Week of September 8th

Our first full week of school was packed with visits from other teachers, literacy and math, explore time, Expressive Arts fun, singing and brain breaks, read alouds, and all around kindergarten fun!

Mrs. Brady joined us for a literacy activity, with a focus on color words.

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The children practiced writing color words and coloring leaves in to match.

This is Number Corner, which is part of the math curriculum. It is a rich and fun academic block where we talk about the days of the week and the months of the year. There are many math skills embedded in this part of our day such as shapes, patterns, ten-frames, math language, number facts, number sense and cardinality, etc.

We keep track of data such as how many days we have been in school, and collection of objects for counting, estimating and graphing. The children have also been doing a lot of 'finger flashing' with their math hands. I will say a number and they will show me different ways to make the amount with their fingers.

This month we are talking a lot about shapes and their attributes. We also came up with lists of shapes we see in our world.

My kindergarten mathematicians practiced working with five-frames and unifex cubes. I flashed at five-frame and the children were prompted to create the same quantity with unifex cubes on five-frame counting mats.

This week we learned some poems to help us learn how to write numbers. The poems are pretty catchy and this would be great to practice at home as well :)

We started FUNdations this week, which is a literacy program. It also provides writing instruction. This is a picture of the Writing Grid. It helps with orientation while children are learning how to properly compose letters.

The students practiced writing 't's' on white board writing grids.

We talked about how to sit in a position that fosters writing, "bellies up" to the table, feet on the floor, both hands working--one hand is the writer, one is the helper hand.

We also talked about writing grips. The card in the middle is called a large sound card. There is one for each letter of the alphabet. The picture is the 'key work' and is a visual prompt to help children recall the first sound in the word that matches the sound of the letter.

I read this Eric Carle classic to the children with a focus on color words, to extend Mrs. Brady's earlier lesson.

I also added these three sight words (high frequency words that we can read and write quickly) to the word wall. They are repeated throughout the book.

Next, the students created their own books to add to their book baskets. Each child has a book basket and they will add books to it throughout the year. 

They were instructed to read the color words on the page and color the animal in accordingly. Finally, they went back through the book to highlight the words, I, see, a. 

You Skills...."it's all about  YOU". Mrs. Nelson joined us for You Skills for the first time this week.

"I'm focused, I'm ready, I'm here for You Skills."

Focused and ready to learn :)

Mrs. Nelson introduced Luke...

...and Sam. They are her faithful YOU Skills assistants and help convey the important social and community building lessons we learn in YOU Skills.

We practiced 'whole body listening', an important kindergarten skill. The children learned that it takes every part of our bodies to be really ready to listen...

...our eyes, ears, feet, hands, mouths, brains, hearts. Our whole self needs to be alert and tuned in.

I introduced the 123 Work Board station. There are several choices within a Work Board station. For right now, all the 123 choices involve exploring pattern blocks.

Super big pattern blocks in the 123 station.

Working with paper pattern blocks to create pattern block designs to take home.

We are working hard to build a safe, respectful, fun math learning community. One of the first steps is to view ourselves and classmates as 'mathematicians'. We had a discussion about what mathematicians do---within just a few minutes children were referring to themselves as 'mathematicians'.

We worked with ten-frames in this math block. I passed out ten-frames 0-10 and had the children figure out how to put them in order from least to greatest.

The children have been enjoying the math game, Spill Five Beans. The drop five beans and lay them on a five-frame; then they record the amount of red beans they spilled. The core idea is for children to explore the various combinations of 5.

Kindergarten mathematicians!