After completing Parent Observations, we realized that a lot of our families were curious to know what we have been up to in math the last little while. So far this year, we have covered three very big topics.
To start off the year, we introduced the concept of numbers and what they are all about to our Junior Kindergartens, with the help of our Senior Kindergarten friends. Learning the difference between numbers and letters is a very tricky concept, but everyone seemed to understand it fairly well, with the help of some kid-friendly poems on how to create each number to ten.
With this under our belts, we moved on to knowing what a pattern is. Once we realized that it is a set of something that repeats over and over and over we were old pros. From there, we defined some key terms such as what a 'core' of a pattern is... the first group oft 'somethings' before they repeat again and again as well as how to create and extend simple ABAB, ABBA and ABC patterns.
On to simple shapes! Last week we just finished up exploring, defining and describing 5 main shapes we see all around us. We determined how to tell someone who had never seen or heard how to draw circles, squares, rectangles, triangles and pentagons using easy-peasy directions. We even differentiated between angles and corners because at first, we thought they were the same thing. Little did we know, but now we do after careful explanation and sharing of our thoughts, that angles are 'sides or edges that meet on a diagonal and make a points, like in a triangle or pentagon' and that corners are, 'sides or edges that meet when one is going left and right (horizontal) and the other is going up or down (vertical)'.
Phew! That's a lot of mathematical thinking and learning taking place in such a short amount of time! Next up... reviewing our numbers to ten, but then extending on toward twenty!
