the tenth day of school

The tenth day of Kindergarten is an opportunity to celebrate all of the children's work and learning. It is a time to celebrate 10; to count up and count down, to use ten frames as tools for organizing our counting and as tools for noticing how many more to make 10. The tenth day of school is an opportunity to collect and sort, compare and combine. It is an opportunity to move; can you do 10 lunges, 10 squats, and 10 roll ups? The children can.

We read 10 Black Dots by Donald Crews and thought of what we could create with 10 black dots. Using Crews as our mentor, each child thought of an idea, shared it with a turn and talk partner, and decided how many dots they would need for their plan. They drew a picture of their idea, representing it using a variety of shapes and lines. They carefully counted and glued their dots, recounting to check that they had the right number.

Caleb shared his work with his peers, explaining how his ten dots could be wheels! We combined our pages and published our first class book. We read the book to families at Open House on Thursday evening.

Ten Black Dots
By- The Kindergarten

 

 

 

 

 

 

The following day we brought our counting to the playground and collected 10 things in nature. Using a ten frame, each child collected pinecones, flowers, leaves, sticks, and stones. Our playground was buzzing with counting and comparing, recording and sharing.

I have 6 things, I need 4 more! 
I have 5 wood chips.
I traced my things to show them!
I tried to draw a rock, it looks like a triangle.

This work will now be one of the first entries in their math journals.

 

 

 

 

the morning message

The morning message is one of my favorite teaching tools. It is a greeting and an invitation, a way to share information and make connections. When you visit our classroom, you may see bits of our morning message displayed, often connecting to a teaching point or big idea. As our morning message grows with us, children take on the important job of circling "noticings"- letters, words, numbers, punctuation, blends, digraphs and more! They begin filling in the date and missing parts. They engage with the morning message in different and powerful ways.

This week we used the morning message to represent being in school for five days. We also used the message as an invitation to draw different lines on a sticky note. These lines will now live in our art space as inspiration for future line drawings!

We have been in school for 5 days.

 

What kind of line can you draw?

 

what is kind?

We have been learning about our school rules of being safe, kind, and responsible. We have been noticing the choices we are making and how these choices help our community to be in the green zone and ready to learn and play together.

It's important for children to have the time to define these big words, using what they know and feel to represent what it means to be kind, safe, and responsible. This week we explored the word kind using literature, reflections, turn and talks, and our own experiences.

What is kind?

Kind is helping people -Nora
Being kind is being in the green zone -Owen
When you are kind you share. Like sharing books! -Richard
Kind is giving presents and giving feelings, like love -Alice (and Cassidy)

Children engaged in different conversations about kindness. Thinking deeply about what it means to be kind and why it is important to be kind. Following our conversations and read alouds they used pictures and words to show their understanding of the word kind.

 

 

 

How will you be kind today?

 

We connected our conversations to another big word; friend. Many of the children shared that a friend is kind and a friend helps. We are kind in our classroom in different ways.

Saying hello during our morning meeting is kind. 

 

Sharing our work with a friend and listening to their story is kind.

 

 

Kindness is important, because when we share kindness in our classroom, it creates feelings of love and peace. We are happy to be together, to work and learn together. Our kindness can spread across our school, to our families, and around the world. We will continue to celebrate kindness in authentic and meaningful ways.

For children to embrace our school rules and feel like they have ownership we must give them time to explore the language we use and represent what these rules mean. As we move into the next couple of weeks the children will use their language, representations, community work, and our school rules to develop our classroom expectations.

shapes at play

On Tuesday we read Shapes at Play and continued our conversations about how shapes fit together to make different shapes, further our learning about shape attributes. We found shapes in our classroom environment, using our knowledge of lines, sides, and corners to name the different shapes.

I introduced three new math tools this week; geoboards, unifix cubes, and exploragons. These materials now live with our pattern blocks on the math shelf. They offer a variety of ways to learn about shapes and lines, count and compare, build with patterns, and gain a deeper understanding of how we can use shapes to represent our ideas or stories.

Geoboards 

exploring polygon characteristics
pinching/stretching rubber bands; developing fine motor skills
noticing and counting corners
using rubber bands and small pegs to make different lines

 

 

 

 


Unifix Cubes

building patterns
counting, grouping (using a ten frame to count a group of ten)
comparing
measuring (how many cubes to make a tower as long as the table)
connecting cubes together; developing fine motor skills

 

Exploragons 

using straight lines (sides) to build shapes
snapping flexible sticks together; developing fine motor skills
developing knowledge of shape attributes
comparing and contrasting squares and rectangles

While the children were building structures and designs with the exploragons we talked about our work as builders and artists- all of our work has a story. We are storytellers and we tell our stories in many different ways. Savannah built a colorful house and Ivy built Thomas the train. Sebby built a robot and Myra built a locked door leading to a party.

The children were so excited about their stories told using shapes and lines, that we had our first "museum walk" share. They wrote their name on a sticky note next to their work. We turned the lights off and quietly moved through our classroom, admiring the detail in their work and noticing the shapes used to create their designs. This also provided an opportunity to discuss what a museum is. Brennan shared that he went to a museum where he looked, but didn't touch. Sebby said that sometimes you can play with things in museums or try things out.

Museums are a place for important work, just like our classroom is a place for important work.