Mr. M's Mighty Kindergarten M&M's

The children are getting more attentive to the routine of the classroom.  Clean-ups are getting done faster, and quiet hands are increasing.  Today was a little less about play and a little more focused on academics.  As always, calendar, weather, and patterns started our day.  We will rotate the children daily to have the opportunity to lead the class in identifying, the month, season, day of the month, and day of the week.  We also count the days using place values go ones, ties, and hundreds.  Practice with your child the days of the week at home if you have a calendar handy.  We also have a song we sing to help remember.  See if they know it yet. Days of the week, days of the week, days of the week(sung to the tune of the Adams Family TV show from ages ago. Snapping their fingers, or snapping/clucking their tongue to the rhythm.

I read The Kissing Hand which some knew already .  It's about a mother raccoon and her young child whose 1st day of school is the next day.  She teaches him that she will always be with him and in his heart through this tender act of kissing his open palm, which travels up his arm, and jumps into his heart.  See if they can recall parts of the story for comprehension.  In the end when the young raccoon no longer has any fear, he returns the kiss.  Try kissing the open palm of your child before school, fingers part and see if the love travels up his or her arm and leaps over into there heart.

I also showed them how to play the Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed Game which was preceded by the book of the same name.  Most now know how the tune goes, and how to play the game during choice time.

Today we started math with two lessons on counting from 1 to 5 and how you can use counters to represent things we count.  I preceded the lesson with asking the children to look around the room to see how numbers are used in the classroom.  Most all could point to an object such as a clock, the thermometer in Puffs terrarium, and the calendar days of the month to see how numbers are used.  You challenge them to show you things around them that use numbers.
We added a short song to our morning routine "Rise and Shine", along with the Pledge which we started yesterday.  We again journaled today with favorite food as the topic to draw and write about if they could.
I emphasized with them that one of the worst bad words you can say is "can't".  We should always try our best no matter what.  "Our kindergarten best."  On our white lap boards we practiced writing our names.

As always,
Mr. M.