Our theme for this wonderful month is "Sights and Sounds of Winter". Such a fun and clever theme to learn about what makes this time of year special. My focus for the blog this month is going to be centered around math and reasoning. I will do my best to show how we incorporate math in our everyday lessons and play.
So much of what we do in our daily circle time routine is centered around math. Patterns, counting, number and shape recognition, and so on. Each morning, during circle time, we look for and add a new number to our calendar. We then count up to that number. And then we count backwards from 10 and blast off at 0. We rotate the calendar helper each day so that everyone gets plenty of turns. Of course every day someone claims that they haven't ever had a turn which then sparks a whole conversation about taking turns... *teacher frustration. Any who… I tend to find that doing the calendar is one of the highlights of our morning. The kids really get excited to pick the number, tape it up, and use the counting hand to lead us in our count. We also talk about what pattern we see and figure out what comes next. Such as, star star, bell bell, star star, bell bell. This month we see an AA BB pattern.
*disclaimer- The reason it's only the 2nd and we have 11 numbers up already is because I'm taking a few extra days off this month to sail the carribean with Mickey and my family and I wanted to do a count down to when we will be back in our class for school.
Because this is an extra short month, I'm not following the timeline suggested in my MGT teacher manual. I'm doubling up on some lessons so we can make sure to get in as much fun and learning possible before christmas vacation.
Today we skipped ahead a bit and worked on some mouse math. Since we've been in school for three months, our math activities are getting a bit more challenging. After we cut out our pieces, we played a little MGT game. I hid the numbers 7 and 8 around the room and the kids got to pretend they were mice and sniff out the numbers. The mice to find the number got a sticker. (They are all able to recognize numbers at this point so that makes my job a bit easier.) After that, I gave instructions on how to use these math pieces. They were to pick out one of the equations (2+5=?) and place two mice on the cheese, then 5 mice on the cheese and count how many there were to find the answer. Together as a class we did a few of these. There were lots of confused looks! They were still eager to learn but some of it was not quite sinking in. That's OK though! This is new for them but we will keep working on it this month. They are beginning to understand what adding is and the terminology that goes along with addition. Because they pictures are so fun and colorful and because we get to play games with math, they don't get too discouraged and continue to build confidence in what they can do.
Because our theme this month is sights and sounds of winter, we will be learning about instruments and music. And since math and music go hand in hand, these kids are going to be learning so much without even realizing it! Music is all about counting. It doesn't matter what notes you play on any instrument if you can't keep count. Some kids do this kind of counting without even know they are doing it, for others it is something that they have to learn. But it's something they can learn without much effort.
On Monday we made drums and Kazoos while we talked about wood wind instruments and different kinds of drums (like i said… doubling up on things). I looked everywhere for my clarinet and couldn't find it. I really wanted to show them one and let them hold it and blow in it. I have no idea what happened to it! Seriously? Who loses a clarinet?
After the drums and kazoos were all assembled, we worked on keeping a beat to a 4/4 count. A bit challenging at this age to all clap and beat their drums together but still fun for us. We also, listened to our new cd for this month and learned and sang about making loud and quiet music. The kazoos were a hit! It took a while for some to get the hang of but like any instrument, practice makes perfect!
We are going to have a great month! I'm so excited to be part of the magic and wonder that comes with Christmas and preschoolers. Always grateful for what I get to do!
See you all next week!
xoxo- Miss Mandy
No comments:
Post a Comment