Wow! What a busy week this was!
1. We ended our Insect unit by talking about the mouths of insects. We talk about how bees have mouths like a straw, ants have mouths like clothespins, flies have mouths like a sponge, and mosquitoes have mouths like a needle - yikes! We were very lucky this week to have found a (dead) bee and fly to put under our large magnifying glass to do some insect observation. It was really cool to do this because we could see the 3 body parts, 2 antennae, wings, and 6 legs. We also were able to catch a praying mantis (alive) and observe it for awhile, too! My kiddos made an Insect book that they were able to bring home and share with their families all the awesome information they learned about insects!
2. Patterns have been taken out of the Common Core for Kindergarten, but our Kinder team has decided that this is something that is just too important to remove, so we are keeping it in our Math curriculum. And lucky for us, we have an administration who supports us in our decision! As a team, we feel strongly that patterns set the foundation for many, many math concepts. Once children start to recognize simple color and shape patterns, this knowledge can be carried over to number patterns as well as recognition of patterns in nature and art. So, we spent the week talking about patterns and we DID keep in the letter pattern names i.e. ABAB, ABB, AAB, ABC, etc. Again, teaching kids to recognize pattern names gives them vocabulary to discuss the type of pattern that they see.
The pictures here show just the marker page that the kiddos used. We also used shape foamies as well as Halloween foamies to create the patterns. I just didn't think to take pictures when we using those other types of media!
Give me a few days and I will get the Pattern book uploaded to my TPT store!
3. Another Math concept we discussed this week was MORE and LESS. We did a fun MORE/LESS activity using paint and large leaf stampers. I read the book "Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf" by Lois Ehlert and then my kiddos used red and yellow stampers to create groups of red and yellow leaves. The rule was that one of their groups had to be MORE than the other. I was pretty proud of how well they did and it made a pretty bulletin board display! Click HERE to download a link to the words.
4. I just revised my Firefighters and Fire Safety packet. It has a 15 page Fire Safety book, songs with posters about fire safety, a Craftivity to create a fire fighter, a Fire Safety emergent reader, and a fun Search the Room fire safety sight word hunt.
5. Do you still study Christopher Columbus in your school? I know many schools have taken this part of history out of their curriculum, but we still teach him. We use him only as a springboard to a study of explorers, though. We also use Columbus as a foundational step to a study of Maps and Globes. I wrote a blog post about how we do this on Blog Hoppin which you can find HERE
Whew..... now hop over to Doodle Bug's amazing Five For Friday linky! I have joined late in the party this week (since it is SATURDAY!) and am WAY down the list, but that's okay.... there are so many wonderful posts to read before mine!!
Have a wonderful weekend!
Blessings,
Cindy
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