Week of 11-25-07
We got back to our much-needed routine this week. We started working on “word families” and understanding the idea of adding a new beginning sound to make a new word. It can be a nonsense or real word. The goal with this is to start the process of understanding the letters and their sounds when putting them together as well as making new and unknown words.
We are already planning on Hanukkah fun! The kids are so excited. We had many discussions this week about the meaning of a gift. Is it something you have to buy? What is your favorite gift? Sometimes, we as parents, think it’s got to be the latest toy or gadget.
During centers the kids created “noodle” art, hopefully it got home in one piece…They worked at the overhead creating shapes, letters, and numbers. At the ABC center they made words using word families. We started this week introducing word families and vowels and how they are both used, to write and read. At the math center they worked on writing their numbers with number templates. It’s a great way to reinforce writing numbers in a very controlled way. Their number writing is really getting great, as you will see. For science we worked with oil and water with food coloring, they had to chart their findings, and look for different reactions in each.
In Math we used a Venn diagram to sort materials. I first sorted letters without giving them the reasons why, when the kids started asking questions and making observations is was great. They had such good theories as to why the letters were sorted, they finally narrowed it down and got the right answer. This type is activity is a great way to let them guide the learning. They then split into groups and had to come up with a strategy for sorting buttons they were given. They had to sort them and then let us ask questions about why they sorted the way they did. It truly let them be the teacher; they loved this activity so much!
We got back to our much-needed routine this week. We started working on “word families” and understanding the idea of adding a new beginning sound to make a new word. It can be a nonsense or real word. The goal with this is to start the process of understanding the letters and their sounds when putting them together as well as making new and unknown words.
We are already planning on Hanukkah fun! The kids are so excited. We had many discussions this week about the meaning of a gift. Is it something you have to buy? What is your favorite gift? Sometimes, we as parents, think it’s got to be the latest toy or gadget.
During centers the kids created “noodle” art, hopefully it got home in one piece…They worked at the overhead creating shapes, letters, and numbers. At the ABC center they made words using word families. We started this week introducing word families and vowels and how they are both used, to write and read. At the math center they worked on writing their numbers with number templates. It’s a great way to reinforce writing numbers in a very controlled way. Their number writing is really getting great, as you will see. For science we worked with oil and water with food coloring, they had to chart their findings, and look for different reactions in each.
In Math we used a Venn diagram to sort materials. I first sorted letters without giving them the reasons why, when the kids started asking questions and making observations is was great. They had such good theories as to why the letters were sorted, they finally narrowed it down and got the right answer. This type is activity is a great way to let them guide the learning. They then split into groups and had to come up with a strategy for sorting buttons they were given. They had to sort them and then let us ask questions about why they sorted the way they did. It truly let them be the teacher; they loved this activity so much!
We started a very cool project making a Hanukkah book. Earlier this year we had a visiting teacher from Israel, Morah Efrat. She taught the children movements to a song called “Aquarium”, and the children loved her! She emailed us the beginning to a Hanukkah story some of her kindergarten children wrote, and asked us to finish it and send it to them. The kids came up with amazing ideas and we wrote a book! They illustrated the pages in groups and dictated the text to us. Leah scanned the pages and is putting them into a Power Point presentation to send. We’ll be using the pages to make a class big book to keep and read over and over. The teams worked together beautifully to collaborate on the illustrations for the book. It was amazing to see the leadership and cooperation.
We will be working on our Hanukkah project next week and have lots of fun centers based on Hanukkah learning! We’re making Donuts and Latkes too!
