Kindergarten
January 6th
Welcome Back!
In order to transition back into "school mode" from winter break, we participated in a few team-building and class-building activities. It was a great way to be able to work together to overcome challenges and spend some time talking about our breaks! The first day back, we listened to music during a Mix-Pair-Share. We mixed by walking around the room while music played, when the music stopped everybody found the closest person to pair with and share something about their winter break. Later that day, we had an "in-school field trip" to the library for some design thinking. We listened to Mrs. Sayre read the book, Albert's Alphabet, and then we had to use the materials to create the first letter in our first name. Later in the week, we worked with our teams in order to complete another challenge. As a team we needed to create a three cup pyramid on our tables; however we could not touch the cups with our hands and the cups started on the rug. We were given one tool to use - a rubber band with four strings attached. We could pull the strings to open and close the rubber band around the cup. We needed to communicate and solve problems together, and we had so much fun!
Math
We began our unit on addition and subtraction within 5. We started with a quick lesson on the concepts of addition and subtraction and how they relate to each other. Then we started to discuss combinations to make 5. We realized that if 5 is the whole there are only so many ways to combine numbers to create 5 (0+5, 1+4, 2+3, 3+2, 4+1, 5+0). Since we will eventually need to memorize these facts we decided to start practicing early, but we became magicians to add some flare. Each partnership was given five cubes. One partner would hide some cubes in one hand and show they rest of the cubes. The other partner needed to use their magical powers to tell how many cubes were in their partner's closed fist. We were incredible! We will continue to develop these number sense skills as we relate addition and subtraction through their understanding of part-part-whole.