Station Activities Week of Jan. 23

Here are our Station Activities for this week:

Math:

Students match playing cards to the sheet with the correct sum.

Students measure the penguin with different manipulatives.

Race to 20 Game - Students roll the dice and place that number of counters on their board. The first one to 20 wins!

Two-Color Chip Toss - Students put 12 chips in a cup, shake & dump. They separate and count the number of reds and whites, then color their sheet to match. Then they fill in the number sentence.

Students make numbers out of playdough.

Students order the numbered cups, then count out the correct number of beans for each cup (to 20).

Language Arts:

These students are preparing to have their writing conference with me. I have them draw a picture first, then we write about what they drew.

More drawing ...

Computers!

Reading to herself. She is using a "whisper phone" to listen to herself read. I made these whisper phones using two "elbow" sections of pvc pipe each. The students whisper into them, they can hear themselves very easily, and this really cuts down on noise in the classroom!

Students look at the picture on the card, sound it out with letter tiles, and write the word in the box on their paper.

Students match word cards to  the corresponding picture, then find that box on their paper and write the word.

This station is very similar to the one two above - students look at the picture, sound it out with letter tiles, and write the word in the corresponding box on their paper.

Have a great week!

Being a Problem Solver!

What do you do when the foam gets ripped off of your headphones and the hard plastic is very uncomfortable? This student decided to solve his problem on his own by using tissues! Hey, whatever works, huh?

By they way, most of our classroom headphones are on their last legs. Foam is missing, cords are bare, etc. If you have any of this style (not the in-ear type, please) at home that you are not using, we'd love to have them!

Cloud Activities

Last week our theme focus was on Clouds. We read several books and watched a video about clouds. We made charts about what we knew and what we learned about clouds. On Friday, we made cloud pictures in art. We "stencilled" and "painted" with shaving cream, cookie cutters, and paint brushes! The students enjoyed it very much. (I think they especially liked the messiness of the project!)

In Science, we made our own clouds! We put hot water in a clear jar, covered it with a paper plate, and put ice on top. We learned that the sun heats the earth to make it warm, and that outer space is very cold. When hot air and cold air meet, rain forms. Can you see the rain we made? We also flexed our observational skills muscles and strengthened our listening skills!

Happy Birthday, Matthew!

Happy Birthday, Matthew!

 

Love, Mrs. K.

This Week's Stations Activities

This week's Math Stations:

Students must take turns rolling the dice and placing the correct number of manipulatives on their chart. The first one to 20 (without cheating!) wins the game.

The computer is always a station!

Exploring with pattern blocks.

Students take turns rolling a dice and finding a piece of the puzzle they need.

Students line the numbered cups in order 0-20. They place the correct number of beans in each cup. If there's time (there hasn't been yet!), they have a recording sheet on which to place the beans from each cup.

Students match numbers to number words (the color of the paper is a big clue). They must write the number on the penguin's belly on the recording sheet, and the number word in the corresponding box.

Students put the number cards in order, with the question mark card in the middle. They must then write that number that comes "between" in the box and color the corresponding snowflake.

Students measure the penguing using different manipulatives.

This week's Literacy Stations:

Of course, we always have the choice to Read from our book baskets, Write in our journal, and Listen to a story-on-tape or online. Our fourth choice is Word Work. These activities change weekly. The ones we are doing this week are the following:

Students cut out the word cards, arrange them in order, and glue them on the purple paper.

Students match the picture with the word card (again, the color of each card is a big hint!). Then they write the missing sound in the corresponding box on the recording sheet (they must also use the same color marker as the cards, hence the red marker in this photo).

Students draw a popcorn word card, then must make it using the individual cards, and write it on the white board.

Students must gather the matching cards (colorwise), put them in order to make the sentence, and write the sentence on the recording sheet.

Can you tell we're working hard to learn our letters, sounds, numbers, and popcorn words?! We're even learning how to write complete sentences using a capital letter and ending punctuation!

Afternoon Calendar Math Activities

Yesterday, I told you about our Morning Language Arts Activities. Today I want to show you what we do during Calendar Math activities.

I missed a couple of pictures, but first we discuss today's date. We write the date, discuss the month and day of the week, and sing a couple of songs to help us remember the months and days of the week. Then we figure out how many days we've been in school. We used to count them every day, but at this point in the year, it gets a little monotonous to count to 100 every single day, so we like to change it up and count by fives, or tens, or just start from a student-chosen number ("let's start at 57 today"). By the way, your child should be able to count all the way to 100 by the end of the year without help, and without skipping any numbers!

Then we talk about today's weather, and graph it. We discuss the graph, too, with such questions as "How many more sunny days are there than rainy days?"

We represent today's date (number) with ten frames and a seasonal picture. For example, on the 18th of January, we show eighteen penguins. Sorry I missed the picture for this one! Then we show that same number in place-value format using "cubes".

We also show today's date with tally marks.

Next we roll the dice and practice making number sentences and "counting on". By now, your child should be able to figure out which dice has the bigger number, start from that number, and count the rest to find the total. For example, if they roll a 4 and a 2, they would say, "4, 5, 6" instead of starting all the way back at 1!

And of course, reading is snuck in anywhere possible! Here the leader calls on another student to "stump" them with a popcorn word to spell!

Finally, we always graph any birthdays and any teeth lost that day, but we haven't had any of either for quite a while!

Hopefully this gives you a glimpse of what we do on a daily basis!

Morning Language Arts Activities

So what do we do all day? Many people think we "play" (like I'm the babysitter). But that is SO not true! Yes, we play and have fun, but it's all in the name of LEARNING!

Every morning we do Language Arts on the Smartboard. This is when we do a lot of phonics activities to learn the letters and sounds, and to practice reading our "popcorn" words. Here she is sounding out the "medial" (middle) sound in the word "bed". While one student comes to the board to write, the others are kept busy by writing the words on their own white boards.

Sometimes I ask a student to come up and find a certain word. Here he had to find the popcorn word "my".

Sometimes we make our own words. Here she made the nonsense word "tim".

Sometimes student-leaders guide us as we read together.

So you can see, every morning we are immersed fully in reading activities. There are several other things we do that we don't yet have pictures of. Ask your child about the letter songs ("C is a consonant, a letter in the alphabet!"), and what we do with the alphabet every day. Tomorrow, I'll fill you in on our Calendar Math activities.

OK, Parents, I'm so sorry I have gotten so far behind in posting for you. My mother's unexpected passing in October threw me off, and I just now feel like I'm starting to get caught up. I will catch up gradually with the things we've been doing, but I did want to post today to let you know the results of our December Family Reading Assembly, which was held today.

Congratulations goes out to the following students who reached their goal of 30 books for the month of December (in no particular order):

Alahna, Khloi, Madison, Breanna, Carson, Boston, Evan, Logan, Emma, Chase, Brett, Payten, Trenen, Tambra, and Gracie! WAY TO GO, Friends!


If your child's name is not on this list, please make sure to read at least 30 books to your child during the month of January, and be sure that the reading log is in their folder on the morning of Feb. 1.

Have a great weekend - enjoy this weather while it lasts - this is Ohio, you know!