Wet, Windy, Wonderful Wednesday!

It was a wet and windy Wednesday this week (note our weather chart). However, we had a wonderful day with many examples of bucket filling and we got some great work done too! It was a great day for literacy. Student's impressed me with choosing to practice writing letters on white boards and practice making words with magnetic letters. They also demonstrated throughout the day that they are learning their letter sounds!

They also worked on printing in mini books that they each created, called "My 5 Senses Book" where they shared what they like to taste, see, smell, feel, and hear. 

In Math, we read a story called Coral Reef (which also helped us to discuss colours) and part of One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. Then students each created their own fish. I provided them with a variety of fish outlines to choose from and they coloured and named their fish. Finally, they talked about how their fish were the same and different in order to sort them into different categories. 

Class fish displayed on our Proud Wall

After reading some books about painting and colour words to build some background knowledge, the Grade One teacher helped us with our first shake out! The students did a great job and got more excited and eager to shake out words as the lesson progressed. I think we may have a lot of extra words written on the side of our whiteboard :) The next step will be a lot of See, Say, Spell where students will orally practice spelling the words together. In the next couple of weeks, we're also going to be trying out some painting activities to connect with this picture. It should be messy and fun! I can't wait to see what art the students will create and to watch their excitement and knowledge grow throughout our first PWIM cycle.

Today, my class spent the day with a substitute teacher as I attended the Beginner Teacher Conference. I can't wait to see them next week, hear about how their day went, and share with them some exciting additions to our classroom! I'll be back later with a post about the work that they did today. 

Have a great weekend everyone! 

School Rules!

"Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children, play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood."

 ~ Fred Rogers

I love this quote and I believe it to be SO true! We can learn so much about what children know by listening to their conversations and engaging in play with them. Today I saw evidence of shape, letter, and number recognition, sorting, patterns, and addition. I also love overhearing such statements as "I'm using my imagination!" while a student is looking at a book. Some students were realizing that they can 'read' a book by reading the pictures. Yay! Students also saved yet another spider by returning him to nature and they created a bank, a McDonald's, a race track, and a restaurant during free choice centers. Busy Busy!

We read White Rabbits Colour Book by Alan Baker and Mouse Paint by Ellen Stoll Walsh to build some background knowledge as we begin our first PWIM cycle. Students did some of their own writing and illustrating today, as well. We had our first go at journal writing! Students practiced writing the date and the word "School" and were asked to draw a picture of their favourite thing about school. We took another look at No David  and David Goes to School  to form a discussion about school rules. Then students did some great work brainstorming rules and they each got to make a page for our newest class book! Check it out:

In Science we did our Week 2 Observations of our pumpkins. We also tried to fill in an OWL chart, which tells what the students Observed (or already know about), Want to Know, and have Learnt about pumpkins. For math class, we continued to practice our sorting skills. Students are going beyond sorting by colour! We are ready to move on to patterns :)

And then there were 5!

We had a whoppin' big class of 5 Kindergarten students today! It was a little quieter~ but not too quiet! It was still a busy, busy day filled with exploration, giggles, and discovery. I'm noticing more and more random acts of kindness within this group that just warms my heart! I even got a 'thanks for everything' at the end of the day.

It was exciting to see the students discover the writing center today during their free choice time. They are very interested in writing notes and making invitations, so I need to stock up on envelopes! I also had a check up at the doctor, went to the dentist, watched a puppet show, ate at a restaurant, and was a student who had to practice writing numbers and letters!

For ELA we went to the library and read Howard B. Wigglebottom Learns to Listen. We also had our first good look at our PWIM picture today and tried to brainstorm some "I Wonder" questions. We definitely need more practice at that, but for our first try I think we had a good discussion. I will post a picture when we do our first shake out of the words next week.

I did not get around to introducing our friend Chester yet! He's the raccoon from The Kissing Hand. The students are very excited when it is their turn to take Chester home. They write in his journal and draw pictures or insert photographs to share with the class. So far he's gone to Saskatoon and Humboldt, went to the movies, watched some of the student's favourite TV shows, played with their younger siblings, had lots of cuddles, and more!

