We began our day with a number scavenger hunt. Patterns of numbers were written on the sidewalk and blacktop, and friends followed them with their feet, identifying numbers as they went along in pairs. Each set of numbers began with a star as a starting point, and after walking and identifying the numbers, friends sat down, and found the numbers on a number chart (that goes from one to one-hundred in rows of tens). Over and over again, we explore various combinations of numbers (mostly in sequences counting by ones), and trying to predict where we will find them on a chart. Now we are exploring patterns with numbers—how we speak them, how they are written in sequences, and how we predict what comes next. Whenever possible, count everything—steps, beads, peas, whatever. Count by ones, by twos, by fives, and tens. This will assist in reinforcing patterns with numbers and help them gain familiarity with numbers from 1-100.
We are using our finger alphabet to decode rhyming words. Flashcards that contain a picture depict three rhyming words, are scattered about, and friends work together putting them together and saying them aloud (e.g. Snug as a bug in a rug.).
Friends work together giving each other ideas of how the pictures tell the rhyming word story. Knowing the finger alphabet and the sounds that go with them are very helpful (along with the clues from pictures) in reading the rhyming words.
We have begun our travels to Brazil to explore the African and Portuguese influences on the native people of Brazil. We have talked briefly about slavery, and how people were taken unwillingly from their homelands in Africa and forced to come to Brazil to work the land there.
We have also begun a book called The Invention of Hugo Cabret by David Selznik. It is an illustrated story of a boy who is working to build an automatron that can actually write. In the process of his adventures there are many twists and turns. It is set in Paris in the 1920s.
April is National Poetry Month and we have been reading various poems that deal with the coming of spring. We have also explored syllables in preparation for writing our own Haiku.
Books We Read:
The Amazon Basin of Brazil: Vanishing Cultures by Jan Reynolds
Swing Around the Sun Poems by Barbara Juster Ebensen
