Halloween Day was such an exciting day. We loved wearing our costumes to school and we paraded and showed them off to Ms. Evan's class, who is in our Learning Group. Halloween stations was a fantastic way to spend our day together! Halloween Stations: We enjoyed playing Halloween Tic Tac Toe, Spider Races, Spider Web - Grab the spiders!, the Skeleton Game, and Ghost Toss. Some of our other Halloween Activities During Activity Time, the children have been choosing to try many of the other Halloween activities:
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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. Halloween Q-Tip Painting Halloween Find & Colour Halloween Word BooksHalloween Playdoh FacesI 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 we have 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". 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! Five Little Pumpkin Art: We even made our own Five Little Pumpkin pictures.
As a part of Science, we've been learning about our 5 Senses. Our focus has been on the signs of Fall. We went outside and used 4 of our 5 senses to notice any Fall changes in our school yard.
As a part of Math, we created a graph about whether we should help catch the Gingerbread Man or whether we should trap him. The results were fairly close: Gingerbread Man Traps So, as a part of our Applied Design, Skills, and Technologies Curriculum, the students had to design and create a trap to catch the Gingerbread Man. Working with a partner and a variety of materials, the children came up with lots of interesting ideas. Our three Core Competencies (Communication, Thinking, and Personal & Social) are an integral part of our school curriculum. They are integrated through so much of the students' learning. During our Gingerbread Man activity, not only did the students have to use the Core Competency of Thinking - both Critical Thinking & Creative Thinking - they also had to use the Core Competency of Communication. The children had to describe their trap to the class and they also had to be good listeners while they heard their classmates' explanations. Working with a partner is not always easy so they definitely had to practice their social skills - also a part of our Personal & Social Core Competency. Save the Gingerbread Man We thought that it was only fair to also try to save the Gingerbread Man. So, the challenge put forward to the children was to try to help the Gingerbread Man get across the river so that he wouldn't get caught and eaten. Again, the students had to work with a partner to come up with a plan. Lots of great ideas!
We decided to make our class tree an apple tree since it is apple season. The children all traced and cut out their apples on the first day. It's tough work tracing and cutting! Then we decided that it would be nice to put our faces on our apples. Our finished tree:
Orange Shirt Day We honoured those children who were sent to Residential School on National Orange Shirt Day - September 30th. We read Phyllis Webstad's book, Phyllis's Orange Shirt, to help us learn more. We learned that Phyllis was from the Williams Lake area and that her Granny bought her an orange shirt before she went to Residential School. It was a favourite shirt for her! Unfortunately, when she arrived at the school they took it from her and she never got it back.
Today we wear orange shirts and promote the slogan, Every Child Matters, as an affirmation of our commitment to raise awareness of the Residential School experience and to ensure that every child matters as we focus on our hope for a better future in which children are empowered to help each other. We read a few books and talked about Residential School at a very basic level – about how we would miss our families and how we are so lucky to go to a school near our homes and to see our families every day! We discussed what we love about coming to school. Together we brainstormed words expressing how WE feel when we’re at school. The children each made a paper feather and then they chose a word to describe how they feel when they’re here. |
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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