Popcorn Words and Number Sense

This week has been a busy one, with lots of new learning and fun!

Fix It Duck is a hilarious story by Jez Alborough.  We talked about character  and setting this week.  In our journals we wrote about our houses, since the setting of the story happened in Duck's house and then moved to Sheep and Goat's houses.  Check out some of the other Duck stories by Jez Alborough at the library.

Read Around The Room... One of my favorite activities to get the kids up and moving and learning at the same time is "Read Around The Room".  The children get to use clipboards, this makes them feel very official!  This week I had hidden letter tickets all over the room and they had to find them and record them on their sheet.  For an extra challenge they could find letters anywhere in the room (not just on the letter tickets), wow, we sure have a lot of letters in our room!

Numbers to 5 is our math chapter this week.  This activity helps strengthen number sense in children.  They had a cup with 4 beans in it, each bean was white on one side and red on the other.  They had to "shake those beans" and then spill them out onto their work mat.  They graphed the result each time.  Here are some of the different combinations of 4 that occurred.  It is great practice to try activities like this at home and school to  help the children begin to recognize visual clusters of objects, rather than having to count them each time.  (If you want to make your own version of "Shake Those Beans" you can buy a bag of dried lima beans and use a sharpie marker to write a dot or color one side of each bean... work up to more beans!)

Popcorn Words... Popcorn Words are words that "pop up" everywhere. They are high frequency words that are repeated often in books and all print media (check your cereal box, you’re bound to find a popcorn word!).  Kindergarteners need to have meaningful encounters with the words in order to build connections to other words they already know.   Learning these words will help us to become fluent readers and writers. As new words are introduced, they are added to our "Popcorn Word Wall”   We add one or two words per week to our popcorn wall.    Each time we add a word to the wall we take a close look at it.  We notice things such as how many letters it has in it, we cheer it and clap it or move to it.  Once the children are familiar with the words, we then begin making sentences with our popcorn words and our word families.  We also refer to the words when writing in our journals.  Your child is sure to begin seeing these words “pop” up everywhere.  Encourage them to look for them wherever you go!

Getting into routines and having fun!

We used these puzzles to help us practice sequencing and using the words: first, next and last.  We had some great conversation about why certain things would have to go first... you can't put your socks on after your shoes!

We loved painting this week!  I was so impressed with how well everyone used the paints and what beautiful paintings we have.  We used these vases to make flowers for the bus driver, just like in the story, The Little School Bus

Some of the kids have enjoyed exploring the writing center and then proudly displayed their work.  Great job practicing the alphabet!

Our beautiful sunflowers... even though the fall weather is on it's way we can still enjoy a little be of summer in our hallway.

Geoboards were so fun to explore and create with at the math table.  The conversation about all of the shapes they could build and create was wonderful!

This week we worked more on learning the routines of Kindergarten.  The children learned about "have-to's" and when they can have free choice time.  Our work tables this week were geared toward both our Scott Foresman Reading Street chapter, The Little School Bus, and our Math In Focus chapter on ordinal numbers.  We worked with our "Amazing Words": first, second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth.  We also worked on sequencing events using the words first, next and last.  The kids had a great week! 

First week of school

Mrs. A's favorite flowers are sunflowers!  What a bright and happy way to start the year.  This week we also painted sunflowers to decorate our hallway.

Our first day of school project...it says, "I had a great day in Kindergarten!"  I know I did:)

These are "pattern block monsters that are tap dancing."  What a wonderful and creative idea!  Amazing what we can already do in the first week of school!

We had an amazing first week of school!  The kids are really into the routines of the classroom.  This week we read books about starting school and how much work it takes to get ready for school.  Some of the books dealt with the anxiety we might feel starting Kindergarten.  The books were: Miss Bindergarten Gets Ready for Kindergarten, The Kissing Hand and my favorite, Kindergarten Rocks!  I think we all left this week feeling like Kindergarten Rocks!  Way to kick off a new school year!