Jan 24 2017

Writing in Kindergarten

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The children are beginning to write pieces that teach readers how-to do something.  Before I ask young writers to try a new genre, I spend time during writing workshop reading several books that we use as our mentor texts.

Mentor Texts

After that, we work together to record what we noticed in each of the books we read. 
For our first shared how-to writing, we made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and then wrote the directions as a group.

On another day we made chef hats and baked a pizza.

Nov 14 2016

Ways to help your kindergartner with math

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Here are some tips for parents to help their kindergartener’s math learning:

  • Give your child plenty of opportunities to count. Count steps, coins, toys, collections etc.
  • Read the calendar, and determine the number of days until a special event.
  • Have your child count coins when paying for an item.
  • Have your child distribute cookies or toys to family members, with each person getting an equal number.
  • Ask your child to find items that are flat shapes (triangles, rectangles, hexagons) and solid shapes (cubes, cylinders, cones) and other shapes around the house or when you’re at the grocery store.
  • Dice games and dominos help kids learn to quickly recognize groups of dots from 2 to 12.
  • Play the card game, War. This game can be played a number of ways.  One way is the traditional way in which players compare two cards and take the highest. Another version is flipping over two cards at the same time, the sum or the difference of the cards can be compared. The higher number takes the cards from both players.
  • Read Math Literature.

ABCya has fantastic math games.

 

Sep 26 2016

Scientist and Engineers Hard at Work

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Last week, we learned how to read a thermometer.  The children tested the temperature of water with and without ice.  The next day we set out plates with rocks, sand, dirt, black paper, white paper, and water on it.  The plates were set out in the sun and thermometers were placed on top to measure the effect of the sun’s heat on those things.  We discovered black paper gets the warmest and the white paper is the coolest.  Adi and Ella’s project worked the best because it was made with a white shoebox. The children learned it was really hard to create shade for their monster friends.  The kindergarteners spent some time in the afternoon revising their projects and testing again…still no luck.  Perhaps next time they can use different materials.