This week, the cherubs strove to finish their how-to books. The finished products are nothing short of phenomenal! I am very impressed with their ideas and how they incorporated so many mentor-text skills into their personal writing.
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.
To go along with the theme of planting, we read Jack and the Beanstalk, as retold by Steven Kellogg. Next, the students created individual castles that were attached to a wooden skewer and inserted into their planters. Finally, after making “mini-me’s” and connecting them to the skewer, the cherubs made their very own “Jack and the Beanstalk”! The boys and girls loved moving their mini-me’s up and down the skewer, acting as if they were climbing the beanstalk! Additionally, on Friday, the Kindergartners did some perspective taking and had to imagine what they would do if they had a magic bean like Jack. They came up with some great ideas! Very cute!
Room #7 continues to recognize common word patterns. This recognition helps the children learn about writing words and solving new words as they read. As the cherubs 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 t-ake, b-ake. The pattern we’ve been studying is the –ake ending in words. The boys and girls are realizing that some words have a vowel and a silent e at the end, and that the vowel sound is usually the name of the vowel.
The kiddos certainly had fun working on their surprise projects for Mother’s Day. We hope you appreciated their hard work and inventive thinking and that you thoroughly enjoyed your special day.
Have a fun-filled weekend!