It has been so great being able to meet with each of you and chat about your child’s successes! Thank you for your time and efforts in continuing to support our Kindergarten family! Room #7 is full of busy bees! The kiddos have been hard at work; keep reading to see some of the highlights!
On Friday morning, the boys and girls went on their first Big Backyard walk to look for signs of fall. They were awesome scientists and found so much: red maple leaves, brown oak leaves, berries, evergreen trees, and even some special discoveries!! It was an eventful and fun afternoon. Thank you very much to all the volunteers who were able to come in and lead the walk. It is SO appreciated!
As it is a new month, the kids created gorgeous, one-of-a-kind self-portraits using oil pastels. As usual, they concentrated on including all the features of their faces into their pictures. Many even included extra details by adding intricate and festive designs to their shirts. Come on by Room #7 to sneak a peek at the cherubs’ handiwork!
During Writer’s Workshop this week, the boys and girls were introduced to a new writing tool – spaceman! We have been talking informally about the importance of spaces in between words and why they are necessary. This is a very difficult concept to grasp, especially when most students at this age are just beginning to understand that words are made up of multiple sounds. It is also a new experience for them to realize that several words make up a single sentence with spaces in between those words. In order to help the kiddos conceptualize and use spaces between the words, we worked on writing a story together using this fun and engaging new tool. Students were also informed that if they preferred, they could just use their fingers! Happy writing, boys and girls!
We have also been talking about syllables in class! Wowza! Room #7 discussed how every word is made up of parts, or syllables. We figured out how we can discover how many syllables a word has by putting our hands underneath our chins to see how many times our chins move when we say the word. Next, we did a picture sort to see if the word had one, two, or three syllables! The kids did a fantastic job with this! We will continue our syllable finding with poems we read, morning message, and our Alphafriend songs! It’s a great game to play at home as well!
Math stations:
- Grab a Handful - Given a bag of cubes, the students grabbed a handful. They then counted how many they acquired and finally, wrote down the corresponding number! I put in more cubes this week so that the students received practice counting larger numbers!
- Build a Staircase (to 9!) - This week, this fan favorite got even trickier!! Not only did the kiddos use number dice to increase their number recognition but also had to build the staircase to 9! They had to choose which dice to use (1-6 or 4-9) dependent on what they needed in their staircase. Working with a partner, the boys and girls of Room #7 took turns rolling a die. They then stacked cubes together to represent that number. Once the partners finished building their staircases (1-9), they took turns rolling the die to disassemble them!!
- Pattern Block Puzzles – At this station, the students had the opportunity to explore relationships among shapes and determine how many ways the shapes could be arranged in a specific space. Using pattern blocks, the children filled in a particular puzzle shape in different ways and recorded the number of blocks used each time! Everyone became very creative with this station – definitely a fan favorite!
- Sorting Shapes – Let’s sort shapes! Students sorted and resorted shapes in a variety of ways depending on which attributes they were considering. Then, they explained why particular shapes belonged together! The mathematicians got very creative at this station!
- Great Monster Race - This is an independent activity with a Halloween twist! Here, students had to roll dice and trace the number their dice had landed on. The students continued rolling and tracing until a particular spooky image won (e.g., a ghost, a haunted house, a witch, etc.)!
- Give the Next Number – We are beginning to talk about one more and one less. At this center, I laid down a number card. Students then had to think what number comes next! It was a great way to go over teen numbers as well as one more!
This week, we talked A LOT about teen numbers, both how you form them as well as what they mean (e.g., 11 is 10 + 1). This will take a lot of practice, but once the skill is cemented, students will have a more solid number sense of what constitutes a number. It can often be tricky to remember which number comes first in the teens. In order to help the students recall how these numbers are formed, we listened to and sang a new song. Go to the following link to hear the fun rap! You can even sing it at home!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1W5aYi3lkho&safe=active
Afterwards, partners worked together to order numbers one through twenty, and they even noticed some patterns that popped up when seeing them in a line!
We are finishing up our first unit in Readers Workshop! The readers in Room #7 have worked very hard to read their storybooks (fiction) and learn about the world books (nonfiction). They have discovered many strategies to help themselves "read" the words and retell the stories, but most importantly, they LOVE reading! On Friday, the entire Kindergarten celebrated by parading into the office and showing off their favorite books, one in each genre. Everyone was so proud, and they deserved to be! Next up, the kiddos will discover the super readers they have within themselves! I can't wait to begin!
We had a very busy and fun week! Enjoy your weekends!