Dot DayOn September 15th it was International Dot Day. In celebration of Dot Day, we read the book The Dot by Peter Reynolds. This day was started because of this book. We learned and thought about how the book taught us to be brave, try, never give up and most of all to help someone else. After reading the book each child created their own unique dot with their fifth grade buddy and thought about how they help at home or at school. Each dot now has a message that the fifth or fourth grade buddy wrote for their kindergarten that tells how they are helpful! We will continue to think about and work on being helpful to others. The dots are hanging throughout the building. We read the "The Dot" online on Tumble Books. You can get to Tumble Books by going to the library web page. It is on the the right hand side of the screen a little ways down the page.
Inventory BagsAccurately counting and representing How Many? is an important math skill. We had a lot of fun with Inventory Bags! We counted, doubled checked to make sure we were accurate and then recorded how many items were in the bag. We had to double check our representations too! We are working on showing How Many? in more than one way. This is an activity that you could set up for your child at home. Grab some brown paper lunch bags and fill them with items from around the house: spoons, uncooked pasta, wrapped candy, Legos, crayons, ... Give your son or daughter blank paper and they can record How Many? The kids also recorded the item in the bag by writing the word. They were BRAVE writers and recorded the words "Just Like a Kindergartner!" Learning about TigersWe have been learning a lot of interesting facts about tigers as we prepare for the annual Glacier Ridge Tiger Trot. Together, we wrote about some of the things we learned through a practice called interactive writing. During interactive writing, the students use white boards and dry erase markers to write words in our message. We are brave and give words a try. We say the words slowly and listen for the sounds. This a time for the students to work on developing their letter/sound connection as well as practice letter formation and high frequency words. We take turns coming to the easel to add the words to our message. We took our work public by hanging our writing and our art work in the hallway. We hope everyone will stop to read about why tigers need our help and to learn some interesting facts about tigers.
Thinking about 5In kindergarten we will be working to develop a strong sense of number. Number Sense refers to a student's flexible thinking about numbers. We want the kids to know the parts that make up a given number and to be able to use that knowledge to solve problems. Currently, we are not attaching number sentences or symbols to our work. We started thinking about 5 by doing a simple activity in which the students used 5 red and yellow counters. The counters are red on one side and yellow on the other. The students dropped the chips on the table and then recorded the way they landed. They did this 8 different times. As a class, we looked at our recordings and organized them into groups. After organizing all the recordings, we talked about what we noticed. As we continue to work with 5 and later other numbers, we will refer back to this work. The more experiences the students have with this type of work, and over time, they will come to understand that 5 can be represented in several different ways and this will support them as they think about number and solve problems. Visiting the Kindergarten TreeThis week we visited The Kindergarten Tree for the first time. After reading the story The Busy Tree, and talking about the importance of trees, we took a close-up look at the beautiful tree in front of our school. Each child made a drawing of the tree. We talked about making our drawing match what we saw. We will visit our tree often during the school year and watch how it changes. Letter BooksIt was a lot of work, but the children have finished their work on their personal letter book! We looked at and read many different alphabet books. Each child found pictures of things that start with the same letter as their first name using Pixie and with support from alphabet books. The pictures were printed, the students cut them out and then added the label for each picture. Soon (when teachers get everything laminated, cut out and made into booklets) we will have a lot of new books to help us think about letters and sounds. :0
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AuthorWe are thrilled to be in Kindergarten working, playing and learning alongside your child. Check the blog to see what we have been up to in Kindergarten! Archives
December 2016
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