April 20-23

 
This week  in Kindergarten we tried not to blow away with the wild gusts of wind that blew through late in the week.  We were very excited as we had the opportunity to watch a "Spring Concert" dress rehearsal for the Grade 2's and 3's in the gym.  We are hoping that all of the Spring singing will encourage Spring to finally come and stay for a while.

This week we learned all about the letter Y.  We know that Y can make a bunch of sounds and we went on a "Y" hunt in our classroom.  We are such good writers that now when we go on letter and word hunts - we can copy the word and draw our own pictures to go along with it.  We also learned about a mountain dwelling animal- a Yak! What a funny word to say.  We learned a few things about Yaks and even practiced drawing one together.

Along with the letter Y, we made our own Yarn Art.  We engaged in "process art"- which is art for the sole purpose of creating art and bringing enjoyment.  We created our own designs using all different types of yarn and lots and lots of glue and paint.  We have our own Yarn Gallery in the hallway that has been growing.  It looks incredible.  Kindergarteners are fantastically creative artists.

We continued to explore the 5 senses this week by engaging in a "Yummy" and "Yucky" smell experience.  We learned all about how our nose works, how we smell things and why our sense of smell is important. Then we smelled lots and lots of smelly stickers and determined whether our sense of smell liked it or did not.  We noticed that everybody has different preferences when it comes to smell- everyone's brain thinks a little different- and that is cool.

Lastly, we celebrated "Earth Day" this week and learned all about how we can help work together to do small things to help keep the Earth clean and cared for.  We made our own plasticine Earth's to help us to remember to try our best to show love to the Earth.

In centre time "The Friendly Flower Shop" dramatic play centre opened and the Kindergarteners have been having lots of fun ordering, selling and arranging flowers.  We also have been building big block structures, creating art with plasticine and pastels, making butterflies and playing lots of board games. We also worked together to complete our biggest classroom puzzle yet- 200 pieces! Wow!

Upcoming Field Trips:

Kindergarten students will be taking a field trip to the Calgary Farmyard in May. If you are interested in volunteering, you will need to have completed a police clearance prior to the date. Please send Mrs. Rupert an email if you are interested in volunteering at kerupert@cbe.ab.ca. The dates are as below.

TUESDAYS (PM) & THURSDAYS  (AM) are our Library Day.  Continue to check around your house for any missing library books.

FRIDAY, MAY 1                         AM Kindergarten ONLY!

FRIDAY, MAY 8                         PM Kindergarten ONLY!

TUESDAY, MAY 12                   Class Photo Day

FRIDAY, MAY 15                       PD Day - NO SCHOOL

MONDAY, MAY 18                    Victoria Day - NO SCHOOL

FRIDAY, MAY 22                       AM Kinder to Calgary Farmyard 

FRIDAY, MAY 29                       PM Kinder to Calgary Farmyard

April 13-19

 Hello Families!

What a wacky week in Kindergarten as we watched Spring disappear in a giant snowfall! Wow! Our "Weatherperson of the Day" have been giving us all of the updates this week as we continue to shift between seasons! 

We had a great week together learning all about the letter Jj.  We have now covered 21 out of 26 letters of the alphabet- and we are becoming more and more confident using all of our letter and letter-sound knowledge to develop our reading and writing skills.  The Kindergarten students have been fearlessly "guess-spelling" everything and it is incredible to see their amazing skills growing everyday!

Along with the letter J we learned all about Jellyfish!  We know lots of facts about them.  We explored various non-fiction texts and watched a short video about them to learn more.  We discovered that they have no brain, bones, or heart.  And a group of Jellyfish is called a "Bloom".  We also made our own Jellyfish.  We also found out some neat facts about Jaguars and created our own Jaguar puppets at the art centre.

In Math, we revisited "Patterns".  We learned how to accurately "name" or label a pattern.  We explored materials to extend and create more complex patterns and worked to identify and label them using ABCD letters.  We participated in the "Great Jelly Bean Pattern Challenge" and then created and labelled  our own complex pattern using "jewels".  

