How Many Sides Does a Circle Have?

Last week during our initial revisit to shapes, we experimented using modeling clay, straws and sticks to make shapes. We then were introduced to drawing these shapes using rulers to make straight lines.

Within this study, one student drew a circle with two dots (representing corners). She had forgotten that we were only drawing shapes that we could use our ruler for to draw straight sides. This 'mistake', however, led to some great inquiry.

As we examined each other's shapes, some students pointed out that the circle did not have any sides because they weren't made using a ruler, and therefore weren't straight. Other students thought that it had two sides, as represented in the original drawing. Still another small group argued that a circle has four sides and the drawing should actually have been made with four dots (top, bottom, left and right). So we were at a stand-still. How many sides does a circle actually have?

The next day, we decided to inquire into this a bit further. With pins representing the corners (or modeling clay as used in the previous lesson), and yarn representing the sides, we set to work taking on different challenges. The first challenge was to work in teams to use the pins and yarn to make a triangle. With our fairly sound knowledge of the properties of triangles, this was fairly easy.

Next we were challenged to make a rectangle. We know that squares are a special kind of rectangle, so we determined squares were also acceptable. This was a bit more challenging as we realized that the placement of the pins (corners) had to be more precise in order to make the sides be "straight up and down or straight side to side" (parallel). 

 

 And finally, our last challenge was to use our pins and string to make a circle. This was tricky and we really had to use cooperation to get it just right.

 

We stood back and looked at each group's 'circles'. Some of them looked a lot more like circles than others. What made this so? We spent the day thinking about this and then revisited pictures of our creations the following day. Each group's 'circle' was displayed and we had to determine of these we thought most closely resembled a circle. We moved throughout the room and clustered into groups to show our thinking. We then worked within that small group to discuss why we thought the way we did. What made us choose the shape that we did? We followed this by defending our ideas against other groups.

 

 These were our collective group thoughts:

Created with flickr slideshow.

After we had a chance to listen to each group argue, we had one more opportunity to change places. This ended up with the class almost equally divided amongst two circles -- the green and red.

So what made these two shapes resemble circles more closely than the others? We determined that the more pins used, the more circular the shape. And so, we came to (well, just about) what we think may be the answer :

A circle has an infinite number of sides.

(And now if we could just grasp at the word "infinite"! This will be explored more a bit later in school. ;) )

EC3 Reading Buddies

Today we had the wonderful opportunity of meeting up with EC3B. We read our just-right books to them and felt proud to share our reading with others. Ask your child to tell you about it!

Click here to see more photos of our KG-B readers and EC3 friends!

New Unit of Inquiry

Last week we began our new unit of inquiry, which focuses on fabric. We will be examining many different aspects of fabric, and will also be inquiring into other areas of study within other subject areas. Please take a moment to read through the newsletter below as it will provide more detailed information as to where we are headed:

To begin this unit, we closely examined photos of various people around the world. We shared our thinking about what and why specific people were wearing certain clothes. Were they doing something special? Was the person in a location that might require that clothing?  We shared our thoughts with one another and built off each others' thinking, which was recorded in scripted form.

To allow us to demonstrate our initial individual understanding of this unit, we then were each given a photo and asked to elaborate on the clothing we saw the person wearing. We used the app ThingLink to capture our thoughts. Take a look at one example:

The information gathered through these engagements will help determine what prior knowledge we already have and where we need to start.

We then explored six different types of fabric. We worked in partnerships to describe the fabrics and think about where we might have seen these fabrics being used. This was followed by a 'fabric hunt' around the school. Our goal was to find the various fabrics and who was using each and why. (See more photos from our fabric hunt by clicking here.)

 

The next day, we returned to these recording sheets and photos of ourselves exploring fabrics throughout school. We spent time recording the properties of each fabric and what important job each fabric was doing in each photo taken of our fabric hunt. We found patterns (such as many of them were used to protect people from various things) and also noticed that the fabrics seemed to have been chosen to fill a specific need.

  

KG-B is looking forward to continuing to explore fabrics and their many uses. As noted in the newsletter posted above, please do let us know if you would be willing to come in and share how you use fabric -- either as a hobby, for work or cultural reasons. 

Math Workshop

Our math workshop time the past several weeks has focused on combining and separating numbers. We have worked quite extensively with number bonds, which has helped us solidify our understanding of what it means to add.

Throughout this unit on addition and subtraction, we have incorporated whole-body kinesthetics to physically add and remove ourselves to different groups, and we have also used manipulatives to play around with sets of numbers.

During the "practice" portion of math workshop we often engage in games and hands-on activities. We learned three new games this week. Ask your child to tell you about them, and maybe even find some games to play at home! Click here to see some ideas that involve only a deck of cards and are fun for the whole family.

Welcome, Hana!

Last week we had two special events take place. We welcomed Hana to our class on Tuesday and she immediately fit right in. We already feel so lucky that she is part of our class! We had been waiting for quite some time, so you can imagine our excitement when she finally arrived.

And so that she is more recognizable, here's one without the mask 😉:

We also celebrated Yana's sixth birthday. Her grandparents brought some delicious treats to share, which I am sure you heard all about.

Stay tuned for an update on our classroom learning and the action we have been taking in response to all we've discovered. 

*A reminder that there is no school for students this Thursday, March 2. 

Carnaval en KGB!

These silly clowns surprised and "interrupted" me today when I was working. They came singing a fun French song (see below). Ask your child to sing it to you!

Carnaval en KGB from Kacey Molloy on Vimeo.

New Home Reading Schedule

Thank you to all those who attended the kindergarten literacy dialogue last week. I hope it was valuable and that we can do it again. Based on feedback I received during that session, coupled with our development as readers here in KG-B, we are going to have a small shift in when home-reading books are checked out and returned here in our classroom. Please expect these books to come home now on Tuesdays. They are then expected to be returned on Mondays. (We need one day between to manage the checking in and out.) Hopefully this will help not only in making things easier to remember (as library books are also due Mondays), but that it will also allow your child the opportunity to read them over the weekend as well.

I would also like to introduce you to a wonderful app that promotes the love of reading. It's called Epic!

This app can be accessed on either a computer or personal device. By registering, you get access to over 20,000 books in a variety of formats (read-to-me, audio, etc.) There is a monthly subscription, however, the first month is free, so I encourage you to try it out. I have signed up for use with my son and he loves listening to audio books in the car or even finding one of our books at home that he can look at while listening. Of course he also loves listening to and viewing new books. For those of you with older children there are even chapter books in audio format. Click here for more information.