March 9-13

 Hello Families,

The snow is back! We are so fast at getting into our snowsuits by this time of the year that we were able to get outside a few times this week to play in the snow, catch snowflakes on our tongues and observe the ever-changing season that is Winter! 

This week we tackled two letters.  We have been doing more and more writing and labeling- so we need more letters! We started the week learning about the letter H.  We know the sound that it makes and had lots of fun making our own "Hide and Seek Hippo House".  We drew things inside our house that started with the H sound, and hid a hippo in there too- then we covered our pictures with paper flaps and had our friends try to find the hippo.  

Mrs. Rupert also played a harmonica for us and we tried to guess the tune:)

Along with the letter H we continued to learn about Hibernation and other things that animals do in the Winter time.  We practiced drawing and labeling pictures of facts we found in non-fiction books.  

We also learned about the letter U.   We know that U is a special letter that makes 2 sounds.  We read a story called "Under and Over the Snow".  We played movement games with prepositions- like moving just how a bear would "over" something, or hopping like a rabbit "under" something.  We like to practice moving like animals.  Along with this learning, we continued to work together on math problem solving.  We have been learning how to show our thinking through pictures in our math booklets.  We can solve problems that involve adding, counting on and taking 1 away.  We love being able to solve tricky questions and showing how we know we are right!

We also read stories about being "Unique" and we know that being unique means "one of a kind".  We spent some time noticing all of the things about ourselves that make us unique and who we are.  The classroom is such a wonderful place because we are all so different- the world would be so boring if we were all the same.  We spent time looking in the mirror and noticing the details in our faces.  We used these observations to help us draw a self-portrait.  We needed to really look carefully, take our time and draw what we saw.   They are very excited to share their self-portraits with their families.

In the classroom we have been on a huge puzzle streak- starting with 24, then 48, then 60 and now 100 piece puzzles.  We are learning great strategies about how to build a puzzle and how to work together! You have to be very observant to build a puzzle and you have to take ideas from other people about where your piece may go.  During centre times we continued to build, craft, pretend, sort, and create together.

Important Dates to Remember:

TUESDAY next week Kindergarten will preview the book fair and will not be bringing home a new library book.  There will be no Library book exchange this week for AM or PM.

Books will be available to purchase during the Book Fair while it is running during Parent-Teacher Conferences Thursday & Friday.

TUESDAY, MARCH 17:  Wear Green for St. Patrick's Day

MARCH 19 &20: NO SCHOOL FOR KINDERGARTEN - Parent Teacher Conferences 

***Parents will book conference times through their CBE account. Conference bookings will open on Saturday, March 14 at 8:00am and closes on Thursday, March 19 at 2:00pm. 

Booking Times: Thursday, March 19 from 8:00-12:00 & 3:30-7:30, as well as Friday, March 20 from 8:00-12:00

Here are some pictures from our week:

March 2-6

 Hello Families,

We had a busy, full week in Kindergarten as we learned about research and using non-fiction books to find facts about animals. We discussed what animals do in the Winter time and learned all about 3 words- Hibernate, Migrate and Adapt. You can ask your student these words and they can show you the actions we have for each one and tell you what it means.  We drew about what we found out about hibernation- using detailed pictures and labelling.

Along with this we did our own research by reading non-fiction books about bears, looking at pictures of bears in the wild and discovering lots of facts we could record in our journals.  We even learned how to draw a bear together.  You can ask your Kindergartener to share a fact about Bears.

Our letter this week was "Bb".  We know what sound it makes and we can identify words that have B at the beginning and the end of them.  We drew things that start with the letter B and attempted to label them using our "Guess Spelling" skills- stretching out the words and writing down the letters we hear.  We are becoming very aware of letter sounds and how they help us write words.  During phonics times we have been practicing segmenting words, blending sounds, identifying rhyming sounds, and clapping out syllables.  

In math we worked on counting using one to one correspondence.  Many kindergarteners are fantastic at counting- saying the numbers and counting.  They can count pretty high too! Practicing counting using one to one correspondence involves counting objects and being able to accurately identify "how many" of something there are.  It also requires organizing the materials that are being counted- like lining them up or separating them from the rest of the objects to make sure they aren't recounted.  Counting objects at home is great practice to continue to develop this skill.

We used our counting skills to begin our math problem solving activities.  We are finding ways to solve math problems.  We can draw out the problem, use blocks or objects, and talk out our ideas with our teacher and friends.  This week we tried many math word problems- like "if there are 3 goats on a mountain, and they all have 2 horns- how many horns are on the mountain".  The Kindergarteners were very proud of themselves as they worked together to solve our questions.  

