Kindergartners Have Class!: Comfy, Cozy Day

We had a wonderful Comfy, Cozy Day! Children and teachers enjoyed being comfortable in their pajamas.

This morning, children were excited to learn they each got their own Polar Express ticket that would be hole punched by a Conductor.

We enjoyed watching a read aloud of the Polar Express with the other Kindergarten students in the library.

After, we had a short holiday sing-a-long! "Jingle Bells", "Frosty", and "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" were the favorites.

To conclude our Polar Express morning, each Kindergartner received their very own silver bell! Our conductor and musical guest was a former student's grandfather, Mr. Rhoads. He truly helped make the event very special and memorable for the kids! Thank you for joining us, Mr. Rhoads!

This afternoon during math, I gave my students a challenge. They counted 1 window and 4 wheels on a train I drew. They had to figure out how many windows and how many wheels there would be if the number of trains kept increasing. Students worked in groups of 3 or 4 to find a strategy that worked best to figure out the solutions to this math problem. Some students drew groups of 4 circles, some counted groups of 4 fingers, and others counted on from what they had already figured out. The groups wrote their answers on Post-its and added them to the class chart. At the end, we saw most groups got the same data. We learned that the number of windows is always equal to the number of trains because there is only one window on each train, and the number of wheels will always be more than the number of windows. Some students noticed the pattern that the number of windows is always 1 more than the previous number and the number of wheels is always 4 more than the previous number. There's nothing better than critical thinking, teamwork, and perseverance all while working comfortably in our pajamas. I had only planned on having students figure out the windows and wheels for up to 5 trains, but some students wanted to challenge themselves to figure out for 9 trains!