Children love to play games

In the classroom, we actively practice new strategies and develop math fluency through hands-on activities, such as games, puzzles etc.  We also work together because cooperative learning encourages different ways of thinking. We can count, show one-to-one correspondence, order and compare numbers, subitize (quickly identify the number of items in a small set without counting), estimate, decompose numbers (break a number into smaller parts) and form numerals correctly.

At home, playing games is a wonderful way to share time with family members, to have fun, and to learn math concepts.

In simple card games such as Go Fish, Concentration, War or Crazy Eights children learn to identify numerals, match numerals to the number of objects, recognize more, less and equal and practice memory skills. They also develop fine motor coordination by picking up and handling the cards.

By playing dominoes or games with dice, children learn to count the dots and relate those dots to the number they represent. Moving game pieces the right number of spaces on a board adds the concept of one-to-one correspondence (being able to point to an object as it is counted), and constantly comparing the rolled numbers helps develop number sense.

Games are also a great way to spend quality time together on these cold, rainy nights.  Have fun!

The children have been working on letter identification (e.g., upper and lower-case, in different fonts), letter formation, letter-sound matches and generating words that begin with a given letter.  Here we are doing some activities for the letter ‘Aa’.

The ability to use the senses to make exploratory observations is a curricular competency of the science curriculum for kindergarten.  The little scientists of Division 12  practiced this competency by using their five senses to describe the properties of our class pumpkin.

We described what our pumpkin looked like: orange, round, small, short, skin, stem, ribs.  We shook the pumpkin and heard it rattle.  We took off the lid and looked inside: pulp, seeds, stringy goo.  We smelled the pumpkin:  phew!  We touched the pulp and separated the seeds.   Finally, we cooked the seeds and tasted them: delicious!

We were surprised by the number of seeds that were in our small pumpkin.  We found out that if a pumpkin is dark orange and has a lot of ribs, it has been growing longer and will have more seeds.

We also learned about the life cycle of a pumpkin (seed, seedling, plant, vine, flower, green pumpkin, orange pumpkin), and what pumpkins need in order to grow (soil, sun, water, oxygen).

Ask me to tell you what I know about pumpkins.