100th Day of School

Last week we celebrated our 100th day of school! 

Instead of our normal morning work, we did a Color by Picture page with 100 objects. This is available for free on The Kinder Polka Dot Patch blog.

We made 100 Days Smarter Hats attached to sentence strips.

We played Roll the Dice to 100 with a partner. This game is really simple and gets them familiar with the 100 chart. They take turns rolling the dice and crossing out that number of squares. Make sure to model starting at the top and moving left to right.

We made pictures of When We're 100 Years Old. I had to post a bunch of examples because I think they all came out so hilarious and unique!

I created templates for the head, neck, and blue background. Each child also had an 1/8th sheet of red and a 1/2 sheet of white to use for a mouth and hair.

We made 100 Day Necklaces with Fruit Loops. I've always used Cheerios in the past, and will have to switch back to that next year. There weren't enough Fruit Loops in the box for each child to have 100!

Finally, I made a 100 Day Cake. :)

6 Great Ways to Teach Addition

This is a difficult unit to plan for, because I still have a good handful of kiddos who are struggling with numbers and counting. I want them to be able to fully participate without needing help every step of the way.

What I've found works best to start out are art projects. We can play around with the pieces before we glue them down, and the strugglers don't have to struggle! Bonus: they are working on fine motor and following directions at the same time. :)

Here are the projects I used this year:

WATERMELON ADDITION from Mrs. Cate's Kindergarten

 

We used real sunflower seeds for this one! After they cut/glued their watermelon together, I gave each child between 3-6 seeds. Since this was their first addition project, they had a hard time understanding that they had to put the seeds into 2 groups, even after some modeling. Next time maybe I'll draw a line down the middle of the watermelon template.

I forgot to take a picture of the finished products! This one is from Mrs. Cate's Kindergarten blog.

I used the template provided on All Kids Network.

LADYBUG ADDITION from The Measured Mom

 

Again, I forgot to take pictures! But this is what my sample looked like. The template has the head and body pre-drawn for them, but then I had them create the antennae, 6 legs, and spots on their own. They could decide how many spots they wanted to use.

M&M COOKIE ADDITION

 

This one was really fun! I didn't use a template here. I just gave each child a sheet of brown paper and had them draw their own circles. It was such a challenge for them to make the cookies the right size (big enough)! For some reason they like to draw really small!

I honestly can't remember where I found this idea. If anyone knows, please send me a message so I can give credit where it is due! It's a keeper though!

MARSHMALLOW ADDITION from the Wood Kinder Class

 

For this craft, kids cut out 2 coffee mugs (from a template) and glued them onto another sheet of paper.



I gave each child 5 marshmallows and we played around with different combinations of 5 before gluing them down.

SNOWMAN ADDITION from The First Grade Parade

 

 

I had lots of construction paper squares out for the kiddos to use- I asked that they use only 2 colors and make a pattern. Next, I had them add up how many they used of each color.

DOMINO ADD IT UP is a freebie from TeachersPayTeachers

 

I wasn't sure how they'd do with this one, but I was impressed.

You wouldn't think this would be enough practice with the actual math for them to really start to understand it, but you'd be amazed! I think the key is that they ENJOY it. And they can see how they could use math in real life with real objects.

In the past, my addition unit mainly utilized 2-sided counters and whiteboards. We'd model story problems and write number sentences. This was really frustrating for them and they got bored of it quickly. Next week I'll introduce some addition math centers and partner games so they can really hone their skills.

Meeting Standards Through Play

One of my goals this year is proving to admin that we don't need worksheets to meet standards! One of the ways I'm working toward meeting that goal is by documenting how kids are learning through play.

The easiest center to do this in has been the reading center, where kids love playing teacher. 

Here, children are repeating an activity we did whole group earlier in the day- ordering the events from the Jan Brett story, "The Mitten."

 

 After that, they decided to see how many numbers they could fit on the whiteboard. :)

 

Over in the art center, a few children were writing letters to Santa. Authentic writing!

Another day in the reading center, a higher level girlie was teaching her classmates how to write morning messages. They were practicing so many skills we'd learned both formally and informally- spacing, capitalization, sight words, and sounding out words.

Here is a simple poster I put together to hang in the hall (that hopefully my admin and parents will read)! I'm planning on putting together many more.

I need to work on making time simply to observe the kiddos at play, and collecting more documentation of meeting standards in the other centers. Dramatic play and blocks are the hardest for me! But I know there is a lot going on there!

Unit 2 Math Centers

Here are the math centers I'm using for my unit on patterns and comparing/ordering numbers 0-5.

The first five were also included in my Unit 1 centers. See this blog post for details on them and how they are organized. These centers are still popular, and appropriate for their level of math skills right now. With the limited hours in a day, I don't see a point in creating more centers when these are still perfectly good. :)

And here are the new ones!

   

 

 
The 2 games above can be purchased at Lakeshore Learning. They make some great stuff!

This one I invented. I honestly believe that using beautiful materials with interesting textures like these have a calming effect on the children. Every time I look over at a child working on this center, they are working so peacefully. I have them place a glass "treasure" on each dot, and then line up the numbers from 1-10.

Here is my open-ended center for the unit. The kiddos are allowed to do whatever they wish with the pegs and pegboards, but to my delight, they typically end up creating some pretty intricate patterns!