Round Dance!

 

Today, we were invited to a special event in honor of Aboriginal Storytelling Month. The school participated in a round dance and listening to some other music and stories. To help build some knowledge around this event, we did a lot of lessons related to First Nations, Metis, and Inuit content today. Our math lesson focused on the four parts of the medicine wheel, in particular four groups of animals (legged ones, crawlers, winged ones, and swimmers). Each student created their own medicine wheel.

We also watched videos of jingle dancing, Metis jigging, and a hoop dance. The students were very excited to try dancing to the music. We read two stories today: Raven and My Kokum Called Today.

We also visited the library today to exchange books. We are winding down our PWIM cycle, so students took turns creating sentences that match the content of our PWIM picture. We also tried coming up with a title for our group of sentences.

Afterwards, students worked on matching words with the beginning letter of that word.

While it was another great day, we did have one low moment. Our first fish, Goldie, is no longer with us! We only have one fish left- Cupcake. Hopefully Cupcake will last a while longer!

Friday is the last Telemiracle fundraising day. It is pajama and hat day as well as an opportunity to purchase hot chocolate and a cookie for $2.00! Looking forward to seeing everyone looking nice and cozy Friday morning. Until then....

Welcome Back!

While one of my student's lamented today, "I love breaks!", it was still great to be back in the classroom. We had one loss: one fish didn't make it through the break (back down to two!). We also gained two new plans. They got a lot of sun today, while the cold winds outside kept us inside all day.

I set out some invitations to learn this morning during their free choice center. I attempted to fill up glass jars with different amounts of what to test the questions, "Can you make sound with water?" However, they were tiny jam jars and did not really get my point across. That was short lived, but I did bring out all of our instruments, plus some extra, and a few students were quite engaged with making many sounds with those!

I was excited to share Chester's adventures over the break. I created a book called "Chester Goes to The Farm" with pictures and simple sentences that the student's can read in their own time. I read it to them as an introduction to our journaling lesson today. Students were asked to represent with picture and words the best part of the week off. They practiced writing the date, gave their journal entry a title ("My Break"), and then wrote "The best part was..." They drew a picture and then shared with a helper their complete thought, and were assisted with finishing printing their sentences.

During math, we discussed shapes and sorted out some characteristics about each shape. We also read a story about shapes that showed pictures of shapes that we see in every day life! We were going to work on shape sorting but ran out of time, so we will save that for another day.

 

 

In our science class, we continued on with the morning's exploration of sound. I made cup telephones for the students to try out. They had never tried them before, so it was quite fun! Then we worked as a group to brainstorm everything we know about sound and what some sources of sound are. Student's then worked individually on 'What makes sound?" sheets.

 

For our word work today we read a beginner sight word story "Farm Animals" that follows the format of "I see a...". Then we rotated through two centers using Handwriting Without Tears materials. Center 1 was about using straight and curved wooden pieces to build letters. Center 2 had students rolling out play dough to make letters with guided matts.

 

During the talking circle, everyone shared that they had a great day back. I agree!

 

Happy Valentine's Day!

Yesterday must have been tiring, because I didn't realize until this morning that I forgot to blog at the end of the day! The room was had a special buzz that comes with an exciting holiday. However, we were able to save our Valentine's Day celebrations until the end of the day!

First thing in the morning, I introduced an experiment that involved 3 chunks of ice. I placed one in an empty bowl, one in a bowl with salt, and one in a bowl with baking soda. Students had to predict which chunk of ice would melt the fastest! We kept checking on the experiment throughout the day and learnt that the ice in the salt was melting the quickest (they still weren't entirely melted by the end of the school day).

We read a few Valentine's Day themed books throughout the day. I can't 100% guarantee that these are the titles, but it was something like Our Favourite Things About Valentine's Day, Valentine's Cats, and On Valentine's Day.

For a big chunk of the morning we were busy making love butterflies! It was a process that took a lot longer than I thought. Student's coloured different sizes of hearts and a large popsicle stick. They also glued the hearts together and chose their colour of pipe cleaner for antennae. I used a hot glue gun to attach the pipe cleaner and popsicle stick. Here's the result:

 

We also engaged in another experiment. This time students were given two Hershey's kiss chocolates. They had to predict what would happen to the chocolate that was held in an open hand and a closed hand. They held the chocolates while I read one of the Valentine's stories. Then we checked on our predictions, recorded what they learnt, and if they had any other questions.

 

 

Next, we brainstormed everything that we know about heat, including sources of heat.

Then, students had to record three different sources of heat on their own individual papers.

 

 

As mentioned, we had a special celebration at the end of the day. Students received a special afternoon snack~ fruit platter and iced sugar cookies. Then, they exchanged/received Valentine's from one another and myself. To extend our science fun, I gave them each glow sticks and glow bracelets. So, we also got to explore light some more!

 

Experimenting with glow sticks!

 

Now we have a week break before us. Look who gets to spend some time with me!

 

Chester and I wish everyone a restful and joyful holiday!

