A Very Long Name!

 We read the book Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henke and then spent some time counting and comparing the letters in our own names with Chrysanthemum's, and then with each other's, and combined our results in a poster. We also put our names in "order" by the number of letters in each name. We'll play some more with the idea of lengths, comparing, and counting.

Until Next Time,
Michele

making our own rules and grouping by that rule

This week we took advantage of some beautiful weather to spend time outdoors collecting leaves.
Before heading out, we talked about collecting according to a rule that we make by ourselves. The children busily collected leaves outdoors, helping each other to gather "enough" ("I need ovals! Does anyone see any ovals?")   Once back indoors, we constructed posters that showed our group as well as the rule that we followed, then shared our work with our peers. I enjoyed the originality of each child's approach and work. They enjoyed asking questions of each other!

taking inventory

 We started the week by playing a "base ten" memory game, in which the children learned how to make sense of a number by breaking it up into logical pieces.  We learned why, and how, to take an inventory. The children counted up a number of fall items and created a poster together that showed the count. For free choice we took inventory using bags of items, wrote the number 4, and continued to use math manipulatives.
Until Next Time,
Michele

how many are hiding?

each child had a particular group to count up

focusing on the count

representing the count

writing the number 4.

Games to Learn By

And now we've started playing games to practice our counting and number skills. We are also making our own counting books 0-6. We'll share our finished counting books with the prek classes.  When we play like this we're motivated to know more, and we become experts!

number bow...color in the number that you roll

grab and count and show your count

creating a counting book

counting jar

survey questions

attributes

answering a question with a clothespin

This week we looked at sorting by attributes...ourselves, buttons, and attribute blocks. The children answered "yes" "no" questions about themselves, and put their name to a question that matched.  We drew self portraits, and sorted by them;  what's one thing about my picture that's the same as someone else's? what's one thing that's different? By learning about attributes, we are looking more closely at our environment and strengthening our math thinking and reasoning skills, as well as learning how to talk about what we notice.
We continued to have time to explore freely materials that we will be using later in a more formal manner.

sneakers

not sneakers!

how shall we sort ourselves?

self portrait

 how am I the same? how am I different?

More About Numbers!

taking attendance

the counting jar

making the number 2

attributes of a button

The kindergarteners continued to spend time exploring materials that will be used more formally in the near future. We talked about attributes, tried to make and write the number two, and at the end of the week tried our hand at journals.  We were introduced to an independent counting activity, the counting jar.

Until Next Time,
Michele