Classroom Update

March came so quickly and it's almost over! Here is an update of what has been happening in the classroom.

Math

In math, the children have been introduced to a few new work places.



Beat You to Zero is a game in which partners are racing to take their pennies off their boards before their partner does. Once the boards are set up with 20 pennies each, the players take turns spinning and subtracting the designated amount from their boards. This is a great game that has the children identifying coins (penny and nickel) and exploring counting strategies.


Sea Creature Handfuls is an activity that has the children estimating, comparing, and counting sea creatures. To complete this activity, the children take a handful of sea creatures and guess how many they think were in their handful and color in their best guess on the worksheet. Next, they count their sea creatures and color the part of the worksheet that shows how many they actually got. After, the children have a peer take a handful of sea creatures and he or she needs to guess how many is in their handful and repeat the same steps with filling out the worksheet.


Fish Out of Water is a game that the children are spinning a spinner, reading and/or counting the hats in the ten-frames and matching it to a number on the gameboard. Partners continue playing until all their cubes are gone. This is a great game (which came from another kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Wills) that reinforces the concept of place value and counting strategies.


The children have also started a project that has them enacting, solving, and posing their own sea creature story problems (2 seal pups were on the rocks and 3 mommy seals were in the water. how many altogether?). The children have been required to orally justify their answer when solving story problems and also show their thinking on paper or on a whiteboard, which they have done really well with. As we finish up these story problems, I'm hoping to get a voicethread onto the blog so that you can hear your child's problem.

Number Corner


This month's calendar pattern, which is an ABC pattern, revolves around events that happen in the morning, afternoon, and evening. The pictures were already created for us! So, the children only had to color them. Once they were colored, we sorted the pictures by morning, afternoon, and evening.

In Our Month in School Chart, we are continuing with using the ten-frame cards for each day we've been in school.

Literacy


During reader's workshop, read aloud, and literacy stations, we've been learning about making text-self connections with the books we've read as a class and/or with our guided reading books ("just right" books). This is a great reading strategy that can be used at home. Just ask your child the following questions to get them to make connections to the text:

• Does this remind you of anything?

• Can you make a connection to the story?

• Can you think of a time when you were feeling upset? (or whatever feeling the character in the book is feeling)

Theme

We learned a song titled the Maple Syrup Story, which the children really enjoyed. Once we became familiar with the song, the children illustrated the song in a book format. When they bring it home this coming week, have them sing the song to you as you look through their beautiful illustrations.

Maple Syrup Story
First you take the tree and you tap it, tap it.
Then you take the sap and you gather it, gather it.
Then you take the sap and you boil it, boil it.
Then you take the syrup and you pour it, pour it.
Then you take the syrup and you eat it, eat it.

Maple, maple syrup!! Yummy, yummy!
Maple, maple syrup!! Yummy, yummy!

We also have been discussing and reading about the seasons of a maple tree. We've been illustrating maple trees and how they would look like in the winter, spring, and summer and will finish up with fall this week. We've also have been discussing what animals we would see around the maple trees during each season and including these details in our pictures.