Family Words

As part of our shared reading of the big book, The Napping House, we have been learning about 'ing' words.  We noticed and located words in the book that have 'ing'. 
Then we brainstormed our own list of 'ing' words.  (We call them family words because they look and sound alike.  Sometimes rhyming words don't look the same e.g., bread & red.)  Here is the list of 'ing' words we came up with:
        king        ring         sing       wing       thing   
        zing        swing       bring     string     morning      

Learning about family words, is one way for us to learn about how words work.  We can make new words, by adding a different letter, or 2 or 3, at the beginning of letter chunks like 'ing'.  When we read, it helps us know what to say when we see 'ing' in a word.  When we write, and we hear 'ing' in a word, we know what to write.

As the year progresses, we'll be working on more family words.  Stay tuned...
 

Making Shape Pictures

We used pattern blocks to make shape pictures, and we wanted to share them with you:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We also made shapes using geoboards.  Here are a few examples of the shapes we made:

 





 

 

 

 

Happy Chanukah

To all our families celebrating Chanukah...

Wishing you all a Happy Chanukah!

 

 

 

 

Shapes are Everywhere!

We have been learning about 2-D shapes in math.  Two dimensional shapes are flat shapes like triangles, circles, squares, rectangles, diamonds, etc.  This past week, we have been focusing on describing the features of the shapes.  For example, rectangles have 4 straight sides.  Two of the sides are shorter than the other two sides.  Squares also have 4 straight sides, but the sides are all the same length.

Here's a game you might enjoy playing with your child, I Spy a Shape.  The 'spy' looks around and finds something that has a visible 2-D shape, and says, "I spy with my little eye something that has a name of the shape".  Everyone else takes turns guessing what the object could be.  Let your child know if they have made a good guess or not:  "Good try.  The clock is shaped like a circle, but it's not the circle I was thinking about."  "That book looks like a square.  Remember, we're looking for ovals."  (We especially like playing this game when there is some waiting to do.  E.g., waiting in lines.)
  
Here's an another idea to try.  It comes from the booklet we sent home in October, Doing Mathematics with Your Child, Kindergarten to Grade 6: A Parent Guide:  When talking with your child, idenitify things by their shapes and size:  "Please pass me the rectangular placemat, the largest box out of the cupboard, the square-shaped cracker and the circular plate." 

 If you have any questions, please contact us or leave a comment. 

Morning Messages - Why do we do them in our class?

If your child has been the Helper in our class, he/she has probably brought home a morning message.  Each day, we write a message for our class to read together. 
With each morning message mini-lesson, there are usually several teaching points based upon the needs of the students in our class.  
Examples of teaching points include:
1.  learning about how we read text in English (e.g., we start at the top, left corner, and we read from left to right and from top to bottom; we say each word that we see/point to);
2.  learning about different punctuation (e.g., . ! ? " ");  and
3.  learning how to write a complete sentence in response to a question in the message.

We also use the morning message to teach high frequency words in context.  These words are eventually placed on our class 'Word Wall'.  Students are then expected to spell the words correctly or use the Word Wall as a resource when writing.  To date, these are the words we have worked on:  a, and, are, am, can, is, I, like, no, see, the, we, & yes.

As always, if you have any questions/concerns, please feel free to contact us or leave a comment on the blog.





 

What Have We Been Doing in Math?

For the past few weeks, we have been focusing on Patterning in math.  We have been learning to identify, extend, reproduce and create patterns.  In addition, we have been learning to describe patterns in different ways.
For example,  * * + * * + * * +, we could describe this pattern as 'red, red, blue' or as 'star, star, plus' or as 'A,A,B'. 

We have also begun to notice patterns when we count the days of school and record the numbers.  For example, all the 40-something numbers start with a '4'...4 and 0 for 40, 4 and 1 for 41, 4 and 2 for 42, etc.

Lastly, but certainly not least, we are noticing patterns in our environment and within nature like the seasons.

Here are some photos of patterns that the children in our class made today:

 





 

 

 

 

Classroom News

As you may already know, we had to evacuate our school yesterday afternoon due to a suspicious smokey smell in one of our school bathrooms.  Firefighters arrived and checked out the situation, and luckily, everything was fine.  When we went back inside, we wrote the following message to post on our blog:

Big   News 

 

On   Friday   afternoon,   there   was   a   smokey   smell   in   a   bathroom.   To   be   safe,   Mrs. Thompson,   our   principal,   called   the   fire   department.   We   had   to   go   outside   to   be  safe.    3   fire   trucks   came   to   our   school.   The   firefighters   checked   the    school,   and    they   said   everything   was   okay.   Then   we   went   back   inside.   We   missed   our   activity   time   today,   but   it's   okay.    Thank   you   Mrs. Thompson   for   calling   the   firefighters   and   keeping   us   safe.

 

By   the   Kindergarten    Students    in    Room    110