New Unit in Science

Last week we began our new science unit which features an in-depth study of organisms. We used activities around the theme of pumpkins to build interest and as an introduction to the world of living things. We have talked about the life cycle of pumpkins, read many books featuring pumpkins, planted pumpkin seeds, weighed pumpkins, measured pumpkins, checked to see if they would sink or float, and visited the pumpkin patch.

Now we have moved beyond pumpkins to list other living things. We have made charts of how plants and animals are alike and how they are different. Next we will be studying seeds. We will use four of our senses (see, hear, smell, and feel) to examine some seeds, and to compare how they are alike and different. Next we will talk about what plants need to live and be healthy before we plant four different kinds of seeds. Daily we will watch how our seeds grow and change. In a few weeks the class will be divided into groups of four to work together to set up terrariums and aquariums for each group. (Let's keep this a secret for now!) This will lead into our study of comparing animals and what they need to live and be heathy.

The unit on organisms contain 17 separate lessons and will continue into January and February. Some will be conducted in each kindergarten homerooms and others will be part of our weekly science activities in the kindergarten common area on Thursday afternoons with our science parent volunteers. These lessons all include hands-on activities, discussions, observations, predictions, and journal response writing.

What a meaningful and exciting way to study living things. Let the learning begin!

Math Everyday with Everyday Math

Our math curriculum is built around the mathematic program called Everyday Math. One of the key math activities each day is the calendar report. We record the date including the month, day and year, along with the day of the month in tally marks. We graph the weather each day and count the number of days we have been in school. Today is Day 40 of kindergarten. We practice saying the days of the week and will be including the months of the year soon. We also read the schedule for the day.
Most of the calendar activities are directed by the two calendar captains, a class job that rotates weekly.

Calendar Captains, Brianna and Duran, update the calendar each day this week.

Leading us into addition and subtraction, our lessons have included activities with More and Less.  Activities include dominos, number cards and comparing items in the classroom such as, there are more girls and less boys, or there are more books and less clocks.  These activities help build a foundation for addition and subtraction, while developing a number sense.

Franco and Ava use dominos to compare more and less.

As we move into the teen numbers the children have added 11 - 20 to their number cards.  We take every opportunity to count beyond ten.  Last week we tallied 45 items donated to the Salvation Army Homeless shelter's pantry.  What a teachable moment to use tally marks. Today the children partnered up to demonstrate what 11 - 20 looks like with our fingers.  One partner held up tens fingers while the other partner held up one finger so the pair together made eleven fingers. We continued for all the numbers up to 20. We practiced using our strong thumbs to hold the remaining fingers and stretching tall the ones needed to make 8 and 9, along with 18 and 19.

Forty-five tallies for us, forty-five food items donated to the Salvation Army Shelter pantry.

Jake and Nicholas partner to display the teen numbers. Here is what 17 looks like.

As our work with patterns continues, the children will move from AB patterns to AABB and other varieties that repeat themselves 3 times to display the pattern fully. We are making patterns using colors, shapes, sizes, objects, numbers, and letters. These lessons develop concepts that will help them later to understand skip counting.

In the classroom we often transition to line or to a new lesson with activities that practice these concepts.  It offers great mental math opportunities and fills a minute or two with a learning activity while taking turns.

While our focus for math lessons is early in the morning, math activities are often sprinkled throughout the day. Not only do we have math everyday, but we have math related activities integrated with our other lessons during the rest of the day.

Buddy Reading with Our Second Grade Friends

Today was our third visit with Ms. Deegan’s second graders to buddy read. To prepare for the visit, the second graders select books that would be of interest to kindergarten children and practice reading them with expression. Our class reviewed their Unit 1 writing books, entitled Launching, which contained the writing they did in September, along with other books they have made themselves since August. Each second grader was partnered with a kindergarten student to read together. They were able to share their books, use reading strategies to help decode words, ask and answer questions, and enjoy each others company. This second grade/kindergarten partnership will continue on most Mondays throughout the year with different reading and writing activities. Sometimes our kindergarten class will visit the second grade classroom. The children do a wonderful job working together and look forward to visiting each other’s classrooms! 

Fiona chose a quiet reading spot.

Jake and Ave share a partner.

Kai shares his writing.

Briana and Noah with shoulder parnters.

Lili and Mariana's turns.

Duran uses his tracking finger.

Franco points to a favorite page.

Nicholas selects from his
 Bag of Books.

Brianna shares her small
small moment writing.

Jaiden finds a new book.

Word Works in Kindergarten

Daily our class talks about words: hearing, reading and spelling them. Each student has a personal dictionary in their seat pocket which we have been working in since August. These dictionaries include enrichment words which each child has chosen to illustrate as examples of each letter sound. So far we have added words that begin with s, r, t, m, p, n, and a. Our focus letter this week is c. Next week we will work with words that begin with b and d. We use letter sounds to help us read and write words.

Today we started to talk about words that rhyme with at, such as cat and rat. We are practicing reading and spelling words that are part of this word family. We began with the word ending "at," and added letters to build new words. Tomorrow we will begin Our Word Family books where we will record on the first page the words that rhyme with at. Over the next few weeks, we will work on additional pages for other word families, such as the "ad" and "am" families. Seeing and hearing the patterns in words help the children to better understand how words are made.

We are discussing how words go together to make up sentences. We count how many words are in sentences and how many sounds are in words. This is especially helpful to young writers as they begin to put their thoughts down on paper in Writers' Workshop.

In Readers' Workshop we are learning strategies to use when encountering a "tricky word" in a sentence. We are practicing sounding out words, checking the pictures for clues, and thinking about what word would make sense in this story.

All of these activities are working together to build strong readers and writers. What great progress each child is making!

Learning About Pets

Mrs. Kiernan and I are excited to have our students read our blog this week. We hope that they will have  a chance to read it every week, as it contains the news about what we are doing in class and has photos of our classroom activities.

Starting last week we began learning about pets. We have been talking about which animals would make good pets and which ones would not be good pets. We have read and recited The Animal Store, by Rachel Field as well as graphed our favorite pets. Our visit to Animal House Pet Shop on Friday, was both fun and informative. We were shown a wide variety of pets, both common and exotic. A class favorite was the rabbits. We enjoyed watching them hop around in our circle, and we even got to pet them.
This Friday, each student will select a pet that they wish to study. The children will be in groups of between two and four students. The groups will read books, talk to friends and adults, and even use the internet to learn more about the pets they have chosen to study. We will want to find out about the physical characteristics of the pets, what they eat, what they need to live and be healthy, and why they could make a good pet. We will share our information with our classmates by making teaching posters using a variety of art materials.
The choices of pets available to be studied and researched are: dogs, cats, parrots, fish, hamsters, guinea pigs, rabbits, and snakes. Students, be ready to tell me on Friday which pet you want to study.