K1 Prep - 7/31/18

These K1 kids are getting ready for school to start in a few short weeks.  We've all mastered writing our name and some amazing things were happening in journals today.  Many kids took the lesson last week to heart and were able to draw a picture and label it in their journals.  I am so proud of them!

 We did a lot of math today.  We practiced counting to 100 and learned about the greater than and less than sign.  We talked about how it's a greedy alligator who wants to eat the most cookies possible.  We did a cut and paste activity and it really shows how solid of a number sense your child has - check their work in your backpack.  If it's not that great there is work to be done on the numbers 0-10.

The biggest lesson in reading today was b vs d.  That's a tricky one.  We made beds from our hands to be able to check if a printed letter is a b or a d.  Reference the picture in order to practice at home.

K1 Prep Summer Camp

We are having such a fun time in our K1 Prep camp this summer.  I get to work with this wonderful group of kids and watch them grow a ton in a short amount of time.  We're reading and writing and jumping and singing all day long. 

 Today was super fun because we started talking about sorting and classifying objects.  I dumped out a giant container of coins on the floor and then showed the kids a penny.  We talked about it is worth one cent and is copper colored.  Then all the kids were sent on a penny hunt to gather all of the pennies out of the pile.  We continued, one coin at a time, with the nickle (fat and medium sized), dime (tiny coin), and the quarter (the biggest of the 4).  This is a FANTASTIC activity to do at home with this age group.  Pull out your pile of coins and have them sort them into 4 groups.  Use the teaching moment to talk about names and values of coins.

We also started "Guess My Secret Rule" but didn't get to play a ton yet.  It's exactly like the Sesame Street "One of these things doesn't belong" game.  Pick 4 items where 3 have a characteristic that is the same and the fourth doesn't match that characteristic.  The kids have to pick which one doesn't fit the group AND tell why.  The telling why part is super important (it doesn't match because it's a different color/shape/size/thickness/etc).  This game is really fun to do with the contents of a silverware drawer - I plan to do exactly that on Thursday morning with this group :).

K1 Prep 7-10-18

I love teaching young learners.  They had so much fun this morning drawing what their family looks like when they go swimming.  We're already getting better at holding our pencils correctly and our drawing skills are so much improved from even last week.

 Our reading lessons went really smoothly today.  There are about a ZILLION skills that one must master when they are learning to read.  You have to look at the words, focus on one letter at a time, make the sounds, use your finger to help your eyes track, listen to the sound you're making, and put it all together.  Some of the key lessons from today included:

1. When you see a letter by itself as a word we say its name (example: a, I)
2. The first letter in a sentence is capitalized and indicates the start of a sentence.
3. A sentence ends with a period - which means "stop", or "the end"
4. New sight words were added 
5. Practice with new word families (this went so much better this week)
6. CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) word practice
7. Introduction of adjectives

Here is the beginning reading lesson from today, please practice it at home if your child has a matching page in their binder.

 This week in math we're talking about 2D and 3D shapes and location words.  Today we reviewed and learned the main shape names and then played "I spy" using shape words.

 We also pulled out the shape blocks and were able to talk about the number of faces on 3D shapes.  I do this by putting stickers with faces on each face of the block.  We can only add a new sticker if we go around a corner.