We're Back!

I hope that everyone had a fantastic break! I had forgotten to get a photo of the bunnies and flowers that the students made before the break. :)

Chester Raccoon and I had a wonderful time at my parent's farm for Easter and then we headed to Edmonton. I hope that the students enjoyed looking at photos of Chester's adventures on our class Facebook page. :) When we talked about it in class today, the students seemed quite excited to say that their parent had showed them the photos. In fact, our morning meeting involved a lot of discussion about everyone's week off and what Chester got up to. :)

 

We also had some math review today to get us back into the mind frame of learning numbers. We re-read Chicka Chicka 1, 2, 3 and then students played a dice game where they rolled the dice and then had to highlight or colour in the number that they rolled. Afterwards, students went to the library.

 

After lunch, our planned schedule was to do an introductory lesson into talking about different materials in Science and then to move onto some literacy practice with sounds and letters (oh yes! We also learnt about the /oi/ sound this morning.) However, our Science discussion really grew into a lot of great questions and 'research'. When talking about the different types of materials, someone said paper. One students said paper is made out of trees and another said paper is made out of mud. So, we did a Google search and ended up watching two different videos about how paper is made. Then, someone asked how coloured paper is made. So, we watched a video about how coloured construction paper is made. Our conversation turned to compost, so we did a bit of brainstorming about what compost is and then we found a video to teach us more about it. We got back into talking about trees and someone asked how trees make oxygen. The video that we found also taught us about different reasons why trees are important!

 Our discussion rounded off by going back to talking about some different types of materials and why we use materials to make certain items. For example, why do we make houses out of wood and not paper or fabric? Why are our clothes made out of cloth/fabric instead of metal? With that question, we had to look up what suits of armour looked like that a knight would wear! I was very impressed with where our learning went today. :) I am hoping that the curiosity and questions will continue as we talk more about materials, recycling, and taking care of the Earth!

We will see where our questions take us on Wednesday!

Easter fun

I'm back! After being away for a couple of days to take part in some professional development opportunities, it was great to be back with the Kindergarten students.

 

I began something new today- a morning message! Twice throughout the day we took turns being letter detectives, with each student looking for a letter of the alphabet within the words on the page.

 

 

There were a lot of crafty activities during their free choice center time! Students coloured Easter pictures and also worked on making some animal puppets.

 

 

Here are two Easter crafts that they worked on when I was away:

A "Happy Easter" wreath that students painted and decorated.

They also used glitter glue and stickers to decorate foam eggs.

 

Today, I provided fruits, vegetables, and chocolate milk as a little Easter snack for everyone. They were also treated to pink snacks by our SCC in the afternoon!

 

Another treat: Mr. Pratchler was in with his I-pad and fun apps! It's always an engaging time.

 

We also experimented with some food colouring to try mixing colours. It was originally intended to lead into dying easter eggs, but the colour wouldn't stick to our eggs! I had bought cardboard ones that look just like real eggs.

 

So, we used markers and stickers to decorate them. Some even added silly hair and faces! They loved them and many of them named them. Here they are proudly displaying their Easter eggs: 

 

We also read some Easter stories: "Happy Easter Little Critter" and "Twas the Night Before Easter". We also did some Go Noodle body break activities and watched the video of the Bernstein Bears Easter Surprise. Through all of these stories and the video we worked on our predicting skills, trying to predict what would happen in the stories.

 

Since it was our Pink Day, we also had to talk about friendships and being a good friend. We read "Stick and Stone" which is a great store about an unlikely pair of friends. They stick up for each other because friends rock! ;)

 

We ran out of time to read "We're All Friends Here", but I read to them the blurb on the back about how the two students have not got along and how they are very different. Can people who are different be friends? We discussed this question~ which included the idea that stick and stone were very different, but they were still best friends!

 

Finally, we joined the grade one to six classes in the gym. The grades three to six had spent some time earlier with a representative from playground buddies and had learnt about some ways to be leaders on the playground. They led the younger students through some fun games in four groups. Everyone seemed to have a great time!

 

I hope that everyone has a fantastic Easter break! :)

Measuring in March!

Welcome to Tuesday, March 24th in the world of Kindergarten. :)

Today we learnt the /sh/ sound and practiced sounding out some words with that /sh/ sound.

 

Some students spontaneously started lining up their water/juice bottles in order of size!

 

 

This matched perfectly with what I had planned in math today! Here the students are working on arranging a variety of objects from shortest to tallest.

 

We also read the book Math at the Store. Math really is everywhere!

 

We also received some more mail from our Little Passports friends, Sam and Sophia. From the stamp on the envelope, we were able to narrow down our predictions to Africa. In fact, the letter was from South Africa. We read about Sam and Sophia's adventures on a safari where they got to see a lot of animals. They mentioned a kudu and impala, so we had to google them to see what they were!

 

We also read together a book called What I Can See in March. It was so great to have everyone reading the words all together! We will continue working with this story into next week to give students time to practice and colour their books.

 

We also worked on our monthly self portraits. This time students had to write their own words at the bottom of the page:

 

We also engaged in some literacy activities today. Students worked on tracing letters, changing the first consonant sound in a word to make a new word (like changing man to pan), and putting the alphabet in order. They also worked on looking around the room for words with the letter 'a' in them and wrote them in their journals.

