Time Flies When You Are Having Fun!

I can't believe we have been in school six days already! The students are doing wonderful and are mastering the routines and procedures of full-day Kindergarten. We have been working on math skills, numeral writing, reading, learning to do Writer's Workshop, and much, much more!

One day last week we were exploring with our snap cubes (Unifix cubes) and a wonderful thing happened. Each table had one bucket of cubes and were instructed to "free explore" with the cubes. One table began snapping the entire bucket of cubes together and making one long train on their table. As the train became too long, the children used chair backs to support the train so it would not collapse. Quickly other tables began replicating the first tables actions. Everyone was interested to see each other's trains, but then two tables decided to snap their two long trains together. We rapidly ran out of room in the classroom and the children brainstormed solutions. After a few options were suggested by students, we decided to move to the hallway and snap them all together to see how long the train was.

I was astounded at how well the class worked as a group. The train was created as a team with no fighting and lots of sharing. It was a wonderful example of team work and cooperative learning.

Take a look at these photos showing great cooperative learning!