Hopscotch Shenanigans

This morning, we started our day watching a Youtube video to help us learn some new signs.  The video we watched was from a channel called "My Smart Hands" and it taught us the signs for quite a few animals.  The kids are really enjoying learning new signs and we practice them often in the class.  We use them to communicate with others, too.  If you'd like to take a look, go to the "My Smart Hands" page and then under "playlists" look for "ASL Sings for Kids" and "Animated ASL Videos" and "ASL lessons for kids-baby signing lessons".  

Reminder, Wednesday is "Ff" sharing day.  

Please check your child's backpack for his/her school photos (if you ordered them).

Here's a look at this week's math centres.  I probably won't share more photos of math centres this week because all of the photos start to look the same after a while.  But I wanted you to see what we are working on this week.

At this centre, the whole group works together taking turns choosing a card from the pile.  Each student has his/her own game board.  They figure out how many circles are on the card and then cover that number on the game board.  The first person to cover all the numbers is the winner (but we're really all winners because we are doing lots and lots of counting and number recognition practice!)

At this centre, kids fill in the missing numbers in a sequence, counting up.  This is similar to last week's activity, but this one uses numbers up to 20 and there are more missing numbers that need to be filled in. The kids work independently, but chat and help each other when needed.

At this centre, kids play with a partner, taking turns to spin a spinner.  They then move a marker on the game board.  The game board tells the players how many markers to place on their ten frames.  Kids keep playing until they reach the end of the game board, or until time runs out and then count up their ten frames (counting by tens and ones) to determine who has the most.  

Here's the 4th centre.  The kids match the number beside the tractor with the corresponding ten frame.  Here, the kids are working with a partner.

So this was pretty great.  We were outside this afternoon and had the whole playground to ourselves (which hardly ever happens).  And a group of kids decided to start a game.  They organized themselves into a line up and then took turns running up to the hopscotch "board" and then hopscotching as fast as they could. One child managed the line up, letting everyone know when it was his/her turn and everyone waited patiently to take a turn.

it was a pretty long run!

Then they ran back to line up again.

The group on the swings were watching all the while....

Then, they decided to all run in a line and hopscotch together...

A few kids were working really hard on their pumping skills today.

And others continued to hopscotch! (and giggle)

Then, this little group organized themselves and did some backwards hopscotching while dancing...incredibly entertaining.  

We have a cd of music that we put on sometimes when we need a movement break.  At Centre time today, one of our classmates asked for the music and a spontaneous dance party broke out.  Here we are singing "one green jelly bean".