Magnets and Decomposing Numbers!

We started two, yes two, new units of study!
The week before a holiday, I must be nuts!
Not really, these children are just ready to learn and are so engaged!
We started learning about magnets- We are focusing on the following terms- attract, repel, north and south poles, non-magnetic, and magnetic for the next two weeks. Please ask your child to show you attract and repel. 
The children activated their schema and shared aloud what they "thought" they already knew about magnets.
From there they had exploration time with the magnets and other objects.  Some AH-HA! Discoveries were made and schema was being built!

We are decomposing numbers in math.  I presented a problem I had to the children.
"Dr. Shewbridge asked me to show her how many ways to make 6."  "I can't figure it out." " Can you help me?" They all so graciously agreed to help! 
They used their unifix cubes, and discussed and displayed that 6 can be made from 1 and 5, 2 and 4, 4 and 2 (that's called a turn around!), 6 and 0, 3 and 3.
WOW!  We shared what decompose means. Breaking down a number to show how many different numbers are found inside of that number.
Ask your child to show you different ways to make numbers 2-10.  Feel free to go beyond if you see that they are ready!

Reminders: Next week, Friday, December 19th is wear your pjs to school. 
Please help us in reminding your kindergartner to continue to be a leader during the last week of school. We have needed to give more reminders to some of our friends, especially during time with specialists and when they are being taught by other adults in the school. The weekly report that comes home on Thursday is based on the classroom, the hallways, with specialists, on the bus, and or daycare van. 
Thanks again for supporting your child and his or her teachers.  We appreciate it!

Holiday Centers

Today was such a fin and exciting day in Rainbow Valley. The children enjoyed rotating through their centers.  They also loved having their parents join them.
Thank you to all of the volunteers. You sure know how to make learning fun!

Terrific Thursday!

Today was filled with fun! 
The children enjoyed their Easter Egg Hunt very much.  We continued to review creating number families.  Today we used Easter Eggs.  Please make sure you are reviewing this skill with your child at home.
To continue our work on non-fiction the children wrote non-fiction stories today.  They needed to include at least three sentences that were factual.  After writing we had many authors who shared their work.

Holiday Centers