How Did You Get To School Today?

Authentic, everyday experiences prove to be strong motivators for little people. In order to generate interest in counting, Mrs. O'Neill selected a book titled How Will I Get To School This Year, by Jerry Palotta to read to the class on Tuesday afternoon.

It is a delightfully simple story about a young girl who uses her imagination to dream of various ways she'd rather come to school than 'on the smelly, old school bus.' Imagine coming to school on an elephant...

After reading the book, Mr. Pickett posed the question, How did you come to school today? Answers were offered enthusiastically. Mr. Pickett decided it might be best to record the responses in a way that allowed us to count them and then compare what we learned. The children were given a sticker of their choice and asked to place it on a visual organizer in the space (walk, bus, car / van, elephant) that matched how they'd gotten to school that morning. Here is what it looked like when we were finished.

After all of the stickers were placed on the chart, several students volunteered to count and write the numbers for each of the groups in the spaces below. We noticed that we had just as many people walk to school as those who came in a car or van. Four of our Kinders arrived on the school bus. Unfortunately, no one had the pleasure of coming to school on an elephant. Imagine the traffic jam that would have created on Geneva St., not to mention in our own parking lot.  :-)