We are watchers in Kindergarten!

This afternoon I read the book The Watcher by Jeanette Winter.  It is a story about Jane Goodall's work with chimpanzees in Tanzania.  However, the message of the book is that we can all be watchers.  It starts with Jane at 5 years old watching hens in the hen house and worms in her backyard.  The book encourages children to watch what is going on in the natural world.  This will be our focus in the woods this year.  Tomorrow morning we will go out to the woods with Mrs. Tourin's class, walk the boundaries and practice being watchers!

In Math today I introduced the game "Roll and Build."  Students worked with a partner to roll one or two dice, count how many and build a tower that corresponded to the amount rolled.  I also introduced a fancy math word, subitize, and explained that subitizing means knowing how many with your eyes or seeing a group of objects and knowing how many without counting 1 by 1. We practiced subitizing with dice and big cards with dots on them.