Phonograms: We have introduced ALL of the single letter phonograms (a-z)! Yay, us! We will continue working on these phonograms (learning how to print them and knowing their sounds) in the weeks and months ahead. Home support is always appreciated! If you don’t already own a set of phonogram cards, you can purchase them at the office. This program is used K-3 at Highroad so they are a good investment!
A good ipad app to download for some extra printing practice is Little Writer – The Tracing App for Kids. The Kindies recently enjoyed using the school ipads to review their letters and numbers:
Centers: Each day in Kindergarten we do “centers,” (sorry for using the American spelling! I purchased my daily schedule cards from an American supplier.) once in the morning and again in the afternoon. Some of the centers are learning focussed and some play based. This week we introduced a new activity during center time called “Write the Room.” The children at this center walk around the room with a clipboard and paper and hunt for special cards that are posted around the classroom. This week’s Write the Room cards featured phonogram letters. When the children found a card with an “c” (for example) they would find that letter on their paper and trace it. Then they would hunt for another phonogram hiding somewhere else in the classroom. Here are a few photos of some children engaged in this activity:
Math – We have been working on counting sets of objects and printing our numbers 1-9. The children have been playing all kinds of games. You can ask them about “Mingle,” “Race to Fill a Cup,” and “Roll a Number.” We have also been practising “subitizing”! Big word, huh! It basically means knowing how many are in a set without having to count. This is an important skill in developing number sense. One way that we subitize is by rolling a dice and calling out the number (without first counting). The kids are getting very quick at this!
Read to Self – We have been working on our stamina and are now up to …drum roll, please…eleven minutes! Woot, Woot! I wish you all could be in the classroom during Read to Self time to see how completely engaged they are with their books! It’s so wonderful to experience! After the children have reached 15 minutes of stamina (and we have our party!) I will have the children read to themselves at the end of each day. It’s a nice quiet way to prepare for home time and should be a little quicker to put away when it’s time to leave. Here are a few photos of some pretty cute readers:
