counting opportunities

Our morning meeting and academic choice offer additional opportunities for the children to develop their math skills, from identifying larger numbers to counting and recording. Our newest find your match greeting during morning meeting is a math challenge. The mathematicians have to find two friends to match their puzzle piece; identifying the number, counting the amount, and reading the number name. Once they've found their match, they have to read the puzzle pieces from left to right.

All of the children embraced this challenge and successfully found their matches! For some, the challenge was counting how many in the picture, as they are working on developing their 1-to-1 correspondence. For others, the challenge was using their reading strategies to read the number name. Our find your match greetings are differentiated to meet the unique needs of the children. We continue to integrate rich counting and reading opportunities into our morning meetings!

 

 

How many beads?

Beading has been a favorite choice during our academic choice. When you bead in the Kindergarten classroom you take on the important job of counting how many beads you used and recording the amount on a small piece of paper. We then hang the beads in our math space, creating a chandelier- a colorful celebration of counting!

While the children are practicing important skills during this experience, the most powerful part is how they are taking initiative of their learning. When recording an amount, instead of asking how to write a number, they go to the 100's chart and find the number they are trying to record. They bring the number card back to the table, record the number, and then return the card to our 100's chart. This is one example of an interactive classroom environment; an environment that supports and encourages students to be independent.

 

 

over and under the snow

 

As part of our work learning about animal habitats, we have been reading nonfiction books about animals living over and under the snow. On Friday, the scientists used pictures and labels to show cozy underground burrows and nests in trees above the snowy ground. Notice the detail in the burrows- a place for a bunny to use the bathroom ("p" stands for "poop") and a place to eat ("f" stands for "food").

Our work and learning about animal habitats in winter will transition into looking for signs of animals in winter and opportunities to search for and record animal tracks in the snow!

 

 

 

how-to write a sentence

Following our extended (and ongoing) work telling, planning, and representing true stories, the children have been learning about and writing sentences. We have talked about what makes writing easy to read and what is important to remember when writing a sentence. This teaching has supported children at different places, for the child writing words, it is important for them to ensure they have spaces between the words. For the child writing lengthy sentences, we've talked about punctuation at the end and how to decide what kind of punctuation to use.

Some of the developing writers are applying these skills and their growing knowledge independently during our writing workshop. For other writers, they are working on using all that they know to stretch out and write words. As I read their writing, it is always amazing how a community writers can be so diverse.

As part of our sentence work, we built sentences this week. Using a sentence strip we pointed to and read the words, cut out the words, organized the words, and reread the sentence checking for accuracy. This work provides another way for the children to demonstrate their learning. The writers had to follow the directions, point and read the sentence strip before cutting and building, recognize new and familiar sight words, recognize words in the at family and words that rhyme, carefully cut out words without cutting off any letters, reread their sentence, and use an illustration to represent their sentence. Some of the writers chose the challenge; a mixed up sentence that they had to organize on their own!

Building sentences is now a new choice during Academic Choice, ensuring children have opportunities to show what they know about conventional writing in a variety of ways- writers and literary artists can write sentences and BUILD sentences!

Sentences have. . .

An uppercase letter at the beginning.
Punctuation at the end.
Spaces between words!

 

 

 

 

building independence

In our classroom the children have copies of a sight word library in their writing folders, access to a large sight word library, and differentiated libraries in their reading baskets. Continued teaching of how to use these tools supports all of the children in being independent learners. In the Kindergarten classroom it is important to remind and reteach, inviting children to explain to their peers how to use tools and strategies! We have been playing "find the word..." with our sight word libraries and using our large library to fill in the missing sight words in a class piece.

An important goal for all of the children is to be independent- to be problem solvers, access the tools we have in our environment, and use their developing strategies with confidence. It is essential to recognize and celebrate children's growing independence in all aspects of our learning and classroom engagement.

 

 

 

a continuation of learning about houses and homes. . .

The Kindergarteners have continued to extend their knowledge about houses, homes, and structures from around the world. We have connected our work to shelters found in the natural world, from animals living in the trees to animals living in burrows. The children's interest in shelters has grown as we've read more books about homes, animal habitats, communities from around the world, and shelters found over and under the snow. To extend our work and connect it to our community building, we have been working on constructing our own structure.

We were recently given a beautiful wooden tipi frame from a local family. I put the frame in our big building space and invited children to help construct the sides of the tipi using strips of fabric and pieces of rope. James helped to demonstrate his knot tying skills, encouraging his peers to practice tying knots.

This community experience has been a loved choice by all of the children. They are developing practical knot tying skills while using what they know about structures to construct the sides of our shelter- sturdy sides to ensure feelings of safety and comfort. We will continue to add on to our structure, using different kinds of rope and outdoor fabric.