Workshop Rundown: 1/14

To practice HFW this week, we played a version of BANG! called "Polar Bear!"  The bag filled with HFW was passed around the group.  The kids drew out a word a read it.  If a polar bear was on the card, all the cards had to be put back into the bag.

 Using letter cards, everyone made words using the vowel O.  These short O words were sounded out and recorded.  This activity is an extension of a whole group lesson.  Everyone is doing a good job of sounding out simple words to read.

 The kids scanned QR codes to explore aspects of the Arctic.  We saw a young boy build an igloo, the northern lights, and found out about the narwhal.

B is for bunting!  Making this cheerful bunting filled with B words was a fun workshop.  It is decorating our classroom.

After choosing a photo of a favorite Arctic animal, the kids wrote 2 sentences about it.  The paper being used is the new journal paper.  It's a challenge to write between the lines on the paper!

 Our new book this week is "We Have a Band" and new HFW is a green word - not.

 After reading the book, the group worked together to make an Arctic Animals puzzle.

Math Tubs

As we near the 100th day of school, we are working on counting and writing to 100.  The hundreds number chart is a very important concept in our Everyday Math curriculum.  To help the kids understand the patterns in the chart, they put together hundred chart puzzles.  After matching numbers on the chart for awhile, they challenged themselves by putting together the puzzles independently. 

More challenges!  These pattern block puzzles ask you to use specific pieces to fit inside the shape.  Some are harder than they look!

Everyone is doing a great job at tallying!  We tallied "snowballs" (aka cotton balls) for practice.  The snowballs are moved one at a time across the tray to by tallied.  At the end, the kids counted the tallies.  They are learning that you can count tallies faster when you count by 5's!

Simple addition was practiced using dice.  The kids are doing a great job understanding how number sentences work and are beginning to solve problems quickly!

Week in Review

We had fun last week! Here are a few of the goings on.

On Monday, JK came up and visited the "big school."  The Brilliant Bugs split into 3 groups and went to the other SK classrooms so that we could help host the 3 JK classes.  After reading a book, singing songs, and talking about the wonderful world of SK, we ate a snack of milk and cookies and played with our JK friends.

During Discovery, a favorite activity was to reenact the book The Mitten.  A few tables were transformed into the mitten and the "animals" had fun crawling into it.

Here, Nicki and Babba talk about how a white mitten may get lost in the snow.  Sweet Babba knits it for Nicki anyway.

When a little mouse crawls onto the bear's nose, the bear sneezes, sending the animals flying out of the mitten.

Friday was basketball Homecoming.  We showed our support and school spirit with this great poster.  Unfortunately we didn't win, but we had fun!  Mac, being the tallest student in the room, posed as our model for the defender.

During the pep rally, we cheered on our own Mrs. Beaumont as she played in the teacher/student basketball game!  She's got skills!

Can't wait to see what's in store for us next week!

Workshop Rundown: 1/7

It's been awhile since the kids have had a "normal" workshop week where we go through 6 workshops. They jumped right back into the routine and did some great work.  Here's what we did this week.

One of the favorite workshops this week was Read the Room BINGO.  The kids walked around the room and looked for the words written on the gameboard.  When they found a word, they highlighted it.  While many of the words were HFW and sight words, there were other words such as "buddies" and "nice" that the kids had to find in order to be able to read them.

Burr!  It was cold this week, so we made hot chocolate!  After putting the directions in order, the kids each made their very own cup of hot chocolate complete with mini marshmallows and candy canes.

Yum!  This workshop was not only fun, but fostered independence and following directions.  For many, pouring the hot (ok, it was really only lukewarm) water into the cup all by themselves was a big accomplishment.  It made the hot chocolate that much sweeter!

To practice our new HFW to, too, and like, the kids filled in the blanks to write a page for a class book.  We discovered that our kids really like to play sports and ice skate!  Most kids completed more than one page so that they could take a page home.  Please ask your child to read their page to you.

 iPads!  We haven't gotten out the iPads out in awhile and it proved to be a fun way to practice language arts skills such as letter matching, sight words, and beginning sounds.

After reading the new HFW "We Have a Team," the kids looked through a page of the newspaper to find HFW.  They were amazed at how many words they were able to find! This is a great way to practice words at home and is an easy activity to do while in the car or waiting in the Dr. office.

The last workshop was to sort M & N words.  While these sounds can easily be confused, everyone quickly sorted the pictures correctly and had no trouble determining the correct initial sounds.  As a challenge, they chose a picture and then wrote a sentence using the M or N word.  As you can see from above, we are beginning to use lower case letter paper in our work.  Here, the kids' goal was to shrink the size of their letters and get used to writing between the lines. 

Fun with Middle Schoolers!

During the holiday season, we got some visits from middle schoolers sharing Holiday Cheer.  The Bugs were paired up with a middle school buddy and had fun making crafts and eating treats.

Visit from 8th grade buddies to make heart Christmas trees and glitter snowflakes.

We were also visited by 6th graders who made unique snow people with our kids.

What fun!  We hope they come back and visit us soon!

Holiday Math

While we spent a lot of the holiday season focusing on literature links to language arts concepts and arts projects, we also worked on several key math concepts and introduced some new ones.  Here's a peek at what we were up to in math during the month of December.

The kids "bought toys" by counting out the change for the price of the item pictured on the card.  This was a fun way to work with money and begin to count mixed coins.  Many kids quickly realized that they could use dimes to count by 10's to "buy" a bigger ticketed item.

Yum!  Sorting, graphing, and tallying gumdrops was fun!  After completing the worksheet, the kids created 3-D sculptures out of the gumdrops using toothpicks to connect them.

The biggest concept reinforced this month was teen numbers.  After completing a teen number addition sheet with a teacher (10 + a single digit = a teen number), the kids matched their answers to colored ornaments and added a yellow star.  These turned out so nice, we displayed them on our classroom bulletin board!

Teen number identification was further reinforced by a round of Teen Number Go Fish.  Played like regular Go Fish, the kids asked for and matched teen numbers.  "Do you have an 18?"  "No, go fish!"

When working with addition, we are learning how to create number addition sentences.  Here, dominoes are being used.  The kids add together each side of the domino and come up with the sum.  At this point, we are not concerned if a child can add in his or her head, we just want them to understand how a number sentence works and use strategies (counting dots, objects, etc.) to find the answer.  After practicing this on a worksheet a few times, they will begin to write the number sentences more independently.