Weekly News (May 11-22)

It has been a busy couple of weeks in kindergarten! Take a peek below to see what we have been up to!

Math

The students were excited to use their ladybug clocks to practice telling time to the hour. Thank you SO much for your help preparing them at home! They have come in handy during our math lessons! When the ladybug clocks are sent home again, please continue to use the clock at home for practice telling time and even keep it handy for first grade when the children learn how to tell time to 5-minute intervals. Continued practice counting by 5's will help them be ready for this skill as well as counting nickels.

We also played a game called "Number Gymnastics" that helped the children develop their mental math skills and strengthen their number sense. For example, I would ask a series of questions such as:

What number has a 3 as the first digit and a 1 as the second digit?--31

What number do you get if you flip these two digits around?--13

What number comes after 13?--14

What number do you get if you reverse those two digits?--41

It's another great game to play at home or in the car! This  children also learned how to apply basic addition and subtraction rules this week as they learning how to use "In and Out Machines." (see sample below) This type of exercise helps children see the relationship between adding and subtraction.

This is a sample of an "In and Out Machine." Our addition problems were more simple than this, but it gives you an idea of how this function machine works. You will be seeing a lot of these in first grade and beyond!

Literacy
We have continued to explore some amazing creatures this week through our read aloud stories. This week we focused on the amazing world of insects! After reading several stories about ladybugs, the children wrote three facts they learned about these interesting creatures. They did an unbelievable job pulling out key details from the books we read and recording their ideas in writing.  It is amazing to see how far they have come as writers this year! The students have also been doing a great job learning about our "bossy-e" words and are beginning to read and write words that follow this pattern independently.

I have also been working on end-of-year assessments with students one-on-one including one final guided reading benchmark assessment. The growth they have made as readers this year is remarkable!

Getting Ready for First Grade
What a great way to practice getting ready for first grade---eating in the lunchroom. The children were SO excited to bring a lunch to school or order a hot lunch and eat at the tables in the lunchroom. We went over the hot lunch routine as well as some of the lunchroom rules. They had a blast! Next week, the students will have an opportunity to visit a first grade classroom and meet with some of our first grade buddies. Another great way to help prepare our kindergarten friends for next year!