The unexpected is sometimes the most exciting!

Well, as usual, we had a lot of excitement in our room today! We also had another day of both planned and unplanned learning, which are the very best days. We started off with finally including a computer option during our free choice time. I'm starting the students off with Sesame Street math games. Today, we were working on patterns. It's a great way to review patterns while still being able to move on with number sense.

I purposely left an Atlas open on the one counter today, too. My plan worked! haha One of the students was drawn in right away and said, "Look teacher! You should take a picture of this. Look at all the maps!" We also found a compass on several maps. Very exciting! What ensued was a little introduction to Twitter for those who were interested. I posted the photo and found some photos and vidoes of other Kindergarten classes' learning.

 

Another round of unplanned activities occurred during our morning meeting. I started with writing a familiar sentence structure, "I see a..." for a bit of a review and then they wanted to try to write their own words and sentences. I'll gladly take a detour from the planned schedule if it means engaging in literacy and being excited about it! Some students copied print from books, the PWIM board, and even our classroom photo that I posted. Others worked from memory and some tried their best to work on printing letters.

 

Words from our PWIM board!

 

Afterwards we settled down into a little lesson about tattling vs. telling and questions one should ask themselves before talking to the teacher. For math, we reviewed the concepts of "more, less than, and the same as." Students were given a cup with a random number of snap cubes. Then they had to choose another math manipulative to show a number that was less than and a number that was more than their original number of snap cubes.

 

As promised, we had a 'treasure' hunt with our class maps that was created Tuesday. I had a new alphabet mat to reveal to them, so I hid letters from the mat pieces for them to find. Then, we had to solve the problem of how to put the mat together! We used the picture of the final product as our 'map' for putting it together. After some trial and error, we have a new, very exciting addition to our classroom.

 

After it was put together, they each wanted to hop on it as their friends sang the alphabet song.

 

I also had the students work on building their own maps of their choosing (castles, treasure islands, houses, towns, the classroom). We ended off the day with a See, Say, Spell of some of our PWIM words and then we worked on a new classroom book called "Kindergarten, Kindergarten, What do you See?" Each student had to write their name to fill in the blanks " I see _______ looking at me. _________, ___________- what do you see?" and then draw their portrait in the middle of the page.

 

The last bit of unplanned learning came from another teacher at lunch recess (we finally had warm enough temperatures to go outside!). I found out later that the inspiration came from finding some students eating snow. I came into the classroom after recess to find a pail of snow on the counter! I was told it was a science experiment (which lead to a discussion about what an exactly a science experiment is). We are going to see how much dirt is left in the water after the snow melts.

 

Clean or dirty???

 

That's about it for today. :) Have a great weekend everyone!