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.