"Shape Up!" It's All About 2D and 3D Shapes

 

                                              Shape Up! It's All About 2D and 3D Shapes!

       As a kindergarten teacher, I know teaching young children about shapes is essential to their early education. Understanding the properties of two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) shapes lays the foundation for more advanced math concepts later on.

                                                                 Pattern Block Work

                                                                        

    First, let's talk about 2D shapes. These are flat shapes that have only two dimensions: length and width. Some examples of 2D shapes you can introduce to your kindergarten students include circles, squares, triangles, rectangles, and rhombuses. You can ask your students to identify these shapes in their environment, such as in books, buildings, and objects around them. The Kinder Bunnies had fun finding these shapes around our classroom. 

            We discovered that our classroom has many cylinders compared to other shapes. 

                                       By: Charles Ghinga and Illustrated by AG Jatkowska

                                              What shapes can you find in your lunch today?

                                                  

                                                    One of our projects with a box!

    Moving on to 3D shapes, these have three dimensions: length, width, and depth. These shapes have volume and take up space. Some examples of 3D shapes you can teach your kindergarten students include spheres, cubes, pyramids, cones, and cylinders. You can use everyday objects like balls, blocks, and cans to help your students understand these shapes better. After reading Boxitects, we built 3D zoo homes for our tigers. 

                                                                      A box fire truck.

 

    The Kinder Bunnies loved using games, puzzles, and hands-on activities to make learning about shapes engaging. You can also encourage your students to create shapes using play dough or sticks. 

                                We ended our shape unit with a "shape dance." Give it a try. 
                                                                                                          

                                                                   

                                                                           Shape Up!

     

Marching into Math

 

                         Rainbows, Leprechauns, and Gold!

            March is off to a great start with rainbow and unicorn counting collections. We used

our tiny erasers from Target to get the month off to a fun start. Every Friday, we work with our different counting collections. A counting collection can be anything you want it to be. A collection of buttons, Legos, blocks, tiny erasers, socks, rocks, and the list goes on and on. Anything you find in a collection can be a collection to count and sort. We read Dr. Seuss's book 123 to kick off his birthday and our counting work. 

                                                                             

                                                                               

            We use five, ten, and twenty frames to help us build our number sense. I created patterns, compared groups, and solved addition and subtraction problems. What kind of collection would you make?       

                                     

        The Bunnies enjoyed playing a pot of gold dice game, counting and comparing coin groups, and more. 

                                                               

                                                                       
                                                                              Keep on counting!

                 

February is Filled with Counting

 

                        February is for Counting and Creating

                The Kinder Bunnies were very busy this month with the Lunar New Year, Valentine's Day, Presidents' Day, and Leap Year. These special days offered us time to read, count, and create. 

                We created dragons for the Lunar New Year. We continued our non-standard measurement practice by using coins to measure our creations; we learned that some of us were born in the year of the Rooster and others in the year of the Dog. Thanks to one of our parents, we learned how to write numbers from one to ten in Chinese and how to count out loud. Grab a copy of Happy Chinese New Year! By Jannie Ho and enjoy a new book in your library.

                         

                       

                The Bunnies celebrated Valentine's Day by reading The Day It Rained Hearts. We created our own umbrellas and used hearts to create different math stories. We also used hearts for matching numbers, counting and sorting, patterns, and more. 

                Even though money isn't a standard in kindergarten, we couldn't resist using pennies to count and learn about President Lincoln. We also read a sweet story called A Penny In My Pocket by CM Harris. We learned that a kind gift can go a long way. 

               

                                       Counting is all around you. What will you count today?

Wonderful Winter Math

 

                           Winter Counting

         The rainy weather in Southern California has brought snow to our mountains, which means it's a bit colder than the Bunnies are used to. We're embracing the winter snap with some fun new stories and, of course, math practice.

       We love Arctic animals, so we couldn't wait to read the book Sizing Up Winter by Lizann Flatt. Kindergartners love the opportunity to measure different animals. We made polar bears and penguins to test our non-standard measurements. 

                           
                                   

Over in the Arctic by Marianne Berkes was another big hit. Counting polar baby animals is always a big hit. 

The rich vocabulary in Ten Animals in Antarctica by Moria Court helped us with our writing. 

It wouldn't be winter without reading Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. 

We wished that our snowballs were real, but we still had fun creating different number combinations.

We also went on a winter nature walk and counted birds, trees, sticks, and rocks. What would you count on a winter walk? 

Remember that you are always math-mazing! 

Counting Through the Holidays: A Kindergarten Adventure

                                                      Happy Holidays!    

    The holiday season offers a magical opportunity for kindergarteners to learn counting festively. Integrating learning into holiday-themed activities is how the Kinder Bunnies add a little extra fun to their day. We have two of our favorite holiday books perfect for this time of the year.

