Patterns: Early Algebra
I divided the kids up into pattern groups earlier last week. They made pattern block shape patterns and then drew a pattern of the same type.... ABAB, ABC or ABB. The goal is for kids to be able to make three pattern types independently. It's also a good time to reinforce checking your work to look for errors.
Here is the beginning phase of our gum ball goals. The current goals are counting to 100, knowing your phone number, knowing your address (zip code, too), knowing all capital letters, and knowing all lowercase letters. Kids get to add a gum ball when they accomplish that particular goal independently. It would be great for you to help them with these at home. The next goal will deal with high frequency words (handy words). I'll send home information about that soon.
You can see that we don't have anyone who can say their whole address, yet. The other day, one little guy almost nailed it until I asked what state we live in and he said, "South Africa." Cute!
The kids made some spider hats with Miss Booth last Thursday. We had each kindergarten class visit each teacher to pave the way for some sharing during math time later on. See a nice smiling photo and then a silly faces photo.
The science guy from Goodwill Hinckley was back again on Friday. This time he focused on insects. The kids had some exploration time at the end. Check out the bug's eye view of the world.
Nature Stamping
Insect Rubbings
Cool butterfly puppet
Lots of little bug toys to explore.
Some cool specimens
We recently did some interactive writing. The kids worked together to create text. Two groups worked on rhyming words. Two groups worked on sentences containing sight words (handy words).
We sang the Bat Song several times this week. It goes to the tune of Are You Sleeping?
A number of kiddos were excited to be able to "read" the whole thing.
We also used this pocket chart song to locate sight words like for, the, in and are. Words like this are VERY important for success in both reading and writing.