Today we also learnt more about our sense of smell. Students got to guess what a variety of secret scents were and gave them a thumbs up or thumbs down vote. We also glued our pumpkin photographs from last day into our pumpkin observation booklets. In math we talked about sorting and everyone got a chance to sort different items that we have in our math center. Everyone did a great job! We also got in some choral poetry, singing, and dancing!

Even though there were only five students today, I think I'll be sleeping well tonight. :) Have a great weekend everyone!

Listening & Observing

Today, our main activities focused on listening skills, making observations, and sorting. We discussed what good listening looks like (a concept that seems to be touched on every day since it is the beginning of the school year!). I read two stories to the students this morning: If You Take a Mouse to School and If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. Then, students decided which story they liked best and filled out a listening response sheet, where they had to state how they felt about the story and draw their favourite part. We also did an activity where students had to follow directions to decorate Mr. Potato.


A daily event in our classroom is discussing the weather and how someone would dress for the weather that day. We also had our first discussion about the seasons. Students were noticing that the leaves are changing colours, so we made an executive decision to change the Season part of our weather chart to fall!

 

In Science we took a closer look at our work for last day and assessed  what we did well and what we could work on next time. Then, I introduced an activity that is going to be a weekly event until the end of October. Thanks to my mom for supplying little pumpkins! Students will be observing the changes that their pumpkin goes through by both sketching and photographing their pumpkin. I was very impressed with their work today! The colours of their sketches made sense and they worked really hard at writing the date.

Other highlights of the day included the pancake breakfast this morning, an introduction to the sight words "it", "is", and "a", activities about "same" and different" that will help us with our sorting activities, and a first reading of Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? (more to come about Brown Bear in the weeks to come!). Even though our class was only six strong today, it was another busy day!

 

Friday Fun

Well, we made it through Friday the 13th! We did have to shake our sillies out by the middle of the afternoon with some fun, silly songs. Our class seems to really love to dance~ especially a good celebration dance! They also discovered the music center today and had to try out all of the instruments at once. My apologies to the classroom next door~ sometimes learning can be noisy :) We also went to the gym for a short presentation about the school yearbooks. I'm so impressed with how well this group behaves while walking in the hallway and I think they did a great job with being in the gym with the entire school body for the first time.


Today, we read No David  and David Goes to School. They are great books for teaching behaviors, as well as making inferences from the pictures in the book. We talked about different behaviors and categorized them under "Yes" for positive behavior and "No" for negative behavior. This activity fits really well with the bucket filler and dipper conversations we had on Wednesday.

We will be talking more about David next week as we continue discussions on classroom and school rules.

 

We also reviewed the five senses with a couple of books and a poster that is hanging on our bulletin board. They seem to have a good understanding so far! We worked on an activity where they cut pictures out of newspapers and flyers. They had to tell me if it was something that you could see, smell, taste, hear, or touch. It's a little tricky since we often use more than one of the senses, but I think they did a good job. We will continue working on the learning about the senses and the ways that we observe our surroundings.

 

 

It was the first of many busy weeks in our classroom. I hope that everyone has a relaxing, restful weekend!

 

Have you filled a bucket today?

Today, we were a class of six! Some highlights for me included observing students meeting math outcomes before we've even started talking about them~ a student was sorting animals during free choice center time and they discovered that the lockers are numbered and were excited to see what numbers each locker had. Inquiry happens every day in Kindergarten!

 

We continued with the theme of "Being Kind" by discussing what it means to be a bucket filler and a bucket dipper. When our bucket is full, we are happy. When we do kind things for others, then we fill their bucket as well as our own. So, we read Fill a Bucket: A Guide to Daily Happiness for Young Children and watched a you tube video of the book How Full Is Your Bucket? to help the students understand what bucket filling was all about.

 

 

After a discussion about the behaviors of bucket fillers and bucket dippers, each student had an opportunity to represent through pictures how they could fill a bucket. The students came up with smiling at someone who is sad, playing with people who don't have someone to play with, watering flowers for mom, sharing a race track, and playing on the monkey bars with friends. We also said a Bucket Fillers pledge and created a class fingerprint tree (the highlight for the students may have been watching the teacher get messy trying to open up finger paints).  By the end of the day, they were still talking about their buckets being full and how they were filling or dipping buckets throughout the day. 



