fairy houses (part one)

The sorting, counting, and comparing of fairy house materials connects to essential math standards and the labeling of these materials connects to one of our literacy standards; 

K.CC.4 

Understand the relationship between numbers and quantities; connect counting to cardinality.

K.CC.3

Write numbers from 0 to 20. Represent a number of objects with a written numeral 0-20.

K.CC.5

Count to answer “how many?” questions about as many as 20 things arranged in a line, a rectangular array, or a circle, or as many as 10 things in a scattered configuration.

R.F.K.3.A

Demonstrate basic knowledge of one-to-one letter-sound correspondences.

We have counted materials and shown how many during our morning meetings. We have counted as a whole group during the share and on our own, using the morning message as an invitation to count in different ways and to show how many in different ways.

Following the counting of materials, children have engaged in exciting turn talks with the prompt; How can we use this material when building a fairy house?

We have read many different kinds of books about houses and homes; teaching books and storybooks. We used a t-chart to sort some of these books. We looked at the front covers and thought about the book, was it a story with characters or did it have information on every page? 

One book caused a bit of a debate. There was information about homes on every page of the book Home, but some of the information didn't seem real. Emerson quickly let us know that although the page about a "shoe home" doesn't seem real, he knows mice can actually live in shoes, so it is a teaching book. His peers agreed. 

At the end of the week I introduced another kind of writing connected to our learning about houses and homes; a poem. We read the poem together on our morning message and the children got their own little copy of our Home poem to work with. We highlighted familiar sight words and used cubes to show the syllables in some new words; chipmunk, living, hidden, and fallen. The readers then used picture power to draw a picture to match each creature living inside a hidden log home. Their illustrated poems will be at their tables on Monday to continue rereading and practicing.