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:

February 9-11

 
Hello Families!

Our week was short- but full of love and kindness! We counted down excitedly to our Valentine's celebration, looking at the calendar each day, creating heart centred crafts and cards, reading stories all about love and kindness and waiting for School Valentine's Day to arrive. 

This week our letter was "V".  We think it is funny to make the /v/ sound as it makes our lips tickle!  We can identify words that have the /v/ sound at the beginning, middle or end.  Many names in our classes have a V in them- we could hear that sound when we said our classmates names.  It was very cool.  

We also know the word "Love" has the /v/ sound at the end.  We practiced our drawing skills this week making Love Monsters or Love bugs.  We also did journaling about "Things that we love!"  Our goal was to try to label our illustrations with the beginning letter sound that matches our drawing.  We know so many letters now, so this is getting easier.  And it's ok if we are not right yet- we are practicing stretching out our words to hear the sounds and then printing,  Adding letters to our drawings is exciting and a big step for us as we become stronger writers.

We also had fun learning a little bit about the Olympics.  We had different Olympic centres this week.  There was colouring, math games, pretend skating and pretend luge, and letter games connected to the Olympics.  We are excited to hear about how our Canadian Athletes are doing at the games.

We also celebrated a big deal this week when our Pumpkin grew as tall as the window! It has finally reached the top of the frame! We can't believe it.  We are watching how it is changing- wrapping its vines around the blinds, growing tiny prickles to protect him, and starting to grow buds that will turn to flowers.  He has been loving the sunshine- just like the rest of us.

Have a wonderful Family Day weekend and Valentine's Day.

Here are some pictures from the week:

February 2- 6

 
Hello Families,

It is February! We said good-bye to January and welcomed a new month this week.  We started our week learning about the holiday "Groundhog Day!"  We made predictions, learned all about Groundhogs (so many facts!), acted out and said our silly Groundhog poem and created puppets for the occasion.   While doing this we explored both fiction and non-fiction books together.

Our letter of the week was "G" and we practiced writing the letter Gg, identifying the letter sounds in the beginning and ends of words and sorting pictures to find the ones that start with the G sound.  Together we read the story "Good-night Gorilla" and worked together to look at the pictures and "write the story" since there are very few words- but fantastic illustrations that "show" the story.  We needed to look for clues from the pictures and use our imaginations.  It was a very funny story.

Later in our week we read a story called "The Mitten Mystery".  We talked all about how most stories have beginnings, middles and ends.  We listened together and then went back through the book to find out what exactly happened in the beginning and the end.  We recorded both important parts in our writing journals.

For math this week we learned about the number 9 and worked in our number journals to represent 9 in various ways.  We also played a dice game and raced to colour in gumballs.  We continued to practice identifying shapes and subtilizing numbers on ten-frames and dice.

In our classroom we had some new centres this week.  Our dramatic play centre has become a Grocery store.  We have enjoyed "shopping" at the grocery store and bringing our food back to the house centre to "cook".  We get to take turns being the cashier, stocking the shelves, and being the shopper.   

We also learned a few new board games to play together and we continue to enjoy crafting, playing on stepping stones at our obstacle course, sorting toys, building trains, making cars and planes out of lego and  painting masterpieces.

Important Dates to Remember:

TUESDAYS (PM) and THURSDAYS (AM)  are our library days. Please remember to send back library books each week. Thank-you! 

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 11: Wear red, purple, pink or white for Valentine's Day. Students can hand out Valentine's on this day if they so wish. Please refer to the email sent last week for further details.

FEBRUARY 12, 13 & 16:   No school for Teacher's Convention and Family Day  

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 20: PM Class ONLY            

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 25:   PINK Shirt Day

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 27:  Non-Instructional Day - NO SCHOOL

Here are some pictures from our week: