Up to No Good & 100 Ways to Love Kindergarten

This week we read books about a character who is always getting into trouble - Curious George.  As a culminating activity, the students wrote about a time they got into trouble. One of our new learning targets is adding on to a sentence. So you will notice that our sentences are either getting longer, or we are writing more than one sentence. Tommy's entry (above) is one of my favorites of all time.  

This child was a little smug about it. 

"I punched my girlfriend at church." Knowing who wrote this, I'm gonna guess it was more of a "love tap."

Each day, after reading about one of George's adventures, we asked and answered the same three questions: WHERE did he go? WHAT trouble did he get into? HOW did he make it all better?

The students wrote a journal entry to go along with some of George's experiences. They wrote about their favorite kind of pizza and their favorite animal at the zoo. 

The students got to play with ice cream just like George did in one of the stories in the number work center. The skill they practiced is called "subitizing." I've taught kindergarten eight years and I just learned the word this week.  It means to "perceive the number of a group of items at a glance and without counting."

The students played with play-dough in the fine motor center (instead of pizza dough like George) to spell super e words (such as hide, bake, cube, mole, etc). I forgot to get a picture of it, though. Womp, womp.

In the word work center, they worked more with super e words. They matched up onset and rime puzzles to create the long vowel words. Onset is the beginning letter, rime is the rest of the word. For example, in the word 'wave,' the letter w is the onset, -ave- is the rime. 

 

To help the students remember all about super e, we've watched a couple of music videos. We talked about how super e has other names such as silent e and magic e. Here are the videos that explain all about it. 

In math, we've been working on subtraction. The kids got to learn it a really fun way on Fun Friday. They went bowling!

 

 Your child can play this game at home too. 

The kids also made an art project on Fun Friday. They made their own super es!

Once they assembled it, I spun two spinners on the Smartboard. One spinner had onsets, the other had rimes. We combined them to see if we'd made a real word. If we had, they wrote it on Super E's cape. If not, we wrote it in the "Nonsense Word" list and tried again.

 

Now for the previous week..........

We started the 100th week off with a bang.  On Monday, the students had the chance to dress up like their 100 year old self. Not many were up to the challenge. But those who were looked pretty cute!

And of course the teachers got in on the action.

Students came in under a special 100 day banner......

to find all sorts of special 100-themed learning activities. 

First, we read the "Ms. Bindergarten Gets Ready for the 100th Day of Kindergarten" and the students talked about the 100 things they brought to school - just like the students from the book. 

And they made colorful crowns, with a band of the tens numbers up to 100.

For inside recess, we hopped 100 times down the hallway. 

They also took turns putting 100 pennies into the money machine- which was our first introduction to our unit on coins. 

Finally they got to play/learn in centers.  In the number work center, they had to build a 100 grid. 

They raced to 100 in math games using fun game pieces (Elsa and Mike Wazowski).

For the writing center, they got to take a clipboard around and play "Write the Room." Their task was to write 100 words.  They got to finish it up on Fun Friday.

 

In place of puzzles, the students were given 100 Q-tips and were told to make whatever they wanted to out of them.  Each creation was as unique as the student who made it. 

But the favorite center of the week was the cup center.  Instead of Legos, trains, or soft blocks, the students built towers out of 100 Red Solo cups.  There was a regular-sized set and a mini set.

The students wrote in their journals everyday for 100 week.  The topics were

What did you bring for the hundredth day?

What would you want 100 of?

What would you NOT want 100 of?

What have you learned in 100 days of school?

They had some great responses. 

I want 100 Frozen toys.

I learned how to read.

I do not want 100 snakes.
I learned how to spell.