Thursday, February 17, 2011

ADDITION! and SUBTRACTION!

This week we continued to formalize our addition and subtraction skills. The children listened to and solved story problems. After a little practice with writing number sentences, we wrote our own book of story problems! The children acted each problem out, directing the cats, dogs, or butterflies to move in a way to join a group or leave a group. We played games that allowed us to take turns, collect 10 or 15 objects together, and feel a little bit of cooperation. We rolled dice, and added or took away "1" from the number rolled.
Until Next Time,
Michele







Friday, February 11, 2011

Measuring, but also Counting, and Combining

We're beginning, now, to combine our math skills. We count, but we also write down a variety of numbers. We count, but then we add another bit and count all together, and write our answer down. The children rolled two dice, combined the numbers or dots, and wrote the number in the correct column. They grabbed a handful of cubes or pom poms, counted, then grabbed another handful and wrote down the "all together" amount. We looked at dots in a ten frame pattern, briefly, and then reproduced it with pennies. While playing the dice game, I heard a kindergartner exclaim,"Hey, we're adding!"
Until Next Time,
Michele






Thursday, February 3, 2011

Measure More

This week we practiced our measuring....we measured footprints, how far we could jump, how far buttons could jump, how far crickets had jumped..... and used different units of measure to measure our face, arms, hand span, and feet. The children are learning to record "data" and make comparisons with their data and report their data(notice the clipboards.) We are going to practice graphing, as our STANDING JUMPS were very popular and we have a lot of data!
Until Next Time,
Michele