ progress as well as noting in their Planting Journal what seedlings and plants need to thrive and grow. Very exciting times in Kindergarten!
We have been reading many books about plants, seeds, and flowers. In fact, we read The Tale of Peter Rabbit. Soon after, a special delivery letter arrived! Mr. McGregor, a character from the book, had written our class! Wowza! He asked the boys and girls a lot of important questions about gardening, plants, and how to take care of those plants. We decided to write a letter back to Mr. McGregor to answer his questions. The kiddos did an excellent job naming plant needs, environments where plants can flourish, and reasons why plants have roots! Way to go, Kindergarteners!
This week during Math, Room #7 continued their work with number combinations using a new context: apple boxes. Children investigated the number of unique combinations for five apples of two colors, green and red, and recorded the combinations for a grocer who is confused about how many arrangements there can be. In contrast to the bunk beds investigation in which children can easily imagine someone going up and down the ladder, now they must exchange. That is, instead of moving a counter to another group, the counter must be removed and replaced. This action is more difficult.
To reinforce this trickier skill, cherubs worked to discover the various possible arrangements, and then we explored their findings as a whole class. The unit ended with a Part-Whole Bingo game. This game will be played throughout the remainder of the year as a way for children to extend composing and decomposing strategies as they establish equivalence, for example representing 7 as 5 + 2 or as 3 + 4, or even as 2 + 2 + 2 + 1.
The kiddos of Room #7 used their prior knowledge from the Bunk Bed unit to help them understand this new Apple Box unit. They really did a great job grasping the importance of how many red and green apples they were getting, not how the apples were arranged!
What can you build with 100 cups? That was the challenge put forth to our Kindergartners on Thursday. In small groups, the cherubs worked diligently together to create various structures out of 100 cups. They had to problem solve, use trial and error, and listen to each other in order to build a structure that stayed up on its own without falling. The kiddos loved this activity and enjoyed the creative freedom they had to make each masterpiece their own.
Room #7 boys and girls are hard at work on their informational books. With their writing partner last week, they brainstormed five things about their topics. It was awesome listening to the partnerships work together and give each other fabulous, relevant ideas. Next, the writers began writing about their topic, taking their brainstorms and transforming them into descriptive sentences and illustrations. This week, the class and I talked about elaborating on those sentences. As a writer, it is one’s responsibility to anticipate the reader’s questions and to answer those questions within your text. This is tricky work! To model, the class and I read a peer’s text about bikes and wondered aloud what questions readers might have. The cherubs came up with some great wonderings themselves after listening to this specific informational text (e.g., Why do bikes have bells? What colors and types of bikes are there?), and thus, together we were able to further elaborate on the subject and include more details. The kiddos then went back to their own books and did the same! Way to go, Kindergartners!
Have a fun-filled weekend!