Back To It!

We are getting right back to it in Kindergarten this week!  Take a look:

Number Scrolling:  Most students are feeling comfortable writing through teen numbers!

Building shapes with geoboards!

We have been working hard on understanding the concept of addition.  We are telling different types of number stories where we take two parts and put them together.  We also learned the plus + symbol and the equals = symbol, so that we can write number sentences to match our stories!  I encourage you to try this at home to have your child should you what he/she can do! :)

During Math Work Stations, we have been using dominos to help us write and solve number sentences in Domino Addition!

This week, I also introduced Attribute Blocks.  These blocks vary is size, shape, color and thickness.  So we discussed and learned these attributes and sorted the blocks by different attributes.  Thickness is a new property for many Ks, so we learned special math terms thick and thin.

Ms. Moray taught us a new game called "My Shape is on the Table."  We laid out all of the blocks and Ms. Moray chose a mystery block.  Our Ks had to ask her questions about the attributes of the blocks in order to figure out which one she chose.  Here are some questions we asked:

Is it a square?  (shape)

Is it yellow? (color)

Is it thick? (thickness)

Is it large? (size)

Through our questions, we were able to take shapes off the table until the mystery block remained.

It was a fun way to practice our attributes!

In Math Work Stations, we are continuing to work on our sense of numbers.  In the Teen Frame game,  each partner spins a number and builds it on a teen frame.  This week, we used a ten strip to lay out a ten and then added how many more we needed to make the teen number.  This really helps to reinforce the idea of tens and ones in teen numbers.  Then we write it on our board and compare with our partner.

Rhyme is something we continue to work on throughout the whole school year, as a part of phonological awareness.  We are getting really good at matching rhymes, so this week we played a game that helps us produce rhymes.  We pretended that magical bunnies where traveling on a spaceship to the moon, but they could only take with them things that rhymed.  We started with a word like cat and passed the beanbag around the circle to share other words they could take (bat, fat, sat, mat, flat).  We also practiced with dog, cake, and pan.

Then we drew our own:

chair, bear, hair, care, air, lair

tree, bee, he, she, me, three

cake, lake, cupcake, rake, make, bake

Generating a list of rhyming words is a more difficult task for most Ks.  This would be a good skill to practice at home!  Soon, we will begin to work with word families, which will also support this skill.

Winter Gear

Snow boots, snow pants, hats & gloves, OH MY!

With the cold and the snow that comes in January (usually!), our Ks have a lot of winter gear to manage.  Your child should be bringing all of these things each day, because we do go outside for recess.  Snow boots are especially important so that feet don't get wet and cold.

Here are a couple tips to help your child manage all this;

1.  Get one of those re-usable grocery bags for your child to put the gear in.  Most of the time, everything doesn't fit in a backpack and our coat racks provide very limited space.  These bags can more easily be hung on the rack.

2.  Keep an extra pair of socks in your child's backpack in case of wet feet!

3.  Keep a regular plastic grocery bag with your child's things as well, for wet stuff to be placed in.

4.  Make sure your child has a hat and gloves/mittens every day!  Sometimes they tend to argue that they don't need them but they do! :)

Supplies

It's a new year and we are in need of some new supplies.

If you can donate any of the following, it would be greatly appreciated.

* Clorox wipes!!!

* small Ziploc baggies

* tissues

* Playdoh

* colored pencils

* snacks (Goldfish crackers, pretzels, crackers)

NWEA:  Our next test session is Wednesday, so please do your best to have your child in school that day.