As a part of our "Me; My Family; My Community" theme, the children had a chance to focus on themselves at the Discovery Centre. Using "loose parts" the children had a chance to create themselves. 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. Check out some of the students' creations:
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We have continued with our “Me; My Family; & My Community” theme. The class has been a busy place with a lot of oral language and dramatic play. Our playhouse has become ‘Westmount Restaurant’. Our puppet centre has become a ‘Westmount Fire & Rescue’ truck. The children have been busy writing and sending letters to each other through our ‘Westmount Post Office’. Many of the children have been making chef’s hats, mailbags, fire hats, police hats & badges. Westmount RestaurantWestmount Post OfficeWestmount Fire & Rescue Our Community Helpers:At work & play: Then we made our own community helpers: Community Helper Visitor: Constable Winkels came and talked to us about her job as a police officer. She showed us all of the equipment she uses to do her job.
Thanks to all of the parents who drove us to the Fire Hall. We got a chance to sit in some old fashioned fire trucks. We got to go into the Dispatch Centre and then we heard our class be welcomed to the fire hall over the speaker system . We learned about many of the different tools on the fire trucks. We got to go inside one of the big fire trucks. We learned about fire safety - to not be afraid of the firemen and to call out to them if we need help...even though they look and sound a bit scary in all their gear!
Our FamiliesWe created framed family pictures this week. The children drew the people in their immediate family, they glued it to a 'house frame', and then coloured the frame. Each child presented their family picture to the class and introduced all of the people in their family. This is an important part of practicing their oral language. It can be very intimidating to present and speak in front of all of their peers. They all did an amazing job! Our NamesWe've been doing lots of things with our names lately. This is helping us learn about the letters of the alphabet that are in our name. The focus has also been on upper case compared to lower case letters. How many letters are in your name?We cut our names apart and counted the number of letters that are in our names. Then we created a floor graph to compare them to our friends' names. Then we converted it into a smaller graph. Sand Names:We created names from glue and glitter sand. Your child can tell you how we made them. This gives our name texture. When the children run their fingers over the bumpy sand they can now "feel" their name providing them with another way to learn and remember the letter. Caterpillar Names:Everyone made Caterpillar Names. We compared their lengths. Some of the caterpillars are very long! We decided to have our caterpillars climb in our class tree!
This week we investigated the question “What colour are your eyes?” The children all made their faces from construction paper. As a part of math we then created a huge eye colour graph using their “faces”. Ask your child which eye colour we have the most and least of. Do you recognize your child? Our results:
As part of our new re-designed curriculum, the children learned about our three Core Competencies - Communication, Thinking, and Personal & Social. The Core Competencies umbrella the literacy and numeracy foundations and essential academic content and concepts taught throughout the year. Core Competencies are sets of intellectual, personal, and social & emotional proficiencies that all students need to develop in order to engage in deep, life-long learning. We learned about the three Competencies this week and have begun to use the vocabulary in our daily learning. The children each chose a poster to colour. Throughout the year we will be making connections to the Core Competencies with our learning. Some of our finished posters:
We remember...We've been reading and learning about Remembrance Day and Peace. The children all drew about what 'peace' meant to them: During Activity Time the children have chosen to colour, make booklets, and do a variety of activities about Remembrance Day. A number of children have enjoyed the poppy provocation at our Discovery Centre. A 'provocation' is simply to provoke - it encourages thoughts, discussions, questions, interests, creativity and ideas. I provided them with the materials and the challenge...they had to come up with their own creations. The children are connecting with the Core Competency, Creative Thinking, and if they are working with a friend they are using the Communication Core Competency. They are practicing the skill of sharing their thoughts as well as listening to others' ideas. The children all made big poppies and we also created a class wreath. The children all traced and cut out their hands for the background. Tracing and cutting out our hands was tough but they did an amazing job! They made small poppies to decorate it. We used the wreath at our assembly on Friday.
We used our Critical Thinking skills to hypothesize about which of our pumpkins we thought would have the most seeds - the orange, white, or green/brown pumpkin. Everyone got to put a tally line beside the pumpkin that they thought would have the most seeds. Which one do you think it will be? Then we had to carry out the task of cleaning and scooping out the seeds from our pumpkins. The next part of our task was to count the seeds - what a big job! Using our hundreds chart made it a little bit easier. The last part of our task was to compare our results and determine which number was bigger. When we are working with big numbers in the hundreds, it can be difficult to understand for four and five year olds.
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 new curriculum.
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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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