Number Corner Grade K Advice for May & June

This is the last blog entry this school year for you faithful readers. I’ll start with a quote from the author: “As the year draws to a close, we encourage you to hold steady with Number Corner instruction through Field Day, school trips, assemblies, kindergarten graduation, and other special year-end events. You’ll find that it will provide a continued sense of routine, so important to five and six year olds.

 

Of course, there is a filled-in Number Corner Planner for May on the Support section of the website.

In previous months I have talked about the “One Last Look at (month)” activity where you remove selected calendar pieces from the grid at the end of the month, such as illustrated in the April advice on pages 249-250. I didn’t get a good photo from that month, but have one illustrating the same thing from the very end of April. Try it! We changed our dog-dog-cat pattern to dog-(space)-cat, dog-(space)-cat.

 

 

 

As in all months since October, you have two choices of calendar markers. You can make the Morning, Afternoon, Evening markers with your kids as outlined in the teachers guide or download (or purchase) the new set D9 - Morning, Noon & Night. Skills involved are using words to describe time (day, night, morning, afternoon), identifying clocks as tools that measure time, reading time to the hour on analog and digital clocks and more.

 

 

I have attached my June calendar we made in my K-1 class. You can use your May markers again for the days of school that remain in June or, time allowing, the children can brainstorm a pattern that will repeat at least once in the shorter month of June. My class came up with the pattern Field Day, Picnic, Last Day of School, First Day of School.

When I first read about the 5-Pointed Star Cards for the Our Month in School chart, I was skeptical. I’m a believer now. As the month progressed, I saw the kindergartners studying the chart more and more, spontaneously making observations about fives. “There’s 25 points in one row,” “And 50 in two,” “ We have 5, 10, 15, 20, 21, 22, 23 points now.” Their observations spurred others to notice more and more things about fiveness. Be wild and DO use a drop of glue on the tip of each star point and scatter it with glitter! If your school year continues into June you can reuse the stars for the last few weeks, make up something on your own or repeat something from earlier in the year, such as weather.

 

It takes a little work, but I encourage you to make the Here’s When We Were Born Graph described on page 293. This gives your children lots of opportunities to experience interpreting graphs. Plus, maybe they’ll actually be able to tell their first grade teacher their birth date! Try it! Please send me a photo if you make one.

You can easily get the May-June calendar up and running in 3 days, giving you more time for sessions.
 
I have enjoyed working with you long distance. This was one of my goals from when I first came to the Math Learning Center – to provide support when I can’t actually be there every month. I hope you have found some useful hints from my musings and pictures. Join us again in mid-August if you want to continue reading.