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!

Roaring Fun and Learning: Using Dinosaurs for Counting and Basic Math Skills!

 

                                                                            

                                                                 Roaring into Math!

        The Kinder Bunnies and I enjoyed using our dinosaur collection for math. Dinosaurs are a perfect fit to spark excitement in the natural curiosity that the Bunnies possess. We showed off our number sense skills by incorporating dinosaurs into student-created math activities. 

      We started by reading several dinosaur counting books. Here are a few of our favorites that inspired us to start sorting and counting. 

                                                                                    

               They went to work sorting and counting their dinosaurs. There were great discussions about what we know about each kind of dinosaur, what they ate, and why they're extinct. It was beautiful to hear the students share why they sorted into different groups and how many were in each group. 

A few of the students decided to note their findings on Post-it notes. 

Other students decided to build a dinosaur zoo. This hands-on activity promotes number recognition and counting skills.

Another way to encourage counting is by using "dinosaur eggs." Create a set of plastic eggs with numbers. Scatter them around the room and challenge your child to find and count the eggs in order. A bonus is to have small dinosaurs inside the eggs to count and sort.

We measured our dinosaurs and created our own to use as a math counting mat. We made up our own math stories to reinforce addition and subtraction.

      Non-standard measurements using cubes and little dinosaurs kept us on task.

                               We engineered 3D shapes to capture our dinosaurs.

                          Counting dinosaur bones, and different-sized footprints, are a few other ways to bring in dinosaur counting and learning opportunities with your child. 

                                                                    Happy Learning!

                                                   

    

      

 

   

                                                       

                                             

Spring Into Math!

 

                                                               Spring Into Math!

Spring is a beautiful time of the year. With the sun shining, the birds chirping, and the flowers blooming, it is the perfect time to teach young children about the wonders of nature. It is also a great time to work on building their number sense using manipulatives.

Manipulatives are physical objects that children can touch, move, and play with. They can help children understand math concepts such as counting, addition, subtraction, and more. In this blog post, we will discuss how kindergarteners can use manipulatives during springtime to help build their number sense.

Counting flowers

One way to use manipulatives during springtime is to count flowers. You can use flower petals, plastic flowers, or even real flowers (if available) for this activity. Have the children count the number of petals on each flower and then write that number down on a piece of paper. You can also have the children group the flowers by color or type to help them practice sorting and classifying. * Note allergies and use artificial flowers if needed.

We read From The Garden: A Counting Book About Growing Food by Michael Dahl. This book inspired us to try to grow a pumpkin. 

Thanks to the rain, we have one little pumpkin so far. We'll see what happens.
 

1. Counting flowers

One way to use manipulatives during springtime is to count flowers. You can use flower petals, plastic flowers, or even real flowers (if available) for this activity. Have the children count the number of petals on each flower and then write that number down on a piece of paper. You can also have the children group the flowers by color or type to help them practice sorting and classifying.

Counting flowers

One way to use manipulatives during springtime is to count flowers. You can use flower petals, plastic flowers, or even real flowers (if available) for this activity. Have the children count the number of petals on each flower and then write that number down on a piece of paper. You can also have the children group the flowers by color or type to help them practice sorting and classifying.

Counting friendly bugs

Another fun way to spend time outside is to grab a hand lens/magnifying glass to look for ladybugs, ants, roly-pollies, worms, and more. Again, plastic bugs, bug stickers, and pictures can be used instead of actual bugs. This is a great way to practice sorting into categories and collecting data.

The Kinder Bunnies spent time on our playground looking for ladybugs in the different stages of their life cycle. We are also graphing how many days it will take for our caterpillars to become butterflies. 

We love our bug books. This book is by DK Publishing and is a big hit with my class.

Kinder Bunny entomologists looking for ladybugs.

We were surprised that it took sixteen days from when the caterpillars arrived to the first one to emerge.

Springtime is a great time to use manipulatives to help children build their number sense. These activities are fun, hands-on, and engaging for kindergarteners. By using manipulatives, children can learn math concepts memorably and enjoyably. So, grab some flowers, bugs, and raindrops, and let's get counting!