Math Centers Week of September 23

Some weeks we do centers for math after we do a week of whole group lessons. These centers help our mathematicians practice the skills we learned last week independently. Take a look at what we are up to this week!

Going on a shape hunt! These masters of geometry hunt for things in our world that are shaped like either circles, squares or rectangles.

Counting sunflower seeds! This activities help solidify our graphing and growing pattern skills!

Mathematicians build patterns! First they use pattern blocks to make "Pattern Snakes" then finish patterns with a cut and glue.

Organizing and Tracing Numbers

Playing Top-It (war in our day) to compare the value of numbers

Thinking and Learning Time Week Of Sept 23

 This week we continue our name work focusing on writing and building our own names. When you see your child's work come home please encourage him or her to practice tracing their names. It's so tricky to start with and upper case and write the rest lower case! It takes practice and help from home is much appreciated!

After building and writing their own names Fawn Friends worked on organizing friend's names under the letters of the alphabet. It is tricky because these learners have to first organize the strips in alphabetical order and then look closely at friends names in order to graph and sort them.

Scientists worked to sequence the life cycle of a sunflower. Look for your child's lifecycle to come home this week!

 After recording the life cycle these friends did more observation work around names. Children looked closely at pictures of their friends, drew the picture and wrote their names in order to create a pattern book. Ask your child to read this book to you at home. Help remind him or her how it goes by reading the first page together!

Readers and writers worked to create another pattern book all about September. They first traced the words "I see..." and tried to read by thinking about what the book might say as they check the picture on the page. I am keeping these books as your learner will use them to read during Reader's Workshop.

More Letter Work

Good Old Fashion Kindergarten Fun

Practicing Responsibility

Patterns!

We have started looking closely at patterns. Most mathematicians know that patterns repeat themselves. These are called repeating patterns. We have also learned that their are different types of patterns including growing patterns.
Take a look at some examples below:

We will continue with pattern work this week during math center time!

Triangle Hunt

Thank you for all the magazine donations!
We used them to look for things in our world that are shaped like triangles. We discovered that ALL triangles have three corners and three sides, but they can look very different!

Such an impressive group of thinkers and learners! This upcoming week these mathematicians will do this independently as they hunt for squares and circles during math centers. :-)

See Think Wonder with Shapes

Take a look at your mathematicians as they "See, Think and Wonder" about shapes!
I love this routine because they are able to teach themselves and each other with minimal guidance and scaffolding!

They came up with so many attribute words revolving around geometry! Some of the language and vocabulary I heard included: lines, curves, corners, points, and sides.
Vocabulary I helped build included: edges, sides, angles, and diagonal lines.
When you give children a chance to talk you will be amazed with how much they already know!

Thinking and Learning Time Week of September 16

What a great week of learning we had during thinking and learning time!
This week we continued to strengthen our science, observation and fine motor skills by using tweezers to extract sunflower seeds and create a diagram of a sunflower. They turned out beautifully and are now hanging in our classroom!

 

Below learners continue to strengthen fine motor skills by pin punching an elaborate sunflower. They absolutely LOVE this work!

Below you see readers looking closely to differentiate between upper and lower case letters. These thinkers are tasked with coloring in upper and lower case letters and hole punching out the letters that don't match. It is so awesome to watch them work so carefully!

Below you will see learners matching friends pictures to their names. This work helps them slow down and look closely at how letters come together to make words. The best way to engage children is to present them with work that is meaningful and relevant to their lives.

I have so enjoyed listening to these Fawn Friends discuss and have conversations around their thinking and learning!