Dear Parents,
Finding the time to sit down and write has been challenging but when I look through my photos, I have almost too much to talk about in a single post. I'll try to do it justice here.
First up, last week we had our second Math-stravaganza (as I like to call them), where students rotate through all the classes to learn about a topic from all our kindergarten teachers. Both teachers and students seem to enjoy these afternoons. This time, the topic was measurement.
Ms. Vandermeer had an interactive lesson about measuring and comparing length, where students compared different coloured lengths of yarn. First they had to look for people with the same colour and then compare whose was longest and shortest. Extensions include using the strings with a clipboard as a centre and having students find objects with that length in the classroom. This is a great open ended activity because students who are ready to use standard measures, like centimetres, can use them but students also gain contexts for the concept by using non-standard measures, like cubes or links.
Ms. Filan had students connecting times to clocks and using the whiteboard for a host of other time related activities and Ms. K had a poem and a variety of centres around the concept of time.
I decided to have students make analog clocks out of hula hoops. I bridged this by marking the hoops beforehand with tape so the divisions were easier to map out, but the cooperative aspect of this activity was where I saw the most learning happening, because they really needed to work together to make it work.
Here are some of the ways students continued to work on time in the class this week:
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| These sheets are from Ms. K's activities and the hoop is being used for a "What time is it Mr. Dinosaur?" game with teddy bears in the background. |
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| Making clocks at the playdough centre. |
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| These guys are wearing the hours and minutes as badges of honour. I'm not sure why tape mustachios were in order. |
But here's what's going on in the background:
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| Wheels in the sandtable |
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| Stinky potato slowly grows roots |
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| Reading with students |
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| Dance Party continued: Waltzing to Vivaldi's Spring |
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| Conga to some salsa music. |
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| Working on apostrophes with some of the higher readers |
Today was all about being outside and lots of learning can happen outside too. Here's what happened with the pattern blocks today:
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| Making patterns. "It's a shape store. You can buy shapes, but they're all free." |
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| Making a sandwich |
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| Two "meat" make up one "bread" |
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| What about lettuce? Some problem solving happened. |
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| Eventually they figured it out, and went sideways |
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| Now it is an ice cream sandwich |
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| And this is: "Pizza sandwich. Eat it now!" |
Some beginning fraction concepts are happening there amidst the dramatic play, as well as shape and colour recognition, counting, and patterning.
I'm sure you'll agree that this post is a little too long, but there's so much happening this time of year, it's almost impossible to show you everything that's happening.
Hope you're enjoying all the sunshine,
Ms. Goegan
