As we move into our Winter & The Four Seasons unit in our K-1 All-Star class; we read a children’s classic known as The Mitten retold by Jan Brett. The class retold the story by doing a reader’s theater and acting out as different characters of the story. We used masks from Jan Brett’s website.
For math workshop we worked on The Mitten printable math centers kindergarten add-on from The Mitten Learning Printables. They included number / quantity recognition mats, ordinal number sequence cards, mittens size cut and paste activity, and number counting puzzles.
For writing we discussed the different characters we remember from the story. Then we wrote about our favorite characters and something they did in the story.
This last Friday the K-1 class had some spring and Easter activities to celebrate the upcoming holiday. We dyed our own eggs, painted a picture of an easter egg, and did some math easter centers!
We have been learning quite a bit in math this past month! In Kindergarten we’ve been learning how to measure using standard / non-standard units. First grade we have been working on Geometry learning about symmetry, congruence, and making bigger shapes using smaller shapes.
As a spiral review our K-1 All-Stars have also been completing centers reviewing their addition and subtraction facts. Kindergarteners were allowed to use counting bears to help them with the concepts.
As a class we read “A Plump and Perky Turkey” and cut out turkey puzzles and glued them in the correct order. In Kindergarten we recently learned about positional words and shapes. Students created their puzzles during math workshop.
In the afternoon we have both reading workshop and math workshop. This is where our students work in multi-leveled groups on specific skills that have been previously taught or we’re just learning. Currently in Kindergarten we’re working on patterns and numbers 0-100. In 1st grade we’ve been learning about addition facts up to 12 and anchors of 10 in addition.
At my current school we started our unit on fact families today with a lesson on commutative property using the SMART board. At workshop students were able to draw a card and create addition sentences based on that card using manipulatives and a work mat. Tomorrow we will be creating fact family maps during math explorations.
Students drew a card and counted out that number of shapes onto the top of the plate. They then split up the number of shapes into the two separate sections on the plate. They then created addition sentences using the commutative property of addition. Here you see a student making 4 + 2 = 6 as well as 2 + 4 = 6.
Student’s would then draw another number and complete the whole process over again. This student drew the number 4. The addition sentence on the paper was from her previous number that she drew which was 5.
For spiral review in math workshop we had number / quantity review, patterns, building shapes using smaller shapes.
If you notice on the first picture students were building a hexagon base by stacking two trapezoids next to each other on top of the hexagon. Geometry in common core requires students to use those critical thinking skills by being able build bigger shapes with smaller ones. Students used lily pads to put the number of counters on that lily pad that matched the number. In the last picture a student was creating an AABB pattern.
