March 23-Release Day

It was back to Mrs. VanHorn’s kindergarten class today! I was excited to have yet another chance to teach my kindergarten students. Because I was there in the afternoon, I really only had to teach math. (The rest of the time was partner reading, stations, and recess.) The math lesson I taught focused on coin amounts and recognizing that 5 pennies equals a nickel. With the lesson, students had to work in pairs. Each pair was given a cup of pennies and a cup of nickels. They had to exchange their pennies for nickels until they ran out of pennies. The students really understood the association between 5 pennies and 1 nickel. They finished the activity rather quickly, and we had about 10 minutes until it was time to move to the next part of the daily schedule. Rather than trying to think of a way to extend the math activity, I simply went ahead and let the students get their books for partner reading. At the end of the day, I regretted ending the math activity early. I thought one way I could have extended it would have been to introduce the dime and to have the students exchange their pennies and nickels for dimes.