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.
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We 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! 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:The children all made big poppies to decorate our room as well as a class wreath. Our wreath was Aboriginal-themed. We all traced and cut out green feathers for the background and then painted and cut out small Aboriginal poppies. A number of children have enjoyed the poppy creating at our Discovery Centre. I provided them with the materials and the challenge...they had to come up with their own poppy creations. The children are connecting with the Core Competencies, Creative and Critical 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.
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 Name Trains:We enjoyed making, decorating, and adding details to our Name Trains. Let's Make Our Names!
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 Books Halloween Playdoh Faces
We've been doing some different 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. Name Puzzles: 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. Torn Paper Names: 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 as well as take part in our weekly Boks program in the gym. We also do different activities and projects. This week, we got together with our Big Buddies and made torn paper name posters. Our finished products look great!
Halloween Day was such an exciting day. We loved wearing our costumes to school and taking part in the school costume parade. 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!, and Ghost Toss. Class Jack-o-lantern: We had to decide what kind of face we wanted carve on our pumpkin. So, we created a graph and each child got to give their input. When analyzing our graph we practiced a number of mathematical concepts - counting, comparing, as well as using the language of 'most' and 'least'. Thanks to Paxton's Mom for carving it. It was great to have it glowing during our Halloween Party! Halloween Art: Some of our Halloween activities: During Activity Time, the children have been choosing to try many of the other Halloween activities:
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've been focusing on the changes that are occurring now in the season of Fall. We read the book "Leaf Man" with our Big Buddies. Then we all went outside and 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" with our Big Buddies! The last part of our outdoor scavenger hunt was that the children had to create their own Leaf Men. Can you spot their Leaf Man creations? We 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!!
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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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