We'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 uppercase compared to lowercase letters. 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. Because we see the names of the children in our class every day that we are at school, they become some of the first words that we learn to read. We've been practicing reading each other's names in class big books, pocket chart songs, from the Special Friend list, and from many other places in our classroom. We created 'name puzzles' by cutting each letter of our names in different shapes (practicing our cutting skills!) and then we had to put our puzzle back together. It became a bit trickier when we had to complete the puzzles of our classmates' names. Everyone made Name Caterpillars. Each letter of their name had to go on one circle for the body of the caterpillar. They had to think about how many circles they would need to make their caterpillar and they also had to make sure that they made it go the right direction for reading purposes. It's harder than it sounds! We compared their lengths. Some of the caterpillars are very long and others are very short! We decided to have them crawl in and around our classroom tree. We enjoyed making, decorating, and adding details to our Name Trains. 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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We have read the book "Have You Filled A Bucket Today?" by Carol McCloud. The book explains that everyone carries an invisible bucket that contains our feelings. When our buckets are full, we feel great but when our buckets are empty, we feel sad. In the classroom we have been focusing on being "bucket fillers" - someone who says or does nice things for other people. By being bucket fillers, the children not only fill other people's buckets but also their own at the same time. We brainstormed a list of things that we could do to fill each others' buckets. We also talked about things that would fill their own bucket. We also learned about "bucket dippers". A bucket dipper says or does things to cause other people to feel bad. A bucket dipper empties their bucket when they say and do mean things. We are learning to be bucket fillers not dippers!! We read some scenarios and decided if they were "bucket fillers" or "bucket dippers". We decided that we want to be a bucket filling class, so we took the bucket filling pledge. We are working at trying to fill our class bucket - every time someone does something that fills our buckets and makes us feel good, we put a jewel into our bucket. Hopefully we can fill it by the end of the year!!
We remember:We've been reading and learning about Remembrance Day and peace. Our focus has been on how we can show kindness and how this relates to peace. The children all drew what act of kindness they can do to promote peace. Our poppy art:
Halloween Day was such an exciting day. We loved wearing our costumes to school and we paraded and showed them off to Mrs. Ruddick's class - our Buddy class. 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 ActivitiesDuring Activity Time, the children have been choosing to try many of the other Halloween activities: Pumpkin Math With partners, the children played our Pumpkin Patch Math game. Not only did playing the game help with math concepts such as counting and reading dice, it also provided the opportunity to practice working with a partner. Playing games with others gives children the opportunity to practice turn taking, to communicate, to help their partner when they get stuck, to follow rules, to listen to their partner, and to experience winning and losing. All are an important part of social development. Of course, we always end partner work by "thanking" our partners for working with us!
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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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