A Look At Math

A while back I mentioned in the newsletter that I wanted to post some math pictures to give a sense of the activity and the thinking that's been happening during our recent sessions. Our current unit has us working with growing patterns, predictions, and counting in groups.  Take a look at two charts we made that tell similar information.

The second chart got erased a bit before the photo BUT, you can see that the children are working on understanding the relationships of wheels to bikes- for every bike there are two wheels. 

Below you can see two recent math games in action- Domino Parking Lot which is played independently, and Count and Collect which is played in partners.  These games are fantastic ways to work on the concept of many ways to make a number.  A domino displaying 10 could show 4 and 6, or 5 and 5.  Similarly, to land your chip on 20, it may take four times of rolling a 5 or many more times if rolling smaller numbers.

Working Around the Glitches

It's been a while since I posted simply because I encountered a problem with all my photos turning sideways when I transferred them from email.  Well, I'm back!  And I will do my best to catch you up.  Soon after we returned from break we found ourselves feeling "winter-y" but with no snow on the ground.  No problem I thought, let's read a classic- Lois Ehlert's Snowballs.  In this book Ehlert, being the amazing illustrator that she is, collages together snow people with natural and found materials.  We took to the playground to collect and then added to our collection with items from the craft shelves.  The next day we created our "snow creatures" and the day after that we named them and wrote about what materials we used. Finally, we had a ton a fun playing a guessing game in the hallway as I looked at the display, read the clues that each child wrote, and then the children guessed which snowman/woman/dog/rockstar etc. was which!  Have a look.

So Much to Celebrate!

Happy New Year and welcome back to this blog in 2019! Before we left school for the break we had two fantastic events in our classroom.  The first was our Story Celebration at which several adult guests came to our room  to listen to the children read their stories.  Akash from School's Out, Ms. Amblo (guidance), Nurse Barry, Ms. Collaro (Literacy Coach), Lobsang (custodian) and of course Mrs. Hayden and Mrs. Knox who played a key role in each student writing a story, were all present to appreciate the hard work of being an author/illustrator.  Have a look... and I apologize for the photo orientation!

On Friday we had our Winter Workshop!  Many parents were on hand to help create some gifts to enhance the spirit of giving.

Better luck in the tech department for me in 2019!

Taking a Pause

The past few posts have been largely about our work in Literacy and Math.  I'm taking a minute here to show you some other aspects to our learning.  We take some time everyday to move our bodies and practice focusing our minds. The children are learning how important it is to be able to focus on one thing at a time- that's being mindful!  We often say- "when you are walking in the hall, just walk" or "when you are listening to directions, just listen". This past week we did a mindfulness activity called "Pass the Cup" where we literally passed a cup full of water around the rug so each child was responsible for handing it to and receiving it from someone else.  It took focusing on just that one thing!  Below you can see us doing some Mindful Movement with  leadership by Jamie from the Cosmic Kids website. A fun thing you can try at home with your Kindergartner.

Moving Right Along

This post got its title because it's really a continuation, or "next steps" to last week's post.  If you've been following along here or in the newsletter you know that our hope was that after reading so many "old favorite" storybooks, we would learn some tips and tricks for writing our own stories.  This past week be begin making  sketches in little notebooks of possible ideas for true stories.  You can take a look.  Also we enjoyed a second round of Math Menu- our three session rotation in which the children set the pace and monitor their completion of activities.  Have a look at floor puzzles for counting and number recognition, the teen number card game and problem solving with Mrs. Lamphier- 3 of the choices from this rotation.

And, on Friday afternoon we had lots of fun playing the Dreidel game with our Big Buddies.  We are always busy!

Working Harder to Get Smarter

This week the children made great strides in literacy and math.  We're in an exciting new unit in literacy where our reading focus and writing focus are intersecting.  Over the next few weeks as we read "old favorite" stories (the kind that are so good you want to read them again and again until you know them by heart), we will work up to writing our own true stories! The children are learning about story elements such as characters, setting, plot and dialogue.  Below you will see pictures from lessons led by both Ann Knox, Literacy Teacher and Janet Hayden, ELL teacher highlighting the stories Harry the Dirty Dog and The Three Billy Goats Gruff .
The children made tri-fold story boards to remember the beginning, middle and end of Harry... and popsicle stick puppets and block bridges to dramatize The Three Billy Goats...
In math the children are applying their addition and subtraction skills to story problems! Being able to listen to a scenario, understand the question and use math to solve it is a great skill!

All in!

This past week was cut short by the snow and it feels like a long time until we'll be back in the classroom.  I don't think it will be hard to get our momentum back though, because the children have been "all in" when it comes to learning.  Have a look at some highlights.  Below you will see two students teaming up to make a number poster- they are representing 11 in three different ways.  You can also see partners reading their Gratitude and Happiness books to one another.  Have a look at one friend enjoying the old fashioned themed dramatic play set up, another friend feeling proud about her Native American inspired symbolic story, and finally some of our finished and nearly finished weavings.  A week well spent!