Hands-on learning

 In Kindergarten, we try not to have the students sit in their seats working on worksheets all day. There's a time and place for worksheets, and sometimes they're necessary, but children learn better when the lesson is "hidden" within play! Here are a few examples ...

We "stirred" a bowl of alphabet soup (magnetic letters), scooped the letters out, and matched them with the letters on a laminated mat.

We played several "count and clip" games. Clipping clothespins also strengthens our finger muscles, which helps with our fine motor skills. 

And also count and write ...

Matching puzzle pieces with the correct numeral ...

And working with a friend to count and find the correct numeral ...

The more active we can make learning, the more our students will remember! 

Fun Friday!

 Fun Friday is when we're a little more laid-back ... we'll do our science experiments, we have some time for free play, and we work on finishing any tasks that we didn't complete throughout the week. This past Friday was a great start.

When students came in, they were greeted with these task cards on the board ...

They selected a construction project and then could choose from several different types of materials to try and build their items. 

When it's nearly time to clean up, I give them a 2-, 3-, or 5-minute warning and use an hourglass timer so the students have a visual idea of how much time they have left. The helper of the day is tasked with keeping an eye on the timer and letting me know when it's finished. As you can see, it's a job they all take very seriously! 😃

Fun Fridays are also science experiment days. For our first experiment, we made a simple chemical reaction with baking soda and vinegar. This helped our kiddos practice using science tools like trays and pipettes. I was pleasantly surprised at how excited they were to see the results of their reaction!

If you haven't seen our science video, you can click HERE to watch it on the HVCS facebook page. 

Scenes from our first week

 We are off to a great start in K5! Our first week is focused mainly on getting to know each other and our classroom rules and routines. We have a lot of fun, but we're also working on fine and gross motor skills, and starting some academic skills. 

When students arrived Monday morning, their first task was to string pony beads onto pipe cleaners. This requires concentration, as well as hones those fine motor skills which will be so important as we begin writing. 

We also spent a lot of time this week learning how to use various supplies. The personal supply pouches are new this year, so we practiced getting our pouch, getting out the appropriate tool (pencil, dry erase marker, glue stick, etc.). Here we worked on our white boards; I'd call out a letter, and they had to try to write it.

Here you can see some of our flexible seating being used. 

A couple of other fun activities included rolling a dice and then counting the number of mini-erasers and placing them into the cup. This helps build number sense and shows me that they understand 1:1 correspondence. They had fun continuing to count until their cups were full. 

Every morning we have a meeting ... Morning Meeting! MM is our way of coming together as a class to prepare for the day of working together. Every meeting has three components: calendar (including days of the week and months of the year), greeting each other face to face just like grownups do, and an academic activity. On this particular day, we rolled the ball around a circle as we said each student's name and said good morning to them. The students then took turns finding the missing letter in the series. (Some worked on the large white board while others worked on this smaller one.)

As the students do this sort of work, I'm observing who completes the task easily and who needs a little help. This will help me get a better idea of our academic skill groups, which we'll break into in a few weeks. 

We also glued paper scraps to letters to make our names, which are now hanging in the classroom. 

As many of you know, we have a tally system of rewards in our class. Students earn a tally mark for making good choices, and when they reach 15, they get to choose from my treasure box. Admittedly, I give tally marks pretty frequently at the beginning of the year; I'm trying to instill good habits right from the start. Several friends have already earned a trip to the treasure box, including this little fashionista! I love it!

Next time I'll share a peek at our first Fun Friday!