 

We read a story called Alphabet Trucks before heading to the gym. Today we played with balloons! Students worked on passing the balloons to a partner without letting it touch the ground and then they got to each play with their own balloon. After our talking circle it was time to head home!

I will be out of the classroom for the next two Kindergarten days. I am sure that they will have a lot of fun. With Easter on it's way, I have a lot of Easter themed activities planned! :) I will update the blog again as soon as I have some photos to share.

For the Love of Literacy

March is literacy month! We had a literacy filled day today. It all started off with school wide buddy reading for half an hour. The grade tens joined us in our classroom and read stories to the students.

 

 

Students also engaged with a 3D pirate book and some props that the SLP left with us this week.

 

 

We also worked on some of our letter sounds. We learnt the sound /ch/ and also took a look at this beginning sound match for extra practice.

 

We read two cow themed stories today, as well, and did some comprehension and text to self connection work.

 

 

We also had our in motion walk around the gym last recess, followed by our gym class. Students played some tag games and then had the choice of playing with balls, hoops, and scooters.

 

I hope everyone has a fantastic weekend and Happy first day of Spring!

Weighty Wednesday

Hello! We had a very photogenic day in Kindergarten today. I take pictures to document our learning adventures everyday, but we had extra fun today because I had the yearbook camera on hand all day. :) We got some great shots and I saw a student pretending to take photos of their friends in their free choice time.

 

We had a new learning invitation today, which included several different types of scales.

 

 

So, if you guess that we were learning about weight in math today- you are correct! Students used scales to measure how many snap cubes some classrooms supplies weighed. They weighed scissors, crayons, books, paper, and pencils.

 

We also talked more about whole body listening today. To help us out, we read a story called Whole Body Listening Larry at School!

 

Here's what whole body listening is all about:

 

Students also worked on a writing activity. They had to cut and paste the sentence "I am very lucky" and then draw a picture and share why they are lucky.  

 

We were very lucky to be invited to view some puppet shows of familiar fairy tales. The Grade 9 class also presented their own play to help teach us about mental health. The Grade 9 teacher led a discussion for the Kindergarten to Grade 4 students and staff, which touched on bullying, anxiety, and ways that we can deal with emotions such as anger. They also shared ice cream cones with us afterwards!

Because of the presentation, we didn't make it to the gym today. However, we did do some Go Noodle body breaks, which included some new fitness workouts! Students did a great job at jumping and doing lunges. As you can see from the blurred photo, they got their bodies moving!

 

March is marching right along! We'll be back in class on Friday. :)

A Recap of Friday

Hello everyone! Here's a rundown of how our Friday went:

 

In math, we looked over our new class book "A Shape is Just a Shape." Then, we reviewed height and length. Students engaged in an activity where they chose colours of paper that were different lengths. They had to glue the shorter pieces of paper on one side and the longer pieces on the other side.

 

 

We also had some new mail from Little Passports! We read about Sam and Sophia's adventures in Mexico. Of course, some of our students have been to Mexico on family holidays so they could make some connections from their own experiences. 

 

We also talked about what it means to be responsible.

 

 

Afterwards, students worked in their All About Me booklets to show ways that they could help at home and at school.

 

We also talked about the method of Stop, Think, Do and the importance of stopping and thinking before we speak or act in order to help us be more responsible and safe.

 

Students then made their own traffic light to remind them of the Stop, Think, Do process.

 

 

Hands up for body breaks! We love them. Students really love the Go Noodle website. Our latest champ, Zap Von Doubler, reached the highest level yesterday. Now we have a new champ, Tangy Bodangy. For every ten activities we do, our champs grow in size and strength. It is a good way to help us think about what two numbers make ten! There is also some number recognition practice with the track activities, as students are enjoying reading the numbers of how far their javelin, for example, travels when they throw it.

 

 

Everyone left in an excited whirl for a classmates birthday party at the end of the day. I'm sure that starting the weekend off that way was the best way to begin the long weekend! We have a Collaborative Learning Day on Monday so we will meet again in Kindergarten on Wednesday. :)

Skating and Reading

Welcome to our Wednesday! Our day had a few different experiences. We started off with our free choice centers. The most popular spots today were the drama center and art center. We had a morning visit from the Speech and Language Pathologist. He talked to the students about being rude vs. being polite. He also brought in some books and some I-pads.

 

This book folds open into a castle with pieces that you can move around. He also brought a story with pop up dragons. Students were choosing these books over the I-pads!

 

We also had a skate-a-thon this morning, followed by a hot lunch of burgers and fries. The students were very excited to be going to the rink!

 

We also had the first of three school-wide buddy reading events this month. It is part of our celebration of March being a literacy month. Our students were paired with Grade 10 students, who came to our classroom and read to them.

 

We also began work on a class book called A Shape is Just a Shape. Students chose a shape to cut out and glue onto their page. Then they had to decide what to add to it so that they could create something new! We ended up with a house, a rocket, a robot, a swimming pool, and a kite. :)

 

It was a windy day, but fun filled with activity indoors. Thanks to those who read our blog! Since it is literacy month, I challenge you to read to a young person today and have them read something to you. I always tell my students that they can always read from memory or by reading the pictures. They are getting really good at it too! I also enjoy when students write their own stories. They have such great imaginations! :)

 

Take care.