During Science we continued to explore the 5 Senses.  We learned about our sense of hearing.  We went on a listening walk, learned about how our ears work, and practiced our listening skills playing "Guess the Sound" and "Telephone".  We also made lots of connections between how we use our senses and how other animals and creatures use theirs.  Like Jellyfish, and Jaguars.  So many connections.  The PM group was able to explore all 5 senses on Friday during our delicious experiment.  We made popcorn in an air popper.  We could hear the popcorn, smell it, touch it, see it and taste it. Yum.

The PM class also participated in "Joy Day".  It is a day we learn about what brings us joy, how we can share joy and how it feels inside when we spread joy to others.  They went on a "Secret Joy Mission"- surprising and delivering snacks and cards with joy messages on them to Teachers, Helpers and Staff in the school- it definitely spread LOTS of JOY!  The AM class will have an opportunity to have their own "Secret Joy Mission" another Friday.

In Centres, we have become more creative in our play- crafting all kinds of new things at the open art centre, building our own dollhouses- creating giant train track villages and creating our own restaurant in the House Centre. 

Families, please help your child to remember to return their Library Books.  Our PM class have Book Exchange on Tuesdays and the AM class has Library on Thursdays!  

Also- it will likely be very muddy and wet this week as the snow is melting.  Please send your child with boots as we will be going out to play!  

Here are some pictures from our week:

April 6-10

 
Hello Families,

It has been a while since my last update, but we sure have been busy in the last few weeks. Our time together has been broken up a little bit with March Break and the Easter long weekend- but this week we were finally all together for all of the days! 

We are excited to see the weather slowly changing to become more "Spring-like".  We have been noticing the melting snow, giant mud puddles, and returning birds while outside and we have been talking all about it at carpet time too.  We learned about robin red-breast birds and how they return for the spring, to make nests and lay bright blue eggs.  We created our own robin art this week, adding them to our hallway tree.  We are trying to encourage spring to come and stay!

We spent a lot of time this week learning about our "Five Senses" and how they help us to explore the world around us.  We read some books about our 5 senses and could identify some different ways we use each of them.  The AM class was able to participate in a super delicious 5 senses experiment- we were able to use all 5 senses at the same time.  If you have an AM Kindergarten student you can ask them all about it.  The PM class will have a chance to experience this next week.

While learning about the Five Senses we explored our sense of touch- learning about our skin and nerves and how they work together to communicate with our brain.  We practiced using new vocabulary words to describe different textures- like smooth, bumpy, soft, hard, squishy, and bumpy. We liked playing with the mystery "Feely Box" and creating our own "Touch and Feel" collage.  We also explored our sense of sight playing a memory game- looking and remembering different items on a tray and then noticing what was missing. We did some journaling this week about things we see in the springtime- and we are working so hard at adding details and labelling our pictures.  We are becoming fantastic writers using our letters and their sounds to attempt to write words independently.

Our letter this week was Rr and our letter last week was Ee.  We learned about the different sounds they make, words that began with these letters and how to print them. During our centre times we have participated in word hunts in the classroom.  We are working on copying print, and matching words to their pictures.   While learning all about the letter R this week, we were able to listen to a real record player.  We loved watching the records spin and hearing songs at different speeds.
 

During math times we have been working on identifying and creating patterns with more than 2 elements.  We made our own ABC patterns, and have been playing around with making more complex patterns.  We practice this in our play, using blocks, shapes, and even during calendar time.

Other exciting things in Kindergarten have been spending time in the Library with Ms. McLean, learning letters and numbers with Ms. Uzma.  Mrs. Rupert's daughter came to school for "Take your Child to Work Day" and was very busy helping and playing with all of the Kindergarten friends. We had a special pancake breakfast day.  We built a billion things, we crafted all sorts of masterpieces and we spent lots and lots of time enjoying being together- playing and trying new things.