Sweetness, Safety, & a bit of Silly too

Friday was such a great day in Kindergarten! As with all Kindergarten days, we had a lot of fun, but I had so many proud moments of my students showing polite manners, sticking up for one another when an older student is dipping their bucket, sharing, working as a team (which one student pointed out, you get a job done faster when you work as a team!), complimenting one another, and one student gave their peers the advice to "just walk away" if someone is making bad choices. I LOVE it!

It was our first morning with the new kitchen center, which was a hit! The kids were totally into role playing, which is super fun and engaging. The secretary came to drop off a form and found me in the "kitchen", drinking "coffee", eating "soup", and getting dressed up to go to a Barbie show! The next part of our morning involved a surprise birthday song and snack for the Grade One teacher and our classes. Before recess, we also read a super cute book called Splat the Cat: Where's the Easter Bunny, which has some fun pop ups.

Next, we had a great discussion about rules; who makes rules? why do we have rules? what rules at school and home keep us safe? They did a great job answering all of these questions. I modelled how to spell the word "safe" on the board, which the students wrote on a worksheet. They drew a picture on their paper to show a rule that keeps us safe, which I wrote a sentence about on their paper. Everyone came up with their own idea, which is always a mini success. Here's a sample:

 

 

Our other big activity was creating goofy pumpkins! It was different for them to have to cut out the pieces to make a picture rather than to draw it. It was also a great lesson for working on some much needed practice on proper gluing. We also got to talk about emotions and how the pumpkins were feeling by the looks on their faces. Here are the final products:

 

 

 

 

We also looked at extending patterns. I started with a connected skill from the ELA curriculum, in trying to get the students to predict what comes next in a story. Then, we talked about what comes next in different pattern examples. Finally, students showed what they know with another Halloween related cut and paste activity. Those who finished early decided to also create colour patterns on their page.



 





There are some more Halloween related learning opportunities coming up this week. The kids have been anticipating Halloween all month! I can't wait to see them in their costumes and to culminate our pumpkin inquiry with exploring the inside of a pumpkin and decorating our pumpkins. :) I hope everyone has had a great weekend! Until next time....