ask me about tuesday, september 10, 2024

We started our day looking at these photographs to talk about what we noticed and wondered, and worked together to find out how they all go together.  The children quickly understood all these animals are moving fast.  I introduced the word "nimble" to the children since we were working with the nursery rhyme Jack Be Nimble.  We defined "nimble" as quick and moving easily.  We took time to look at a few quick clips that showed some of these animals running, or a football player running in and out of a bunch of other players to get a touchdown.  We had to look at Simone Biles running and vaulting, and we did watch one of her floor routines.  We found out the candle jumping, as Jack did, was actually something people long ago in England did at fairs.  They jumped the candle to get good luck.  We spent time working with rhyming words from the nursery rhyme.  We are getting better at identifying words that rhyme, and today I couldn't even trick them by giving them two words that begin with the beginning sound.  Most of them knew right away that the ending part of the word has to rhyme for the words to be rhyming words.
We will be starting our weather unit later this week, but I wanted to get a jump on it by reading a fun read aloud.  We read Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, by Judi Barrett and listened for weather words.  When we heard a weather word in the text, we put our thumb up.  Well, I did a really good job with my thumb, but the children were so distracted by the pictures, they did more listening to the story than for weather words.  That's perfectly okay!  I am glad they enjoyed the story, but they were so hungry when we finished the story.  Good thing it was time for lunch!
Speaking of lunch, I encouraged other children to sit at the table I sit at today.  I want to give other children a chance to sit with me so we can talk and get to know each other better.  Soon we will rotate by table groups who sits at the teacher table, but for now we will just be a little more random.
While I did some testing today, the children worked in a booklet I made about the people who work in our school.  We are working hard to learn the names of the workers we come in contact with so the children can call them by their name.  We also are talking about what they do at the school.  Today we worked with the kindergarten team.  
In math we played the game "What's My Rule."  I used the pictures from our Picture Talk and moved them into two groups.  The children had to determine how I grouped them.  Then I played the game using them.  I called children up to stand on the purple part of the carpet and the children tried to figure out what my rule was for choosing those children.  They did a great job with this game!
We also did a couple math pages with things that go together.  I am getting them used to getting right to work and working for short periods on the papers.  We used a sand timer and most everyone finished in time.  Eureka Math wants the children to work independently on the problem set papers and gives the time they should have to complete it.  If it looks like your child colored messy, well they are learning to color quickly so they can show what they know, not produce beautiful pictures for an art museum.  If they start scribbling we will talk again about how we can color quick but still be neat about it!

Have a nice evening!
​Miss Wolfe