We are continuing to work on our Portrait Project. Children have been busy mixing multicultural paints to match their skin colors. Once we finish up with our portraits, we will be moving onto places. We plan on visiting the Art Museum again, to see art from different countries—stay tuned for more details on this!
Purple Cubbies
In math, one of the units in Kindergarten is number recognition. We have specifically been working with the numbers one through ten. The Purple Cubbies did a project called “Six Sticks” which focused on number sense. We integrated both math and language arts for this activity. First, we began by reading the story, Six Sticks, by Molly Coxe. In this story, two mice use six popsicle sticks to create many things—for example, “3 pairs of skis,” “6 flags,” “2 swings,” and “2 tents.” During the read aloud, we made predictions about what the mice might make next. We then created our own math stories. Each child was given six popsicle sticks, as well as glue, construction paper and crayons. The children made their own objects and scenes using only these six sticks! The students came up with many creative ideas. Below are some examples: --“6 sticks make 2 sailboats.” --“6 sticks make 6 pogo-sticks.” --“6 sticks make 1 house and 2 trees.” --“6 sticks make Penn Charter School.” --“6 sticks make me on the monkey bars.” --“6 sticks make “3 trees, 1 telescope, and 1 starshaver.” --“6 sticks make me.” The children were able to experience what the number six feels and looks like. They also created number sentences through their designs (for example, 1+1+1+1+1+1=6, 4+2=6, 3+3=6, and 2+2+2=6). Another language arts component to this activity was setting. While creating their math stories, children decided where their stories would take place. Last, we shared our “Six Sticks” pictures with the rest of the class. We had so much fun doing this project together! There are many other math read-alouds that we will use throughout the year to go along with our math projects, that will help to develop your child’s mathematical thinking. We are always aiming to encourage a love of math. After all, math is everywhere! | Green Cubbies
As part of our All About Me unit, Kindergarten students explore the world of feelings at home and at school. Explicit identification and discussion of feelings is one example of how our curriculum supports the emotional health and development of students. The Green Cubbies have begun discussing emotions during Reading and Writing Workshop, Math and Dramatic Play. We are working on developing our feelings vocabulary, differentiating feelings, understanding that it is normal to have a variety of feelings and learning how to express our feelings appropriately. During Dramatic Play pairs of students are given a scenario to act out for the class with or without puppets. The audience's challenge is to identify the feelings in the scenarios. Examples of some scenarios include:
Your teacher helps you write a sentence.
You lost a tooth during a playdate.
You are visiting a friend who is sick.
You lost your mittens on the payground during recess.
The students have enjoyed listening to Read Alouds such as "The Feelings Book" by Todd Parr, "My Name is Yoon" by Helen Recorvits, "Heather Has Two Mommies" by Leslea Newman and "Lily's Purple Plastic Purse" by Kevin Henkes. We ask students to make personal connections to the characters and the situations in these stories. During Writing Workshop students wrote and illustrated a piece about a time when they were happy, "When we went to the Art Museum", "Me and my friends went on the swings" and "I am happy at the circus." In math, we read "Glad Monster, Sad Monster" by Ed Emberly and Anne Miranda. Students will engage in the Monster Matrix activity where they have the choice of creating a square, round or triangle monster that experiences a variety of feelings. Exploration of feelings will continue throughout the year and we encourage you to continue explicit discussions about emotional health with your children. | Red Cubbies
Over the past few weeks, the children in the red cubbies class have become very dedicated authors. Centers has become an extension of Writing Workshop, with people putting together books of all kinds: fiction, non-fiction, wordless, with words, funny and serious. They are putting all of their skills that we introduce in Writing Workshop, such as using covers and title pages, starting sentences with an upper case and ending them with a period and having the words tell a story about their picture into practice through their own fruition. It has been wonderful to see them working tirelessly at sounding out their words, resourcing their room and the people around them to figure out how to spell their words. We have made an effort to set aside time at least a few days a week for “show and share” which is a time when the children have a chance to share their books or other creations with their classmates and also field questions and comments. This helps them to understand the difference between questions and comments, how to be a respectful audience member, and how to offer kind words to their friends. They are even willing to share their books with the class by leaving them in our classroom library for a week so that their friends can look at them during rest, which they often do! We love how their interest in books is spilling across the curriculum in such a wonderfully creative way! |