how many?

We have been answering "how many" questions throughout the school year; How many days have we been in school? How many Kindergarteners are here today? How many Kindergarteners have a birthday in September? 

These questions connect to our community and invite students to develop their counting and cardinality skills. When we ask students to respond to a question in different ways, we are supporting the development of foundational skills for solving future story problems. This week we have been using our morning message and morning meeting time to practice answering and showing how many.

Combinations of Five

How many red dots? How many blue dots? How many in all?

How many friends in the sand?

We can show how many in different ways. 

We can show how many using our math hands, dots, numbers, or pictures!

How many friends at your table?

How many hands at your table?

This question provided an introduction to counting in different ways. You can count how many hands by one's or by two's. You have 2 friends at your table and 4 hands at your table!

We discussed what our "how many" question might be on Monday. Kindergarteners said maybe the question will be how many feet or how many masks at your table. Nikki wondered if it will be how many fingers at your table. 

You can ask how many questions at home, too. Invite your child to count and show how many people or stuffed unicorns in their home or how many chicken nuggets are on their plate!

nature journals

The children have been growing as writers through their exploration and reflection in the natural world. Following nature class in mid-October they responded to the prompt; show one way a seed can travel. They practiced using pictures and beginning sounds to share their learning of how seeds travel!

This week we drew like scientists. We carefully observed one pressed leaf (another gift from Chris Gluck!) and talked about what we noticed; thin lines, a curved edge, a stem. Then the children drew the details, like scientists, and added color. 

Our work as scientists connects to our growth as writers and readers. We practiced sorting the Fall books we have been reading; Is it a teaching book or a storybook? How do you know?

Teaching books are books that teach you, providing information about leaves and Fall on every page. A storybook tells a story with characters, there's a beginning, a middle, and an end.

On Friday we read Zonia's Rain Forest. Zonia's home is in the Amazon rain forest. Zonia, like us, loves nature. She spends time with the trees, plants, and animals. Her forest, a rain forest, looks different than our Westford forest. Her forest and our forest are alive with beauty, animals, and life. Our forests are different and the same. Zonia is connected to her forest and we are connected, too. When Zonia notices that trees in her forest are being cut down, she shares the importance of listening to the needs of the forest. Zonia's story helped us to begin important conversations as scientists, artists, and explorers in nature while encouraging the learning of communities around the world.

Zonia said we must listen to the forest.
Why is it important for us to listen to and learn about nature?

BS- We need trees, trees make air for us to breathe. Learning about trees and nature helps.
IE- We need nature to live, honestly, we just need it. We can't cut trees down, that's really mean.
ES- We need to learn about nature to help us love it.

On Thursday we talked about a safe place for our scientific drawing and writing to live; a nature journal.

We collected sticks for the spine of our journals.
A book has a front and back cover and a spine holding it together.

This was a meaningful way to reinforce "book knowledge" as well as integrate counting and cardinality.

Before our collection; How many sticks do we need? 23! Why? We have 23 kids!
After our collection; How many sticks do you think we collected? 24, 23, 25...

How can we figure out how many? Count! How can we organize our counting? 10 Frames!

How many in all? 31- 10, 20, 30 and 1 more.

Our Nature Journals