 

We also began our Science unit that focuses on the ways that we observe our natural surroundings. Students learnt about the 5 senses through a couple of fun songs and Mr. Potato Head! I love the way that this activity turned out~ doesn't their work look great!?

 



 Another great day in Kindergarten! Until the next adventure, I'll leave you with this question...

 

 

 

 

Sharing and Caring

We have started working on a unit about healthy habits and relationships, which includes a focus on rules and safety. Today, we began looking at the main theme for the week: "Be Kind".

During our first trip to the library, the students listened really well to the story Chrysanthemum  by Kevin Henkes. The students passed a heart around as I read the story. They were to wrinkle the heart when someone in the book was mean to Chrysanthemum and also smooth out the heart when someone was kind. They were pretty gentle, so the heart was not as crumpled as I thought it would be in the end! However, they did get the idea that when we say and do mean things it hurts people's hearts. I placed a verse in the middle of the heart that says: "Before you speak think and be smart, it's hard to fix a wrinkled heart." Then, the students placed band aids on the heart and also brainstormed words that heal.

We continued the "Be Kind" theme with the story We Share Everything  by Robert Munsch. We had a discussion about the different things that we can share (which involved a lot of talk about what circumstances would warrant sharing a water bottle!). Students then worked on pages to create our latest classroom book!

 

We also discussed what some classroom rules should be. Some very important ideas came up that are valuable in all walks of life~ be honest, be kind, share, be polite, keep your hands and feet to yourself, and of course~ ask before you take someone's play dough. I think that last piece of advice will fit under be kind/polite :).

Hopefully these and upcoming lessons will give us a great head start at becoming a responsible and respectful class that works together peacefully and happily!  

Day One

The first day of Kindergarten was a great success! It was wonderful meeting the seven inquisitive young people who will make up this year's class. They were very eager to investigate all of the learning centers in their classroom. I was very impressed with how well they cleaned up after center time and how well behaved they were while walking in the hallway for our school tour.

We read several stories about beginning Kindergarten and introduced Chester from the story, The Kissing Hand. Chester the Raccoon is going to be with us all year long. Each day he will go home with a different student. I'm looking forward to the journal entries that will tell of Chester's experiences in Watson!

We also discussed our feelings about the first day of Kindergarten and created our first class book! To view our work, click on the picture of our book cover:

Student's also started what will be a monthly tradition by drawing a self-portrait. We sang songs, did celebratory dances in gym, saved a spider's life by returning him to the outdoors, built castles and houses out of blocks, raced cars on racetracks, talked on banana phones, discussed whose name had the letter A, played out in the heat at recess, and even interviewed the principal for the newsletter!  At the end of the day we started another daily tradition; the talking circle. Everyone took their turn and said that they had a good day and did no one had any problem sharing their favourite part of the day! With all of these little successes, Miss Gagnon had a good day, too.

It was the first of many busy days in Kindergarten and I look forward to what Monday's adventures will bring.

Ready, Set, Go!

Tomorrow is the first day of Kindergarten!

 

The classroom is ready for the students to make it their own. I am so excited for the adventures, creations, stories, relationships, and lessons that the upcoming school year will bring.

Will it ever be this clean again? :)

 

This is where our classroom meetings will take place.
We will have a morning meeting and a meeting at the
end of the day, which will include a talking circle.

I can't wait to see what work the students will choose to display on Our Proud Wall!
This area of the classroom is also our Drama Center.

 

 Lots of lockers but we only need 7 this year for our small class.

 

Our Science and Math center area.

We are going to begin the year learning about sorting, patterns, and the

many ways that we can observe our natural surroundings.

 

For September, the water table will be used as a sensory bin that

includes coloured rice, noodles, and hidden treasures!

The colours are intended to match our first PWIM picture

that will focus on colour words.

 

Let the adventures begin!