Kindergarten, Math, Week 3

Monday and Tuesday I introduced the concept of solid shapes.

• I started with a UNO card. "What shape is this?" Rectangle. But what about this book? It isn't flat like the card. If we look at each side we see a rectangle. Things that aren't flat have special names. We call this a rectangle solid.
• Using similar examples I introduced sphere, cylinder, cube, and cone.
• Monday I piled a bunch of items on the table and we categorized them as rectangle solid, sphere, cylinder, cube, or cone. Cubes are hard to find around our house, so I made one with paper. Cones that actually come to a point can also be hard to find. I took a sand bucket and put it up against the bathroom mirror and used a bar of soap to draw it's outline. Then I took the bucket away and showed K. that if the slanted lines of the sides were to continue they would meet in a point.
• Tuesday I wrote each shape on 3 post-it notes and had K. go around the house and put them on correct objects. Then she took me around the house and showed them to me.

Wednesday we practiced Ordinals. This time we went up to Tenth.

• First I gave her all the words to put in order.
• Then I got out 10 cans of food. "Put the corn sixth." etc.
• Then I took the words away and asked her, "What is second?" etc.
• Then I rearranged the cans and asked her, "What place is the soup in?"
• Then I stacked the cans vertically and asked her what place the spaghetti was "Tenth". Then I took the top can off and asked her what place the spaghetti was. I continued until it was "First".

Thursday we played the Hot/Cold Game again.

Friday I introduced using a Ruler and Scale.

• In reading Blaze it talked about going across country was faster than staying on the roads. So K. could understand this I made a simple map and marked where Billy was and where the farm was. Then we used a string to how far it would be on the roads and how far across the fields. I had K. mark the string for each measurement. Then I got out the ruler and we talked about inches and 12 inches is a foot. Then we measured the string. The string that showed the distance to stay on the roads was 15 inches and the cross country one was 11 inches.
• Next I asked K. to go around the house and pick up 5 items she would like to measure. We did that.
• Then we went into the kitchen to look at the scale. We looked at the large numbers -- those show the pounds. We looked at the small numbers and the line marks. These are the ounces. We counted the line marks and found that 16 ounces make up 1 pound.
• Next I asked K. to find 5 things to weigh, and we did that.