Jelly Bean Math

In honor of Easter, I decided we would do a fun math activity with one of everyone's favorite Easter candies...Jelly Beans!!!

It was very fun and actually right on time as we had just done our topic opener the day before about sorting and classifying. 

I gave each child a random assortment of jelly beans and a work mat. First, they had to sort their jelly beans. I asked them what would be a good way to sort them and we decided that color was the best attribute to sort by since they were all the same shape. 

Here are some of our sorted beans. 

  After we sorted, we learned about a new way to organize and count...tally marks! The children had to make tally marks to organize their data and show how many of each color jelly bean they had in their bag.

 Then the children used the data they collected to make a graph showing how many they had of each color. We learned that having tally marks to show the amount makes it a little bit easier than having to count and re-count to find out how many you have.

 Here are a few of our finished graphs!

When we were all finished, we answered questions about the data we collected. Which color jelly beans did you have the most of? Which color jelly beans did you have the least of? How many more yellow jelly beans did you have than green? This was a great way for students to compare and understand the data that they had in front of them.

This activity was a fun way to finish out our last day of school before spring break. The kids were really impressed that they could actually do math with jelly beans. What a yummy math lesson!

Searching for Spring

Each day in Kindergarten, we discuss the season and the weather. As we have gotten closer and closer to spring, the children were very excited about transitioning into our new season. They are looking forward to warmer weather and more time to play outside. They are really excited that after spring comes summer...and I can't blame them. I love the hot weather and sunny skies myself!

On the first day of spring, March 21, a student said, "Mrs. Tucker, it is the first day of spring, but it feels like winter!" I had to agree. It seems we've had colder weather since spring's arrival, but I assured the children that it is, in fact, Spring and that warmer weather is coming!

So since the temperature is not cooperating, I thought I would help the students find other signs that spring is here by doing a little scavenger hunt!

 

 

We headed out around town and looked for several different things that showed us that spring is in full swing and we can expect nice weather to come!

Here are a few of the things we found...

We found a bird nest!

 Lots and LOTS of birds!

 Buds on a tree!

 

 Green Leaves!

 A puddle from all of those springtime showers!

We also found several other things like a garden planted, ants, bees, and even a butterfly. We discussed how all of these things show us that winter is leaving and spring is here and soon we'll see even more of it. It was nice to discuss how the trees and flowers had changed from winter and exciting to see all of the new life blossoming all around us!

HAPPY SPRING EVERYONE~!

Us On The Map

For the past two weeks, we have been studying maps. As an introduction to maps, we read the story, Me On The Map. 

This story is great because it gives the students an idea of their own place in space.

 The little girl in the story starts in her own place, her bedroom and then draws maps all the way out to her planet, Earth. The illustrations are wonderful because they first show a map and then show a child drawn map to show how the girl drew her own map.

After reading the story, we made our very own maps using a great template I found online. We started with our houses. I demonstrated how to make a map of your house and then the children made their own maps of what their houses looked like, labeling important places like the kitchen, bedrooms, and bathrooms.

  

Next, we moved out a little farther and the students learned about their streets. Their weekend homwork was to find out their address and then they had to draw their street, including their house and a few neighbor's houses.

   

 After we all made our own streets, we started to talk about our city. We looked at some google maps of our town and found important places like our school and other familiar local businesses like Groucho's Deli and the library. The children were given the option to draw a street map or to draw three places that they enjoy visitng in our city, Statesville.

Next, we went out even farther and learned about our state, North Carolina. To give the students a little information about North Carolina, we read the book, T is for Tarheel by Carol Crane. This book highlights fun and important things about our very own state. Then we looked at a map of North Carolina and found Statesville on it and noted other places that we had learned about either in our story or had visited on our own. The children then drew a map of North Carolina and added a star for where Statesville would be. They also had to choose a fun North Carolina place or thing to add to their maps. Many of them picked favorite places that they have visited.

 Next, we zooped out even farther and learned about The United States. We read the book, A is for America to help us learn a few facts about our country. Then we looked at a map of The United States and found where our own state belongs and also discussed different states that we recognized or had visited. The children were asked to draw a map of The United States and then put a star where North Carolina belongs and then draw something cool about The United States.  

The Statue of Liberty

 

Mickey Mouse





 

Disney World

Finally, we zoomed ALL the way out and discussed our planet, Earth. We pulled up Earth on Google Maps and watched how we could zoom in or out to see from our very own houses all the way out to Earth and vice versa. The kids wanted to look up all kinds of different places. we discussed why the Earth looks like it does from space and learned why parts of it are blue, green , or white. The children had to make their  very own Earth and show themselves on it.   