Of course, we crafted, painted, built things, read stories together, played in the sand box, visited the library, played outside in the snow, and even became "veterinarians" in our new vet centre.  We also made cool paintings using watery paint, eye droppers and straws- we had to use or breath to create cool designs.  It was very fun to do! 

One last thing: If anyone is willing to make playdoh next week or the week after- we would be so grateful! Please let me know if this is a possibility- I can help with a recipe if needed.  We really appreciate it!

Important Dates to Remember:

TUESDAYS (PM) and THURSDAYS (AM) are  library days. Please remember to send back library books each week. Thank-you! If your child has library books out that are overdue, they may not be able to take a new book. 

FRIDAY, MARCH 13: PM Class ONLY!

MARCH 16-20:  Book Fair - Please refer to the information sent home this week with your child

TUESDAY, MARCH 17:  Wear Green for St. Patrick's Day

MARCH 19 &20: NO SCHOOL FOR KINDERGARTEN - Parent Teacher Conferences will be these days. Please stay tuned for further information to come. 

Here are some other pictures from our week:

February 23-27

 
Hello Families,

Another busy week in Kindergarten rounded off the month of February. Next week we welcome March and time is flying.

This week was quite eventful as the AM class attended the Jump Rope for Heart assembly and were able to watch an amazing teachers vs. students skipping competition as we learned all about how to keep our heart healthy and body strong.

Both classes had a visit from our school Knowledge Keeper and Indigenous Elder - Hal Eagletail.  He came to share more stories, answer more questions and sang us some songs that have been passed down from generation to generation.  We liked listening to his drum.

Our letter of the week was K for Kindness as we celebrated Pink Shirt Day on Wednesday.   We talked all about how we show kindness to one another at home and at school.  We understand that we feel good when we make others feel good too.  In our classroom we read stories about kangaroos and kazoos.  We had lots of fun making our own kites and had a chance to take them outside and test them on a breezy day.

This week we finally made it to the number 10 in our number journals and made creative pictures using 10 back dots after reading a story called "Ten Black Dots."  We will be using our black dot pictures to put together our first collaborative class book.  It was so neat to see every person's own unique ideas for their picture.

Other highlights of the week included seeing our giant dragon hanging in the hallway when we got to school on Monday.  He's so big and bright and shiny! We also loved going to see Ms. McLean in the Library.  She showed us how to use "Book Markers" to choose books off of the shelves in the big section of the Library.  That was very exciting!

During the week we built cities, played cards, made giant puzzles, and crafted like crazy! We also did directed drawings, played with the sunlight, played with animals and crafted some more.

Here are some upcoming dates:

FRIDAY, MARCH 6:   AM Class ONLY!

FRIDAY, MARCH 13: PM Class ONLY!

MARCH 16-20:  Book Fair (More Information to come)

TUESDAY, MARCH 17:  Wear Green for St. Patrick's Day

Here are some pictures from our week:

February 17-20

 Brrrrrr! What a chilly week we had as winter returned with its snow and cold wind.  Luckily we still had lots of beautiful sunlight pouring in our classroom and a nice warm space inside to play and learn.

This week we focused on the letter "L" and learned all about a celebration called "Lunar New Year".  We know what sound L makes, we can print the letter Ll and we can identify L sounds in the beginning, middle and end of words.  

We also learned all about Lunar New Year by reading and looking at non-fiction books that show how people celebrate.  We used this information we discovered together to share drawings and practice labeling in our journals.  We are working on copying words, creating detailed illustrations that can represent information, and using our understanding of letters and their corresponding sounds to "guess spell" and label some words.  We know that this year is the "Year of the Fire Horse" and we also saw how people sometimes celebrate Chinese New Years with a dragon dance.  We made our own Dragon puppets and learned about how the dance is done.

Labelling is an important step in learning how to become strong writers.  The PM class learned all about labelling and why it is important on Friday.  The AM class will learn this same lesson this week.  We had fun labelling Ms. Bitz and then had the opportunity to label EVERYTHING we could in the Kindergarten rooms.  We know how to stretch out our words to listen for different letter sounds.  We can write them down as we hear them in words.  We can ask our friends to help us. We can look on our letter charts and alphabet pictures to help us too!  We loved labelling our classroom- and we did such a good job.

We also played math games, shopped at our "grocery store", created a giant collaborative art project, did lots of painting, colouring, crafting, puzzle making, and block building.  We created animal homes with blocks, made giant racing ramps, used stamps to make books and created so many vehicles out of lego.

Here are some pictures from our week: