Teacher Netta's Notes

Over the last two weeks at school, both Teacher Jen and I have made some March/ St. Patrick's Day activities available for the kids at HCMA. The picture in this post is a lucky charm graphing work. 

All the kids at HCMA have had experience with graphing so far this year, whether it has been graphing different amphibians or different kinds of gourds in the fall. We have talked about how to line up each different item so it is easy to count. Today I taught this lucky charm graphing work and again, showed them all how to sort the different marshmallows and then line them up to count them. This task by itself is a challenge since the lucky charm marshmallows are small and fragile. I was curious to see how each child would do with this first step of sorting and organizing their lucky charms and I was very pleased with the outcome! All the kids I observed using this work lined up all the types of lucky charm marshmallows neatly and clearly.

After the lucky charms were sorted, the students had to count each type of marshmallow and record their findings on a data sheet with a paint dotter. This task requires one-to-one correspondence skills and steady fine motor skills to make their yellow dots inside a small box. 

Over the past two months we have used food manipulatives for activities and all the kids and I have talked about how important it is to refrain from eating the food because they pick up germs from the hands of each student handling the food pieces. We've also talked about how if the food pieces were eaten, there wouldn't be enough pieces for the next person to use the work. Although having food as a part of a work is tempting, so far we haven't seen any pieces being consumed which is great. 

I have prepared a few more march/St. Patrick's day works to share with the kids this week and next week, which is always exciting for the kids. I love it when they ask for a lesson on a work they haven't been taught yet because it shows how interested and motivated they are to learn a new concept!

I hope the warmer weather and lighter evenings has put you all in the mindset of spring! Spring is on its way----I can feel it! Hopefully it will arrive soon through melting snow and continuous warmer days! Have a great week, everyone!