Week 1: Tuesday

Tuesday, May 10, 2011: 11:50-2:45

Day two in the kindergarden started out (after some recess of course) with talking about the date. The class informed me that we say the year as two thousand eleven because if we say two thousand and eleven people might assume we are adding, not telling the year. Next we counted the days on the calendar to determine the number of days in the month of May. We also talked about what day of the week tomorrow is and what month comes next. Once we established that tomorrow is Wednesday and the next month of the year is June, we discussed the tools that students used to figure it out. Some students looked at the calendar, others used songs, and one used a birthday she knew was coming up. it was interesting to see how each student thought differently. We had some quick excitement as it looked like it had started to rain, but when we checked it was just a false alarm. This prompted using the weather chart to document that today was windy and cloudy. After, we talked about syllables vs. sounds. We started by using clapping to split everyones names into the different syllables, and then chopped different body parts into the sounds that make up the word. Then it was time for snack. Durring snack, students took turns watering the bean plants they are growing in the window. A couple have started to sprout which made the kids really happy. At the same time, students were taken one at a time to do quick one minute assessments in the hallway. At the end of snack time, this weeks "star student" did some show and tell. Today she showed us a shell that was a gift from her father and she passed it around so that each child could have a chance to look at it and try to hear the ocean. From show and tell we moved into daily news. Students shared stories about pets, siblings, and what they did after school yesterday. The day ended with some stations. The math station did more modeling of addition using beans while another station used pattern blocks to make new shapes using smaller shapes. A third station had two parts. Part one was writing the letters A and G in both upper and lower case one worksheets. They started with tracing and then moved to writing them on their own. The second part of the station was using letter magnets to write the alphabet and sight words.
I look forward to exploring Springfield Kindergarten tomorrow morning and being able to compare and contrast the two different classrooms.