Opposites Week

These are the snowmen the AM and PM class have been
 'building" during calendar math in January. We weren't in school
enough days to finish them!

    This past week was more of a learning experience for parents than for the students. Quick, what do you do on a one hour delay? What do you do on a two hour delay? Now that we all know, lets hope we don't need to do it for the rest of the year!
    Although we did miss one day (in kindergarten), it was a full week of learning back in room 109.  Some of that learning was just remembering our routine and how we cooperate and participate while in the classroom. But we worked on academic content, too. Our main focus in math has been subtraction. We had a snowball fight in the Math Games center (I forgot to take a picture of it). We've been using a similar activity on the SmartBoard during calendar math to demonstrate subtraction and how it means "to take away." For this game, the students place 10 cotton balls into their own ten frame. Then they spin a spinner with the numbers -1, -2, and -0 on it.  They get to "throw" that many snowballs (really they just remove that many from their board, but I'm sure they'd love it if they could)! The first student to throw all of their snowballs wins, collects a Snowball Fight trading card, and then they play again. This was a crowd pleaser!
   In the Number Work center, the students worked on composing teen numbers with marshmallows in hot cocoa! There was some added fine motor work with the tweezers.

    One of the math goals in kindergarten is to recognize that teen numbers are made up of a group of ten plus some "ones" left over.  Students need to both compose (make) and decompose (break down) teen numbers to demonstrate that knowledge.

Our phonics focus this week was again on the short vowels, short i and short o, specifically. The students worked on making CVC words using the short vowel sounds in the Word Work center. 

In the Writing center, the students played on a new app on the IPad called Dolch Words.  It s a free app that allows the students to select a sight word, hear it, and trace it.

Then, as always, the students read to themselves or to each other in the Reading center, and got to play with trains in the Block center. This is the last week of using www.starfall.com at the Computer center.  Beginning next week, they will work on www.raz-kids.com instead.  Remember to let them log in at home, too. It will really accelerate their reading!

 

Our theme this week was opposites. We sang along to a special music video everyday as we gathered at the carpet. Then we read books and noted the opposites we heard during our whole group writing.

    Over the course of the week, we read The Foot Book by Dr. Suess, Big Dog, Little Dog by PD. Eastman, and Harry the Dirty Dog by Gene Zion (one of  my childhoold favorites). The students selected their own pair of opposites to write about in their journals. Once again, they surpassed my expectations. They are getting really GOOD at journal writing.

    Our Fun Friday art project tied in our theme of opposites and wrapped up our unit on measurement. The students had to order 5 dogs from shortest to tallest.  Then some chose to draw their bones, dog houses, water bowls, etc to further show size comparison.



The class welcomed our new student teacher, Miss Emily Kendall. She is from Georgetown College and each week she will be leading more and more in activities and instruction.  She will be with us for 8 weeks. The students have already grown attached to her. Here she is playing Quiz Quiz Trade with McKenzie. 

Next week will be pretty HUGE.  We celebrate the 100th day of school for a whole week!  I'm already looking forward to next week's blog. Fingers crossed that snow days don't ruin our plans!
    I'll leave you with a few pics from a special music program the AM class got to be a part of on Friday. (Sorry PM class).  A group from Belmont University in Tennesee called dnk. came and entertained and involved the students in a very fun musical experience.