Our First Math Small Groups
Whole Group Times
The children with meeting jobs got right to work this morning. Eyza started us off by counting the children and letting her classmates know how many students were in JK South today. Sloan filled us in on the date, Charlie let us know that the forecast for the day was windy and cool, and Arianna added a cube to our ones jar and told her friends that today is Day 12 of JK. Alexander walked us through our Thursday schedule.
To sign in today, the children were shown a picture of a tree. They had to use their sound knowledge of our latest Lively Letters to make their best guess as to the initial sound in the word "tree." After everyone signed in, we worked together to sound out the word "tree."
Today's literacy block started off by reviewing how to build and write the capitol L that we learned how to write during last week's HWT lesson. Today the children worked on building, tracing, and writing capitol F. F is our first frog jump letter! "Frog jump letters" are how HWT describes letters where, after making the first part of the letter, children “jump” their pencil back to the starting point.
For example, when writing F, a child:
Starts at the top.
Makes a big line down.
Jumps back to the top.
Makes the top and middle lines.
The “frog jump” language helps young children remember the steps and where to place their pencil. We listened to this catchy song to help us learn about frog jumping.
We also continued on with this week's Heggerty lessons after each child had a turn to build, trace, and write capitol F.
At the end of the day Ida, this week's Librarian, chose Grumpy Monkey for our story.
Classroom Explorations
Today, students played Shapes Bingo during math small groups to strengthen their understanding of two dimensional shapes and geometry concepts. As students identified and matched shapes on their bingo cards, they practiced recognizing shape attributes. We also used the activity to reinforce different types of lines, including straight, curved, horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines. The different types of lines is also something that we work with during our HWT lessons. Shapes Bingo provided a fun, interactive way for students to build confidence in identifying shapes while developing important math skills!
When not in their math small group the children could:
explore geoboards before meeting and snack after meeting at the round table
craft and create at the drawing table
build with Magnatiles and space figures on the rug
explore some new stencils at the trapezoid table
do some beading after math small groups at the round table
create with letter stamps, markers, scissors, and fall washi tape at the easel
splash around in an ocean themed sensory table
scoop and smoosh Pluffle in our sensory trays
play in the dollhouse
play in pretend
read a book in the book loft
build with Legos on the light table
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