                                                 

       We drew our own sleds for this math activity and read a book called "Ten on the Sled" by Kim Norman. The Kinder Bunnies loved the animals on the sled, teaching them to count backward in a fun winter setting. We used this story to graph the story characters, along with using our sled drawings as a math mat. 

    Instead of animals on our sleds, we used clipart pictures of toys, gifts, and candy to make up our addition and subtraction stories.  

    We created glitter snowflake art and used pom-poms to continue our addition and subtraction stories with "Ten Sparkly Snowflakes by Tiger Tales. The Kinder Bunnies loved using glitter glue to make their math mats pop. We'll save them and use them again after the new year for more winter fun. They also liked counting backward again with forest animals. We compared and contrasted the two stories during our reading block. 

* This year, all of the Kinder Bunnies are celebrating Christmas.

The use of trees and sleds was parent-approved.

    One of our families donated a math activity that helped us practice counting and decorating. The felt trees were used with dice, one or more depending on "the challenge." Each Bunny would roll and decorate their tree, snowman, or gingerbread man with holiday decorations.* The smaller trees used beads for decorations. 

    We liked the activity so much that we created our own trees and then graphed the stickers on each tree. We knew there had to be a book to support our tree theme, and we found 1"0 Trim-the-Tree'ers" by Janet Schulman.   

    Counting can be part of many holiday activities, from baking and decorating to making art. These activities help reinforce number skills enjoyably. 

                                        Counting the Joys of the Season!

It's Looking Like Fall!

 

                                                            September Fall Counting Fun

    The Kinder Bunnies started the month of September with counting and engineering with fall things. We enjoyed reading Count Down to Fall by Fran Hawk. This book allowed us to practice counting backward from ten while learning new vocabulary words such as maple, birch, aspen, oak, pine, and more. It inspired us to create our own leaf collections.

                                                           

                                       We counted, sorted, and graphed our leaves.                              
  

    The beginning of fall would be fun without trying to engineer 2D and 3D shapes with pieces of apples. The Bunnies were very creative this year. 

                                                                Posted with Parent's Permission

Vincent * engineered an apple person, and Leila was the first Bunny to get measured with apples. 

                                                                    * Posted with Parent's Permission

        We rounded up the month by counting bears and graphing our annual bear picnic.

                                                 

Fall is a great time to practice our counting skills. Start with a nature walk and collect leaves, sticks, or rocks. Graph the fall fruit in your kitchen. How many pumpkins do you see around the neighborhood on your walks? 

Count On!

Kick-Start Kindergarten: Counting and Sorting with School Supplies

 

Happy New School Year!

        It's August, so it's time to meet my new group of Kinder Bunnies. The Kinder Bunnies arrive with bright eyes, eager minds, and school supplies! Most of us remember the excitement of getting new crayons, pencils, and notebooks. But did you know these everyday items offer learning opportunities, especially in mathematics? 

         We have been working on sorting school supplies by color, shape, and size, along with counting. Let’s dive into how to utilize school supplies for counting and sorting activities, setting the foundation for your kindergartener’s math journey.

  Crayon Color Counting

Supplies: A box of crayons 24 or more.

Activity:

- Spread the crayons out and have your child sort them by color.

- Once sorted, ask them to count how many crayons are in each group.

- Extension: Introduce simple addition by combining groups. For example, "How many crayons do we have if we combine the red and blue ones?"

-Ask classmates or family members what their favorite color is to create a graph. 

                                    Pencil Length Comparison

Supplies Needed: Different-sized pencils, cubes, or any object to help with non-standard measurement.

Activity:

- Line up the pencils from shortest to longest.

- Ask questions such as "Which pencil is the shortest? Which is the longest?"

- Extension: Use cubes or other objects to measure each pencil.

                                Button Size and Shape Sort

Supplies Needed: Various buttons (from home or craft stores)

Activity:

- Spread the buttons and have your kindergartener sort them by size or shape.

- Count how many buttons are in each group.

- Discuss the different attributes of each button: size, number of holes, color, etc. * Not recommended for children four years old. Watch carefully.

              Remember to read Pete the Cat's Four Groovy Buttons.

                               

Sticker Patterns

Supplies Needed: A packet of stickers

Activity:

- Create patterns using the stickers, like circle-star-circle or blue-red-blue-red.

- Ask your child to extend the pattern.

- Count how many of each sticker type are in the pattern.

Wrap-up!

       Using school supplies for counting and sorting integrates learning into a fun, hands-on activity and familiarizes young students with the tools they’ll be using throughout the year. It's a win-win!

      The beginning of the school year is essential for setting the foundation for future learning. Turning something as simple as school supplies into a learning tool teaches your kindergarteners that learning opportunities are everywhere!

                               Happy counting and sorting!