(I think this is why I could never be a high school teacher.)
I am now leading the majority of the day's events in our Kindergarten classroom, having taken on whole-group literacy instruction new this week. I taught the letters /c/ and /a/, which are not easy letters, you know. /c/ is what we call a stealer, because it doesn't have its own sound - it must take from /k/ and /s/. And when you write the letter, you "fly backwards with your pencil, realize "Oh no, I'm going the wrong way!", so you turn down and around and land back down on the ground going the right way." (That is, literally, how I explained it.)
Don't get me started on /a/. First of all, it's a vowel. It's not one of our tip-tapper or lip-cooler consonants that start with our lips or teeth. This letter starts with a smile - about the smile you'd have on your face as you bite into an /a/pple! Second, don't forget that sometimes it can say its own name and sometimes it's a word all on its own. Finally, it's a real trickster, because it looks a lot different in the books we read than the way we write it, so watch out!
Ah yes, good times learning letters in Kindergarten. Don't get me started on the tubs and pictures of objects that start with /c/ and /a/ that I pulled out for practice! ... c- c- camera! ... a- a- alligator! ...
On the front of Mathematics, I introduced a new weekly routine from the math curriculum my school uses called a Counting Jar. I began with a cute little book called Mouse Count, about a snake that collects 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10 mice in a jar for dinner. Just as he's going to eat them, one of the mice tells him he forgot the biggest mouse of them all over yonder. As the greedy snake is off looking for the mouse (that's just a big rock!), the mice "uncount" themselves 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 out of the jar.
We broke for recess and lunch, then returned to the story and retold it with a real jar and 10 little origami mice (unfortunately no snake). I then introduced the jar as "Our Counting Jar": What do you think we're going to use this jar for? For counting, of course - we'll count whatever is in it! Let's practice. I'm going to put a new number of mice inside and you can look at it and guess how many mice are there. What do you think? Four? Five? Six? What's one way we could count them? Take them out one by one and count along: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5! What's another way? Dump them out and count them with your finger: Dump! 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5! Same number, even though we counted a different way that time. Interesting. Now that we have counted and we know how many mice we have - 5 - our next job is to show our number on paper. What's one way you could show the number 5? You could write the number 5. You could draw 5 dots. Like on dice. You could draw 5 lines. You could draw 5 mice. Look at all the ways we can show the number 5! Let's each take an index card and pick one way to show the number 5. Then we'll put them together up on the board to share. Look at what everybody picked! Some number 5's ... some mice ... some dots ... I wonder if we could find 5 of something else in the classroom? I have these paper bowls here that just happen to have your name on them. I'm going to take mine and look around for 5 things that are the same and all fit in the paper bowl. Let's see ... Look what I found! Five legos! Wait. Do I have five? How can I tell? 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5! But wait. This pile of legos is different than my pile of mice. How can they be the same number if one pile is bigger than the other? Oh, I see! The size of objects doesn't matter when you count, just the number! I bet you'll remember that when you go to find your own collection of five things. ... Let's share with our neighbors at the circle what we found. So many different ideas! I notice Susie over here organized her five things just like the dots on a die. That's an interesting pattern. Can you all put your five things in the same pattern? Look at that! From now on, when you come in Thursday morning, the Counting Jar will be out and we will be able to practice different ways of counting and showing our numbers, as well as to collect some things from the room to share at Morning Meeting.
Oh, it was so well-received, I was so happy! It's odd sometimes, what we all take joy in - children and adults - but I think it reminds us that we fundamentally can't help sometimes but wonder at the world around us and celebrate the ways in which we may participate in it.
What's in your Counting Jar today?
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