Math Centers

One of the favorite parts of our week is Math Center time.  We take 15-20 minutes out several times a week to work with partners or by ourselves to focus and strengthen number sense and fluency.  Practice becomes fun when games like Roll and Record and Coin Toss and number card ordering, one to one correlations with beads on a pipe cleaner and popsicle stick tally marks are part of the tasks.  Students chose the center in which they want to participate with the idea that they must try a new center each time. 

L. Is working with tally marks and number cards.  This activity helps a student with counting and grouping items into groups of five. 

Push, Pull or Both?

Sorting at the end of discussion

Hand motions 

Working with small groups

B showing where her object should be placed in the Venn Diagram

We have been discovering how things move and what makes the objects move.  Through a variety of activities with partners and small groups, our friends came up with hand motions to show how things move- slow, fast, up, down, all around and zig-zag as well as hand motions of the forces of push and pull.  After exploring these forces students worked together to categorize objects by the forces that cause motion and used a Venn diagram to sort them.  Way to go, friends!

Amelia Bedelia at the JCA Theater

Our class enjoyed the performance of Amelia Bedelia and many of the silly antics found in her book series.  The actors involved the students with song and dance and even spent time talking to many of our students after the show.  It was a wonderful experience with the theater.

Polar Express Day December 2013

Wearing our pajamas to school and walking to see a movie on a giant screen?  Well, only in Kindergarten and 1st grade at Chets can you have 400 friends celebrate in this way!  Chets Creek Church opened up their worship center to show this special viewing of the movie, The Polar Express. Our students were able to walk over to the building and enjoy the movie.  The children were so excited and were enthralled with the movie itself.  At the end of the movie, each student was given a bell just like the main character in the movie and we all walked back to school for more celebration activities.  Jingle bells could be heard down the street with our group of friends!

Pow Wow Celebration November 2013

Our Kindergarten Pow Wow celebration was a huge success!  We started the day with a Pow Wow ceremony out on the soccer field where over 200 children sang and performed 3 different dances.  Once that was completed, we spent the rest of the day visiting different centers such as Indian Food Tasting, Clay Art, Storytelling in the giant teepee, Outdoor Scavenger Hunt and Interactive Music.  The day was a highlight and will remain a vivid memory for this sweet group of students.  Thank you to every parent who donated materials to make the costumes and help with our celebration!  This is one of our favorite Kindergarten days!PO