We have been enjoying our weekly time with our Big Buddies! It's a great way for students to make connections with other children in the school. It's an excellent opportunity for the older students to take on a leadership role and it's nice for the younger buddy to develop relationships with older students in the school. Throughout the year we get together to read but we also do different activities and projects. We got together with our Big Buddies and made torn paper name posters.
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The children enjoyed starting their mornings at our four Table Tub stations. The children were practicing a number of skills during this time of the day. They were especially developing their fine motor skills when working with a variety of materials, such as pencils, Q-tips, felt pens, and playdoh.
I set up a challenge for the students to see if they could build a gate for our five little pumpkins. They had to use some good critical thinking strategies to find a way to balance the pumpkins. Many of the students came up with some good ideas. They planned them, tested their plan, and then often had to refine their thinking to make it work. These kinds of challenges are a part of the Applied Design, Skills, and Technologies component of our curriculum.
We love our story "Five Little Pumpkins". We have re-told the story with our finger pumpkin mitt and with our flannel board. We've read it as a big book. But the best was when we dramatized it using our stick puppets. We've been talking a lot about 'being brave' - just like Kerry Koala from our Fun Friends program. The children got to practice this by standing up in front of their classmates and saying their lines. A fantastic job by everyone!! It's always a bucket filler to hear your friends clap for you when you finish!
We have read lots about things that happen when the season changes from Summer to Fall. We have also been noticing a lot of these changes when we are outside. Together we went on a Sensory Walk to See, Hear, Feel, and Smell things about Fall. Each child gathered a couple of favourite leaves. When we came back to class we took a good look at our leaves - what they looked like and their different characteristics. We then sorted our leaves by colour. We created our own "Fall Trees" by sponge painting. Using "loose parts" the children had a chance to create Fall trees. The idea behind loose parts is that you use different materials to explore, build, create, and design an infinite number of 'masterpieces'. This allows for the students to focus on the Core Competency of Creative Thinking.
We learned about some different kinds of apples and their attributes. The children had fun trying to mix up and match the names with the different apples. The children all made their own tissue paper apple trees. Our finished products:Other apple activities:Many of the children chose to make other apple projects - such as Apple Faces booklets, apple people, and apple crowns.
Meet Kerry Koala:We've been using the Fun Friends program to help us talk about feelings and emotions. This week Kerry Koala came to our class but she was very nervous. We talked about being 'brave' and how that means sometimes we have to do things even if they are a bit scary. The children helped Kerry be brave by telling her some of the things that she needed to do to talk in front of the whole class. They told her to use a big voice, to stand tall, and to look them in the eye. It's important for children to be able to identify and express their emotions in appropriate ways. Kerry Koala used different pictures to talk to the children about their feelings. Then we made Kerry Koala stick puppets - happy, sad, scared, and mad. We used the stick puppets to show how we would feel during different scenarios: you fall down and scape your knee - how do you feel?; your first day of kindergarten - how do you feel?; Mom and Dad take you for ice cream - how do you feel? etc. We will be seeing Kerry Koala a number of times throughout the year to teach us about feelings, how to face fears, relax, solve problems, and set goals.
The Earth Rangers came to our school to talk about animals and their habitat. We learned about how when we help the earth, we help the animals. We got to see a number of animals up close!
To learn more about them, you can go to their webpage at: https://www.earthrangers.com We've been focusing on the changes that are occurring now in the season of Fall. We went outside this week to see what changes we could notice and we also did a scavenger hunt to look for some things in nature. It was a beautiful day outside and we had lots of fun being "Nature Hunters"!
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AuthorI'm Mrs. MacDonald. Welcome to a window into our kindergarten classroom. My goal of this blog is to give you an opportunity to see some of the things that we are doing at school. Enjoy! Archives
March 2023
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