Stick and Stone

Over the past few weeks, the children having been reading the story 

Stick and Stone written by Beth Ferry.  

The story focuses on two individuals who are wondering the earth lonely and alone. 

They have a chance meeting at the playground and through an incident with a "bully", 

they become friends.

Each Wellness block, the children were asked questions about the story,

 friendship, and bullying.

For example: 

What is bullying?

Bullying is behavior that is unwanted and harmful emotionally and/or physically that is repeated.

What is a bystander?

A bystander is someone who sees or hears about a bullying situation.

In the story, the character being treated unkind was Stone and the character 

who was seen as the bully was Pinecone.  The bystander was Stick.

Ask your child: What did Stick to do "stick up for" Stone?

The last Wellness block, we reread the story and worked on retelling the story.

The children colored and cut the pieces taping them to popsicle sticks. 

 We then took turns retelling the story using specific details about the story. 

Ask your child to retell the story to you.

The children really enjoyed the story about friendship and 

seemed to learn many concepts throughout our Wellness blocks.  

We all learn that together Stick and Stone make a perfect 10!

Friends make a perfect 10!

Daily 5

The children have been working very hard at building their stamina during our Daily 5 block. 

 What is Daily 5?  

Daily 5 is a time of the day when the children work on skills either by themselves, in a small group, or with me.  Daily 5 consists of Read to Self, Work on Writing, Writing Station, Listening to Reading, or Word Work.  All of these centers are a time for the students to build their skills and stamina.  

What is stamina?  

Stamina is training your body and brain to do it the right way!

Read to Self is an opportunity for the children to build their reading skills independently.  The children choose books for their book boxes that they are interested in reading or enjoy their Poetry Binder and enjoy reading the poems.  We have been working on the 3 ways to read:

1. Read the pictures.

2. Read the words.

3. Retell the story.  

This is also a time for the children to practice touching each word and looking for those trick words or sight words we have been learning.

Word Work is another opportunity for the students to build their skills and stamina.  Often times, it is a game or worksheet where they are practicing a specific skill, such as trick or sight words, rhyming, identifying letters or beginning sounds of words, and other phonemic awareness games.

Listening to Reading is another choice for the children to listen to literature on tape or CD.  They are becoming experts at a CD player.  The children listen to the story and respond to the reading.  The children illustrate and label their drawings to respond to the reading.  This is a time they children reflect upon the story and answer the questions.  There are many prompts the children are answering. 

 What is your favorite part?

What is the setting of the story?

Who was the main character?

What happened at the beginning, middle and end of the story?

Work on Writing is another choice the children can choose from.  Each student has their own Writer's Notebook kept in their book boxes.  They have the opportunity to write about anything!  The students are beginning to write and are sharing what they wrote.  These little ones have lots to share!

The Writing Station is changed monthly to go along with different monthly themes.  Each week the children have a different task to complete.  They might have to label a picture, or write a list, write a story or write a letter.  The children use the vocabulary cards hanging on the wall to help support their writing.  Each task has "I can" sentences on the worksheet guiding the children to become their very best writers!

Daily 5 sure is a very busy time of the day where the children build their stamina and reading/writing skills.  I am so proud of how much they have grown in such a short amount of time!

Halloween Math Stations

For the past two weeks, the children have been exploring different mathematical concepts through the 4 different math stations.

The first math station was called "Witch's Brew".  The children have to pick a number from the cauldron and identify it.  If they can name it, they keep it.   If not, then the number goes back into the pot.  There are many interesting cards added to the brew to keep the game interesting, like "Magic Frog" where you can go again  or "Spider" to take a number from a friend. The "Lose a Broom" card makes you put one card back into the brew.   The "Witch's Brew"cauldron cards ends the game.

The next math station is Halloween playdough mats "Spooky Numbers Mats".   The children are counting, practicing number recognition, one to one correspondence, building numbers with the playdough, and using the ten frame to build the number.  

The third station was called "Costume Count".  The children had work mats and used their "eagle eye" to count each costume using the strategy of crossing out each one while counting in a scattered picture.  The children then had to write the number and color the corresponding amount.

The fourth and last math station was by far the favorite.  It was called "Boo Brew" which is a number recognition activity.  The children used the pocket chart to hide the cauldron behind a number.  Each student picked a number to find the hidden cauldron.  The one who picked the right number got to hide the cauldron next.

Each math station involved lots of mathematical concepts, as well as turn taking and team building, and the children had so much fun learning and exploring numbers!  We have math stations four days a week and are able to play with them at least 2 times. 

K.CC:3 Write numbers from 0-20. Represent a number of objects with a written numeral.

K.CC 4 Understand the relationship between numbers and quantities.

K.CC 5 Count to answer "how many?" questions about as many as 20 things arranged in a line, a rectangular array, or a circle, or as many as 10 things in a scattered configuration: count out that many objects.

K.OA 4 Given a number between 1-9 find the number that makes 10 when added.