Apples!

It's apple time! With apple season, there are always plenty of fun projects going on in kindergarten classrooms. We started our learning about apples by learning about Johnny Appleseed. In our writing center, we talked about character traits and the traits that Johnny Appleseed had. He was kind, giving and loved animals. We also made apple books and made beautiful apples for our classroom window. We will continue our learning next week so stay tuned...

Sort, Sort, Sort

We have survived the first month of school! It has definitely been a month of adjusting and learning. As we dive into our curriculum, one of the routines I introduced this past week is sorting.  
We have started early concept and shape sorting activities that will be followed with picture sorts that develop phonemic awareness and include activities for rhyming, syllabication, and sound play. The purpose of these activities is to get our students used to these procedures so they are prepared for their individualized program.

How Many Dinosaurs Do You See?

On Friday, I posed the following question to the class: You are swimming underwater in a lake and see dinosaur feet in the water. You don't want to go to the surface in case they are not friendly dinosaurs. How many dinosaurs are standing in the lake?

Prior to asking them this question, I wanted to tap into their background knowledge to ensure that they knew what dinosaurs were. I read them the story, How Do Dinosaurs Go To School and then showed them various pictures of dinosaurs. While looking at the pictures, I had the kids observe how many legs each dinosaur had, what they looked like, if they looked like a meat eater etc.

I then projected the question onto the screen and had the kids look at the picture to the problem. The picture showed eight dinosaur feet. I then opened it up for discussion. Kids went up one by one to explain how many dinosaurs they thought there were and why. A few of the kids got into a debate about why their answer was the correct one citing "bone structure" and "leg curvatures" to justify their reasoning. :)

The Common Core State Standards for Math focuses on these 8 Standards for Mathematical Practice in addition to specific grade level standards. I encourage you to read them and reflect on what standards for mathematical practice you think were addressed by the kids solving this problem. How many dinosaurs do you think there are? I think there are 8...all posing like ballerinas on one foot. ;)