Week of October 6th

On Monday I read "The Rainbow Fish", by Marcus Pfister, We had a lovely conversation about sharing and how it is a classroom expectation to share materials. Everyone feels happy when we work in a space where we share. This is one way of taking care of each other. The children painted their own fish, and everyone got one very special shiny scale as a reminder of our promise to share.

The fish are so colorful and cheerful.

Pattern work in the 123 Work Board station.

Morning messages are rich with literacy (and math). On this day, children filled in missing sigh words, learned the word "you", circled all the punctuation marks, and counted up the total words in the message. They also talked about what was the same and different about the two five frames. 

Four Winds this month was another lesson about ecosystems. Wiggle and Woggle, the worms, talking about soil, roots,  and decomposers We learned that soil is made of water, air, minerals, and organic matter. Not only this, but we were interested to learn that soil is actually an ecosystem!

Mole is a worm predator!

Taking a close look at worms, which are integral in the health of soil!

Some brave students even held the worms!

Kindergarten scientists drew a picture of the worms.

We ventured outside to dig in the dirt to look for worms and other evidence of an ecosystem. 

We also pulled up some weeds to examine the soild around the roots.

This week was especially exciting because we had our first class in the computer lab. Mr. Bianchi talked us through computer work stations and gave an overview of how to use the computers. It will take lots of practice, but in a few weeks children will start to gain independence in logging on and off, and navigating the mouse to choose a kindergarten appropriate computer choice.

ABCya.com was a bit hit for the first lesson :)

Later in the week children started to use the computers inside our classroom. Computers will now be a Work Board station.

We dove into Writer's Workshop this week. Above are the core ideas of the first lesson. The main goal is to establish a 'safe', fun and exciting writing culture. The big idea is that we are all writers!

The group loves this block if time. They have taken their work very seriously and are extremely proud to share with each other!

Writer's Workshop

Writer's Worlshop

We have been reading lots of informational books about pumpkins.

As a result, we've started to keep track of pumpkin vocabulary. The children listen as I read, and raise their hands when they hear a word specific and important to the topic of pumpkins.

The list grew with each book we read!

Working with ten-frames in math to compose combinations of various amounts.

Here are the Big ideas of writers workshop from this week, all setting the tone for a positive and productive kindergarten writing culture.

Here is a core math idea from a new game called "Count and Compare".

Children draw a card from a deck, decide which number is greater or less than (or equal to). Then they spin to decide who keeps the cards.

They play until the deck runs out, then tally up how many cards they each have. The final spin decides if the player with the greater or lesser amount wins. This game encourages practice using ten frames, number recognition, and using math language of greater than, less than, and equal to--all an important part pf number sense concepts.

New pattern activities in 123.

Mrs. Nelson joined us for You SKills this week for a lesson on how to handle problems in school. She introduced the language of 'reporting to a teacher' and 'working it out with a friend'. We talked about the difference between the two, and what situations would warrant reporting something to a teacher.  The hope is to foster independence and confidence in children so that they can try to problem solve together and fix minor issues without immediately involving a teacher.

We enjoyed another fun week in kindergarten. Stay tuned for highlights of our upcoming week together!