Which One Is Covered Up?

 Which One Is Covered Up is a memory game that provides opportunities for students to practice reading numerals to 10 and naming positions, using words and phrases such as below, inside, above, on top, at the bottom, etc. There are two ways to play. In the first version players examine the game board and then close their eyes while another player or teacher covers up a number. They then open their eyes to determine which number was covered. The second version involves covering all the numbers and then giving clues about what number you are going to uncover. For example: "I am going to uncover the number that is more than 5 but less than 7, what number is it?" We played this game as a whole group and then in pairs.

Reading Buddies

 We learned about Martin Luther King Jr. and his message to the world today through literature. Older students read stories to younger students about Martin Luther King Jr. Some of the books were stories about Martin Luther King Jr such as My Brother Martin by Christine King Farris and If You Lived at the Time of Martin Luther King by Ellen Levine. Other books were books about peace, equality, and being kind like Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney. At the end of our time together one of our kindergarten students grabbed her browsing box and read some of her own stories to her older student partner. It was a fabulous way to start our day!

Kindergarten Weather Watchers

 Today was the perfect day for studying the weather! It was cloudy, then snowy, then rainy, then back to snowy! We went outside for our second weather observation, this time with black paper and magnifying glasses to observe snowflakes.

When we came back in we created a list of words to describe the weather and were delighted to discover there were many similarities and differences in the weather today compared to the weather on January 5th.

Our weather words today were: snowy, wet, crunchy, windy, rainy,icy, drippy, soft, slippery, cold, cloudy, slushy, whooshy and smushy!

Community Breakfast

On January 16th you are invited to a community breakfast in the gym from 7:45-8:30. Bring a dish to share.

Echo/Find Letters

 Echo/Find Letters is an activity during Fundations, our phonics program. During this activity students reinforce their skill of matching a letter with a given sound. I say a sound and then students echo that sound, find the corresponding letter on their letter-tile board and move that letter on or off their individual ABC chart. Variations of this activity include having students locate and point to the appropriate letter after hearing a letter sound, students coming up and pointing to a letter for their classmates to find &  move or using keywords as the clue instead of the letter sound. For example: "Move the letter that begins the word bat."

There are many other activities in Fundations including Sky Write Letter Formation, Drill Sounds, Student Notebooks,  Letter-Keyword-Sound, Echo/Letter Formation, Make It Fun, Word Play and Story Time.

Future Fundations activities include Alphabetical Order, Dictation Sounds, Echo/Find Words, Trick Words, Word Of The Day, and Word Talk.

Shape In My Pocket

One of our favorite new games is "There's a shape in my pocket." It is a guessing game that began with a review of the shape cards that we have been using to learn about shapes, attributes and sorting. After we looked the cards over and shared what we noticed about the shapes in the pocket chart I told them one of the shapes was in my pocket. To find out what shape it was students asked questions to eliminate shapes from the chart until the only shape left was the one in my pocket. The questions were guided by our attribute cards including size, color, shape, straight lines, curved sides, and number of corners. By playing this game (over & over :)) we practiced the following skills:

• describing shapes by their attributes
• questioning

• sorting to solve a problem

Guided Reading

We started guided reading groups today! Look for a book buddy bag with a book for your child to read to you.