Shapes, Words, and Half Way to 100th Day :)

Well, today was the 100th day of school for many! Since we only go to school every other day, it really wasn't a big deal in our classroom. However, we did read a couple of books related to the excitement of the 100th day: Miss Bindergarten Celebrates the 100th Day of Kindergarten and Kindergarten Count to 100. Thanks to the Grade Ones who shared their 100 cupcakes with us :)

 It was also our library day today, so we went to exchange some books and spent some time reading in the library. During gym, we played the game Octopus for the first time, which was very exciting.


We mixed math and art together today. I showed the students some art works by Kandinsky, which involves a lot of shapes. Then, we worked on creating our own works of art! The goal was to create paintings of circles in squares. Here's how some turned out:

 

This afternoon, we did some word work. We played Mystery Word, where a word is pulled out of a folder one letter at a time. Student's must try and figure out what the mystery word is.

 

Then, we played Toss, Read, Spell. Students worked in pairs and their PWIM words were placed in muffin tins. They took turns tossing a dice into the muffin tins. Then they had to read the word, find the corresponding number on their paper, and then practice spelling the word.

 

We ended off our word work fun with a game of Bang!

 

 

Our class is looking forward to Valentine's Day. We aren't in school on the 14th, so our Valentine's celebrations will be on Thursday. We decorated bags today to hold our Valentine's and treats. Thursday is also the school's pink, white, and red day! It should be an exciting day.

 

Fun day? Of course!

Well, I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that another one of our fish died. The good news is that today really was a Friday fun day!

Our free choice centers involved a lot of dramatic play with babies requiring a doctor, dancing kitties that needed to see the vet, and student's playing 'school'.

We worked on our "This is me in February" pictures, which has students drawing a recognizable person, printing the date, and printing their name. At the beginning of the year, I do not offer any suggestions because I'd like to see where they begin and how they will naturally progress. The last couple of months I have been offering more direct instruction to suggest some ways that they can improve their portraits.

Today's lesson focused on building Mat Man, from the Handwriting Without Tears program. My intention was to help student's who often forget to give themselves a body! It's wonderful to see the progress that the student's make throughout the school year.

In Math, we played I Spy with items around the room and a picture that displayed many 3-D objects. The task was to try and describe the object as well as possible, including some description of the shape. Gym class was a lot of fun as we played our usual tag games, but also did a mini obstacle course/relay race. Students had to hop over hula hoops, throw bean bags, and run around pylons.

After lunch we engaged in some art. I demonstrated a variety of lines that we can use in our artwork. Student's then tried to draw as many different lines as they could using a black marker. Then, they filled in the spaced with water colour paints.

 Finally, we ended off the day with a super fun way to practice our PWIM words! We brought out the shaving cream again!!

Sometimes the shaving cream doesn't stay on the table...

 

I hope everyone has a fantastic weekend. 2 more Kindergarten days next week and then it will be February Break! Time flies when you are having fun.

 

Let there be light!!

 

Today's biggest highlight: a light box! It allowed us an opportunity to explore light, shapes, and colours. I made the light box at home by cutting a hole in the bottom of a clear plastic tote. I lined the inside with tin foil and placed two sets of icicle lights inside.

 

 

Blue and red make purple!

It's a house!

Making pictures.

Checking out how we look in different lighting.  

 

So much fun! During our science class, students brainstormed everything that they knew about light, including sources of light. Then, students drew three different sources of light.

 

 

Today, we also had some discussions about expressing our feelings. We started off with a "bug and a wish". Students competed the sentence, "It bugs me when ______, I wish __________."

We used a cute little bug and star to help us share our thoughts.

As I was explaining the activity, one of the students noticed the cover of Fish is Fish by Leo Lionni. She decided that it looked like the fish was making a wish! So, we read that story at the end of the lesson. There are so many great themes in that book! (friendship, life cycles, liking oneself)

 

 

The Speech and Language Pathologist visited our classroom today. He taught the class about the Zones of Regulation:

 

 

To round off the day, we had a lesson about labelling. As a group, we worked on labelling a picture of a face. Then, students worked on labelling a drawing of a cow.

 

 

I'm looking forward to Friday- it's pajama day!

Monday~ a quick debrief

Happy Wednesday everyone! My apologies for not posting about Monday until now.

The biggest news from Monday-- 3 new fish!!

 I believe the names are Goldie, Jewel, Cupcake, and Rainbow Fish.

 

First thing in the morning, the students had their new 'pets' reading Rainbow Fish!

 

Some other highlights from the day included:

*a visit to the library for reading and exchanging books

 

*a math lesson to launch our new unit on space and shape

 

*we read Penguin's New Talent to work on predicting

 

*plenty of fun in the gym, especially playing Hungry Hippos (in pairs, students race from hula hoops to grab one bean bag at a time and return them to their hoops)

 

*PWIM activities included a see, say, spell, reading a new book about farm animals (we leant about cows, sheep, and horses) and rotated through 2 centers.

Center 1 had students looking at a picture and guessing what later that word starts with. When they guessed correctly, they could place their letter on the game board that has the entire alphabet on it.

Center 2 was a game of Alphabet soup, where students are to guess the letter. They keep their letters until they get a SPLASH!, in which case they have to return their letters to the soup can.

 

 

Then, to prep us for Valentine's day, we finished off Monday with a discussion about who/what we love and what love is to us. Students then printed their ideas onto heart shapes, which are now on the classroom door (picture to follow).