Week 10 (October 20 -24)

Week 10 (October 20 -24)

Children are made readers on the laps of their parents
-Emilie Buchwald

 As adults we all aware of the importance of reading in our daily lives! The ability to read is essential for success in life. Reading is a privilege and a pleasure, but we have to help our children understand that! There are so many children who say “I hate reading”! I don’t believe that it’s possible to hate reading, perhaps that child just hasn’t found that one book that they love yet! As adults it is our job to continuously expose our children to books and all other forms of reading. I challenge you to sit down with your child every day and read a book with them! Watch how happy it makes them, just to be able to share a reading experience with the person they look up to most!

Our kids really do love reading, look at how comfortable and cozy they get with their books during their independent reading time!!

Playing with Matter

This week I introduced matter to the kids and let them get very hands 

on! I simply place 3 liquids on one table, 3 solids at another table, and 3 balloons filled with air at a third table. I asked the students to “fool around” with the materials and write down any observation that they notice.

Well they made some very interesting observations and we created a  class chart to display their observations.

Next week we will be looking a little more closely at matter and try to gain an understanding of how matter transforms from a solid to a liquid to a gas.

Measurement

During Module 2 of Engage NY we will be working with measurement. To kick off our module we used 1s unit blocks to measure different objects in the class, but before they could measure they had to predict what their measurement would be. The kids really enjoyed the activity; especially the part where they compared their prediction to their actual measurement. We had great conversations that centered around predicting measurement, how do we know where to start and end our measurement, and what happens if our measuring tool is not long enough. The conversations went very well and we each learned a lot from one another.

Each day during math we always start with some type of fluency practice. I’ve found that a lot of the kids struggle with number sense. One way that we can help our student to gain a better understanding of number sense is to have them practice it. One activity is to have the kid(s) count the things around them. Anything around the house will work. For example count the number of skittle in a bag, the quantity of their snack, the number of books on a bookshelf, or the number of utensils you have. It’s for the sole purpose of practicing counting.  First have them predict and then actually count them. The more practice they have with counting the more fluent they will become. In class we have been working on counting by 1s, 2s, 5s, and 10s. We’ve created a chart to monitor their progress and to watch our growth! We’ve only done this one day, so I’m curious to see what happens. We may need to monitor and adjust, but the class has is very flexible.

I’m looking forward to our Red Ribbon Week this coming week and our walk on Friday! See you all on Monday!!