Dressing for the Weather
It is nice to have our playground drier than it was just over a week ago. Blacktop recess out in the front of the building was just not as much fun, though it was much drier than than the alternative! There is still a lot of snow out there, but it's easy for students to avoid it--if they so choose. Please continue to send your child with snow pants, winter coat, hat, mittens, and boots until after spring break. Let's hope that we won't need those things after that! Children who play to play in the snow or in the patches of wet ground on the playground MUST wear their full snow gear outside. It's no fun to sit inside with wet socks, shoes, and pants. Please remind your child about your expectations regarding proper clothing for outdoors. They know mine. :-)
Color Week!
It was great to see a rainbow of colors in our clothing throughout last week. Thanks to all who helped their children join in the fun! I think most children are much stronger in reading the color words, which are part of our sight word collection. We did many activities throughout the week for practice. The books Birds, by Kevin Henkes, Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See, by Bill Martin Jr., and Pete the Cat, I Love My White Shoes by Eric Litwin, were class favorites for thinking about color words. We are going to read one of my favorites this week: The Day the Crayons Quit. I'll post about that when we read it, as we'll do a fun follow-up writing activity. We also enjoyed a Color Robot Video and an all-time class favorite dance-along song:
Awesome Rainbows. These are too good not to share! :-)
Students also painted rainbows, made a Pete the Cat color word book, watched/listened to several color word related books online, practiced sight words using two rainbow writing methods (one is pictured below), and did a rainbow themed bird painting project with our reading buddies in Miss Knue's class. I have A LOT more up my sleeve for this theme, so our Color Week is really going to be a Color Week-and-a-Half. :-) Up next--a fun color poem and a super cool science experiment (or two or three)!
One of my personal favorite parts of the week was going to Mr. Kay's 3rd/4th grade class to visit their arcade. Amazing! Students created arcade/carnival games with found materials as a culmination to their study of Forces and Motion. It was a perfect connection to our class' current study of Pushes and Pulls. My wheels are turning (no pun intended) and I am strongly considering doing some project-based learning after vacation. I have had great success with this mode of learning in the past with 1st graders and I could see a spark light up in they eyes of many of our students as they visited the projects made by the 3rd/4th graders. I kept asking them, do you think you could make something like this? Most of them were very certain they could--and I agree. I'm thinking along the lines of ramps, roller coasters, race tracks, mazes, etc. to fit with our pushes/pulls theme. Stay tuned!
We have officially ended one math unit and are about to start our first geometry-focused math unit--I'm so excited, as geometry is decidedly one of my FAVORITE parts of math! It was what hooked me into mathematics as being an interesting subject when I was in school. Of course, we'll continue to explore and review other math concepts as move into the new unit, and previously learned skills will be integrated into new learning. We will study 2-D and 3-D shapes. Here is the unit summary as provided by our published math curriculum, Investigations:
Make a Shape, Build a Block: 2-D and 3-D Geometry Students explore geometry using a variety of materials, including Geoblocks, pattern blocks, interlocking cubes and geoboards. They describe, sort, and compose and decompose two- and three-dimensional shapes. They think about shapes in their environment and match two-dimensional shapes to threedimensional objects.
We will officially begin this new unit tomorrow!
Last week, we explored composing and decomposing numbers. Students used two-color chips to show ways to make 5 (i.e. 4 yellow and 1 red is 5 chips total; 2 yellow and 3 red is 5 chips total), they selected a number from 4-10 to "decompose" for the activity "Toss the Chips," and we worked on making arrangements of 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 color tiles. We worked on our visualization/memory skills when we played "Make My Design." In this game, a student makes an arrangement with a predetermined number of color tiles. The design (arrangement) is hidden behind a file folder so the partner cannot see it. The child then lifts the folder to show his/her partner. The partner has to try to recreate the design after seeing it for only 5-10 seconds. This game is a perfect example of some of the many ways we work to improve working memory in kindergarten. In case you missed it, here's a short article about working memory and why strengthening it matters.
Students are thinking of creative ways to use our iPads. Here, a student has decided she wants to see how her letter formation looks. She asked me to take a video, so I did. Then another student asked for some handwriting/letter formation analysis. I love it when students think of ways to use technology. Coming this week--we will use the app Pic Collage to document our findings as we go on a shape hunt in our classroom. We will share them after they are finished...possibly on a brand new blog where STUDENTS will do the posting. Did you know we use our iPads daily, multiple times?! Watch for details in later posts.