September

Hello and welcome to our first post in Kindergarten!

Welcome to August and September in Kindergarten.   The students were very excited to play with the toys in the classroom for structured play time.  We played in the doll house, with bristle blocks, magnets, trains and puppets.  Your children have been communicating about playing with others and sharing their toys.   Here are a few things that we look at when the children are playing.

What are the expectations of purposeful play?

Purposeful play classrooms do not simply provide opportunities for children to play, but also encourage children to challenge themselves; reflect on their own understanding; tap into their interests, needs, or talents to make connections and to develop self-efficacy as learners.

What is the purposeful play approach?

Purposeful play means play is integrated into curriculum, instruction, and assessment. We know that play is an integral part of how young children learn, so it makes sense to use it as a leading instructional strategy.

Purposeful Play

Questions to think about to help me plan my play:

• What am I curious about? 

• What problem do I want to solve today?

• What could I build and how; what will I use?

• What could I create and what materials will I use to create this?

• Who do I want to be?

• Where do I want to travel?

Play time in Kindergarten

            Math Explorations

               Pattern Blocks and Shapes

Students have used pattern blocks to create various shapes and designs, which helps them understand concepts like congruence, similarity, symmetry, area, perimeter, patterns, functions, fractions, and graphing. They enjoyed manipulating the blocks and using them to explore different geometric relationships.

    Number Formation

In addition to shape exploration, students are also focused on developing strong number writing skills. They learned a number writing poem and practiced number formations from 0-9 in their math number book. The focus was on holding the pencil correctly, forming numbers from top to bottom, and maintaining appropriate number size. Practicing these number formations with the poem sent home this week is encouraged to reinforce learning

Clifford's Scavenger Hunt and Paw Counting

 Clifford's Birthday Celebration

All the kindergarten students went on a scavenger hunt around the school to find Cliffords.  Look I see Clifford they all said.  Each student colored in a 10 frame on their sheet of paper with Clifford's paw prints.  We used a 10 frames to collect data on how many Clifford's we found on our walk.  

            Clifford's Birthday Stations   

It was a very special—and very red—day in our classroom on Friday as we celebrated Clifford the Big Red Dog's birthday! The students had an absolute blast with a series of Clifford-themed learning stations. 

Birthday Station Highlights:

• Math: Matching Clifford Ten Frames to practice counting and number recognition.

• Literacy: Digging through the sand to find letters and spell "Clifford the Big Red Dog."

• Teamwork: Playing a special Clifford board game to help Clifford get to his doghouse.

• Science: Comparing the weights of real dog bones.

• Reading: Tallying how many times we found "Clifford" in our stories.

We want to give a special shout-out to all the wonderful parents who came in to help with the stations. Your time and energy were key to making the celebration a huge success!  Thank you thank you!

Number Blocks Exploration

The Numberblocks curriculum is a hands-on program for grades PreK-1. We have introduced the first five numbers and foundation skills including counting, recognizing amounts on sight, comparing and sorting numbers and simple addition and subtraction.   We will be introducing the next few numbers in the coming days.  We will continue to use this program though out the year.  The students get very excited when we introduce the numbers to the children because they get to watch a 2-3 minute video about the numbers.

 Outside at our New Park

Sharing at Journal Time

During Journal time we were working on drawing and labeling animals.  We drew our favorite animal and shared it with our friends in the class.

Kindness Day at Tarkington School

Tarkington School had a 1/2 day filled with nothing but kindness!