We'll dig much deeper into maps in First Grade, but this was a great introduction to maps and to help us know where we live. The children enjoyed making their maps each day and I was really impressed with their great work!

Cat in the Hat Day {Also known as saving the best for last!}

To finish out our fun Suess-tastic celebration this week, we read The Cat in the Hat. This is one of my very favorite Seuss stories because that crazy cat makes the most fun mischief!

Today I have a little bit (or a huge) frog in my throat so instead of me reading the story to them, I let Justin Bieber do it. The kids loved getting to see one of their favorite singers reading the story instead!

You can watch it at home here.

After we read the story, we discussed the different characters in the story. I asked the children how each one of them behaved. I loved their answers.

Cat: Bad, Good, Silly, Crazy

Thing One and Thing 2: Wild

Fish: Follows the Rules, Good

They clearly have a great understanding of how to describe characters as well as what is ok to do and what might be a little bit too much!

After we discussed each character, I asked the students to pick which one was their favorite. The only catch was that they had to be able to tell me why this was their favorite character.

Once they decided their favorite character, they were able to come and add their choice to our class graph.

I loved their answers describing why the liked their characters.... The Cat "had a lot of fun and then he cleaned up his mess", Thing One and Thing Two "did lots of wild stuff", and my favorite was describing the fish.

"He was trying to tell them what to do and I think he was being nice"

I'm a rules person myself, so my obvious choice was the fish and I loved that one child in my class agreed with me :)

Here is how the rest of the class chose their favorites.

After we made our graph we discussed which one was the class favorite and how many more people liked The Cat than Thing One and Thing Two and how many more people liked Thing One and Thing Two than The Fish.

This was a fun activity to do after reading the book and it gave the students a chance to explore the characters in the story a little deeper and think about each character and which one they liked the best based on their actions in the story. It also reviewed graphing and  several other great math terms including "how many more", "how many fewer", "most", and "fewest".

Later this afternoon we'll be watching the animated version of The Cat in the Hat,, which I know will not disappoint!

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

Today we read another Dr. Seuss favorite, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. The class has really enjoyed all of the books we've read this week and this one was no exception! We have enjoyed comparing all of the different books and how Dr. Seuss always does similar things in his books. The kids are really enjoy the made up animals- they keep asking "What's a grox", "What's a glox?', "What's a wump?" and I show them the picture and explain that one of the cool things that Dr. Seuss liked to do was make up crazy animals and I am encouraging them to use their imaginations and make up their own crazy animals!

After we read the book, we got our own fish and made a One Fish, Two Fish graph. First, the students had to sort their fish into groups. This is a perfect introduction to sorting, which we will be studying later on in the year. We started by discussing what sorting means and the class decided it meant "putting things together that are the same". It was also a great review of graphs.

 To make our graphs, they started by putting their fish that were the same into groups. 

Next, the students placed their groups onto the graph. 

Then, the students had to color their graphs to coordinate with the number of goldfish that they had on their graph. This helps the students to understand that the goldfish that they physically put onto the graph are the same as the numbers that they color in as well as the actual number that they represent. This helps to bridge the gap between concepts: concrete (the goldfish), semi concrete (the colored squares), and abstract (the actual number of fish). 

Wacky Wednesday!



Today was Wacky Wednesday in our classroom. We got to read this really fun book by Dr. Seuss! This is a great interactive story because there are lots of things to find that are wacky in the story. I scanned the story on to our Smart board so that the children could actually come up and find the wacky things and circle them.

There are lots of crazy things and the children had a great time looking at the pictures and trying to find things that were out of place. Lots of them are very silly such as a mouse chasing a cat, a palm tree in the toilet, and a house with no door and a tree growing out of the chimney! This activity was not only fun, but a great way for the children to work on their visual discrimination skills. Some of the things were obvious, like the table with a peppermint leg, but they had to look really hard to find some of the wacky things! They also had to use reasoning and critical thinking to figure out which things belonged and which didn't.

In honor of Wacky Wednesday we had our very own wacky Wednesday. The children got to dress up wacky tacky and they looked phenomenal! I really enjoyed getting to see all the crazy clothes and hairstyles today- this may be the best wacky tacky day we've ever had in Mrs. Tucker's class!

We're having a great time celebrating Dr. Seuss's birthday, but all this fun is wearing us out!