Math Stations with Boulan Buddies

Today children were able to recieve small group practice with different math skills.  We joined with the other Kinderplus class and headed to the cafeteria where there were 4 different math stations.  The kids were split into groups of 3-4 and partnered up with a Boulan Buddy.  The Boulan buddies took thier groups to each station for 8-10 minutes and provided small group support to reinforce the math concepts.  The Boulan buddies were very encouraging and helpful as the kids practiced. 

 One math station helped children to practice the concept of place value. The children used popsicle sticks to make bundles of tens and then count how many were left over.  This is often a very challenging concept for kids, we will continue to practice place value in the months to come. 

At another station children were using stacking cubes to build numbers in different ways.  For example they built the number 6 by using 3 blue and 3 green cubes.  They also used 4 yellow and 2 orange, etc.  Many children were surprised at how many different ways they could build a number. 

We reinforced coin recognition by playing a roll a coin game.  Children used coin dice and graphed how many times they landed on each coin. 

Boulan buddies read different math stories to the kids and talked about what concepts the books were about. 

Snowmen at Night

Today our Boulan Buddies came today and helped us make a snowman project that went along with a series of snowmen books we have read in class.  We have read the Snowmen at Night, Snowmen at Christmas and Snowmen All Year.  These stories are very fun because they tell what snowmen do while everyone is sleeping.  They drink hot cocoa, go sledding, have snowball fights, play baseball, etc....  Today children had to create a snowman according to the number of letters in their name.  Each letter was one snowball and then one extra for the head.  After they created their snowman they did a writing response as to what they would do at night if they were snowmen.  Our Boulan Buddies help us with the project.  All of the snow-girls and snow-boys are on display in our kindergarten hallway.