Number Bonds, Ten Frames and Personal Narratives, OH MY!

You are probably hearing your child talk about things like Number Bonds and Ten Frames.  We wanted to let you know what we are working on in math so you can have a good understanding of the vocabulary.  We have know entered the part of the school year where we really start dissecting numbers.  We want to understand all the different ways we can represent a different number.  We will be making a number anchor chart like the ones below each week as we explore a new number.  We concentrate on one number a week.  Last week was the number 6 and next week is the number 10.  We want the students to know many different ways to represent the number.  We also want them to be very confident with their number sense before entering First Grade.

As you can see in our charts we ask the children to come up with as many different ways as possible that they can make a number.  We introduce many different math concepts during this unit.  The students are expected to be able to identify the number, make the number, read the number word, use the number in a ten frame, use the number in a number bond and understand basic addition concepts up through the number 10.  Some of the children have found additional ways to make six and we added those to our chart.

 In Writing Workshop we are starting our unit on writing Personal Narratives (a true story about yourself).  This is the anchor chart we use to help the student generate ideas for writing their personal narratives.  This is a fun unit of study for the students!  We are working on putting spaces between our words, having a beginning, middle and end, using details in our pictures to help tell the story, using punctuation at the end of the sentences and using a capital letter at the beginning of the sentence.  It is a lot for the students to keep in mind while writing.  We are not worried about words being spelled correctly at this point.  We are looking for them to sound out the words they want to write and put down a letter for each sound they hear.

This is another place working on those popcorn words becomes so important!  Knowing those words helps to move the story along, and if they know them it makes their writing process so much easier for them.  Please keep working on those words.  We do keep a word wall and add other relevant vocabulary cards to the wall to help them spell bigger words (family words, winter words, days of the week, color words and number words).  Please encourage your child to write at home.  The more they write, the better they will get and the easier it will become.  Encourage lots of detail in their pictures.  We look for each story to have characters and setting with detail.  We also look for the story to stay on topic and the story to go in chronological order (sequenced correctly in time).  We just started this unit so we will have lots more to share in a few weeks.  Thanks for all of your support.  We hope the blog helps you foster meaningful conversations about the skills they are learning at school when they are at home.  We also hope this helps you understand a little more about what our goals our for each unit we introduce.

Gingerbread Fun

Each classroom focused on a Gingerbread Unit in December.  We read several different Gingerbread stories and compared and contrasted how they were they the same and different from each other.   The student's also really worked hard on identifying characters, setting, problem, solution and details of the stories that we read.  We also did many different activities to make learning reading, writing, math and science concepts fun and meaningful for the student's during the month of December.  We wrapped up the unit by doing a Gingerbread hunt (the Gingerbread men ran away!).  Here are some pictures we took during the unit and descriptions of what the students learned during these activities.

 Some of the students made 3-D Gingerbread houses like they learned about in The Gingerbread Baby to learn about flat shapes (squares) and 3-D shapes (cubes).  This hands-on activities helped build fine motor skills while reinforcing math concepts.  This activity also helped them recall details from one of our gingerbread stories.

 Many of the children became frustrated trying to make the graham crackers stick together and used problem solving skills, team work and advanced vocabulary while trying to figure out ways to engineer their structures.

We also did a non-standard measurement unit during December and it was easy to use our Gingerbread theme to help the students make connections.  The students used a variety of objects to measure items around the rooms.  One of the learning centers for math involved measuring Gingerbread cut outs of different shapes.  The students were encouraged to find different ways to measure the gingerbread men.  Math vocabulary such as length, width, height, are and perimeter were used during this activity.  We used different sized marshmallows over several days to show that measurement depends on your tools.

The students were also encouraged to make estimate how many marshmallows they thought it would take to measure.  They then had to fact check their estimation.  The students worked independently and in groups to do this exercise.

 

Gingerbread found their way into center time to reinforce color concepts and to reinforce popcorn words.

The students labeled the Gingerbread man during Writing Workshop to practice sounding out words and using labels to help the reader understand what they are writing.

Salt was used as fake "snow" with alphabet and popcorn word cards to help students with letter formation and popcorn word recognition.  This made practicing these difficult fine motor skills much more fun!  Some used fingers and some used tongue depressors to write the words.

Pretend "gingerbread dough" in dramatic play and dough stampers were used to make words, blend sounds and practice popcorn words.

In dramatic play they re-enacted details from several of the gingerbread stories we read during Reading Workshop to increase comprehension skills, retelling in sequence, remembering details and using vocabulary to strengthen speaking and writing.

"Run, run, as fast as you can, you can't catch me I'm the Gingerbread Man!"

 

We started practicing the foundations of sentence structure in Writing Workshop making sure we put finger spaces between our words when writing.  We practiced as a group on write-on/wipe-off boards to understand how much space should be put between words so the reader can read our words.

 

 

To wrap up the unit we had a Gingerbread Tasting Party with Gingerbread Cookies, but before we could try them they ran away, just like in some of the books we read!

 

We came back from lunch and found crumbs where the cookies had been.  We searched all over the school looking for them!  They ran away from every Kindergarten classroom!

 We looked everywhere for clues to try to find them.  We observed liked scientists to try to figure out where they could have gone!

 

We made signs and posted them around the school like in the book The Gingerbread Man Loose In School that we read.

We built traps and placed animal crackers out like in The Gingerbread Girl Goes Animal Crackers hoping that having animal friends waiting for them might lure them back to our rooms!

We placed our Gingerbread Houses out hoping giving them a home like in one of our Gingerbread stories we read by Jan Brett would cause the Gingerbread Men to come back!

We made beautiful Gingerbread Houses for our cookies hoping they would like them and come back.

 

We made Gingerbread Friends for our Gingerbread boys and girls to play with in dramatic play hoping that would make our cookies want to come back.

 

In the end it worked and after Specials classes, when we returned, they had all come back to every Kindergarten Class!  They students were so excited.  What they had learned and remembered from reading all of those different Gingerbread books helped them solve a problem and find a solution, just like in the characters in the stories we read!  This was a great text to self connection.  It was also a great way to apply what they had learned to a real life problem and realize that what we learn in books can help us in our life and help us use that knowledge to solve problems.

 

These are some of the books we read during our Gingerbread Unit.  We used these books, which part of the Gingerbread Man we ate first and other fun concepts to reinforce what we had learned in math about graphing.  Below is one example of a graph we created in one of the classrooms.

 

In this graph the students voted on which Gingerbread book they enjoyed the most during the unit.  We then graphed each response to find out which story the class liked the most (expanding math vocabulary), the least, how many votes each book had, how many votes total and how many books all together and total.  This was a way to visually organize and compare their data!

 

The unit was a huge success and the students learned so much.  We hope you enjoyed this little view into some of our December learning objectives and we hope this gives you some ideas of how you can support these concepts at home.