What happens to animals when it starts to get cold outside? How do they stay warm throughout the cold winter months? We began to explore these questions in kindergarten this week. Kids were VERY excited to share the bits and pieces about what they already know about this exciting topic. After sharing what they know, students came up with great questions around what they would like to learn more about. This prompted an amazing conversation between the students that went on for ages. We have some great inquiring minds! 

"I wonder where sharks go when everything is frozen?"

"Yeah! What about dolphins! They like to jump. They need to jump out of the water so they can breathe!"

"How will the whales spray their water?"

"Maybe they swim south, like the birds do."

"Whales are strong. I think they could break the ice."

We focused in on hibernation this week and will continue our investigation of animals in winter throughout the next few weeks. Students read stories and watched video clips about animals that hibernate, where they hibernate, how they prepare for this big rest and some of the changes that happen to their bodies during this time. Afterwards, they drew pictures and wrote sentences in their journals. Check out this amazing work...we're writers now!!! WOW!

"I learned snakes hibernate. Bears hibernate in a cave."

"Bears sleep in a cave. Snakes sleep in a den. Squirrels sleep in a hole. Frogs bury themselves to sleep." 

"The frogs hibernate deep under water. Chipmunks hibernate in trees. Bears hibernate in caves. Mice hibernate in burrows."

We learned a couple exciting new number games this week. These games help us to properly form our numbers, practice some early addition, and continually develop our intuition and understanding of numbers and how they relate to one another. Games are such a fun way to learn! 

The afternoon class spent our Early Dismissal Friday finishing our number art. These turned out great!

Classroom Reminders:

Next week is Love of Reading Week at Briar Hill School. Information was sent home about this with afternoon students yesterday. Morning students will receive their information packets on Monday. Students are encouraged to participate in reading activities each day (being read to, reading themselves, reading as a family, etc.) and keep track of how many minutes they have spent reading. Please refer to the folder sent home for more information on this exciting initiative! 

Have a beautiful weekend. Enjoy some fun in the snow!

Miss Roberts

Our week in kindergarten was wonderfully fun and filled with love! We focused on the letter V. Students were extremely excited to make their Valentine bags and hand out notes to their friends. 

We read many stories about friendship and love this week. On Wednesday, students reflected on the question, "What is love?" They came up with many beautiful examples of ways we can show love to our friends and families and even thought of ways to show love to the earth. 

I 💖  kindergarten. 

Classroom Reminders:

1. On Tuesday, Feb 21 we have Evergreen Theatre coming to our school to present "Jurassic Bark," an educational musical theatre production that will focus on our relationship to the creatures who came before us. The afternoon students will be watching the performance on Tuesday afternoon. If your child is in the morning class and you would like to come join us for the show, you are welcome to do so. It starts at 1:30 in the gym. You will need to stay and supervise your child for this time. 

2. Our school is supporting Pink Shirt Day on Wednesday, Feb. 22 to take a stand against bullying. Children are encouraged to wear a pink shirt to school on this day. 

Students worked very hard to finish their stories this week! They thought of great adjectives to describe their main character, created unique challenges that their character encountered, learned that the main problem in a story doesn't usually get solved immediately, and came up with wonderfully creative endings to their stories. These were A LOT of work and turned out great!

Our letter focus this week was the letter N. To reinforce our learning of this letter and continue to build upon our math skills, we started an exciting art project to help students learn how to properly form their numbers to 10. We spent time together on the carpet using the whiteboards to practice forming each number correctly. When students were ready, they each received a big piece of paper to apply their newly acquired skills. Students worked in pairs to help each other form their numbers and supported their partner to fix any numbers they had written backwards. On our Early Dismissal Friday, the morning class got messy with oil pastels and paint and created some beautiful works of number art! 

Classroom Reminders:

1. Valentine's Day is almost here! Please see last week's post for details.

2. Teacher's Convention takes place on Thursday and Friday of next week. There will be no school for students on these days.

3. Did you know Random Acts of Kindness Day takes place in February? As part of “Our Care” philosophy at Briar Hill, we are going to support the Calgary Drop-In Center through a Random Act of Kindness. We are asking all families who would like to participate in this event to make a loaf of sandwiches on February 15th and send it to school with your child/children.  Those sandwiches will be delivered by parent volunteers to the Calgary Drop-In Centre that same morning. The DI distributes over 3500 bagged lunches every week to clients who are employed yet are not able to afford lunch. Include your children in some sandwich making – pick up a loaf of bread and some fillings, bag them back into the bread bag and deliver them to the school to help feed those who need it. Sandwich types may include things like: cold cuts/meats, peanut butter and jelly, tuna salad or egg salad. Any extra sandwiches are frozen for distribution in the future and as such, there are specific criteria for the sandwich contents. Please do not include ingredients such as condiments, cheese, lettuce, tomato or cucumber that would not freeze well. Thank you for your help in this exciting Act of Kindness for our city.

4. There has been some confusion recently regarding our Early Dismissal Fridays. I sent home an additional copy of our ED Friday schedule with the morning class today to ensure we're all on the same page :) I will send this home with the afternoon students on Monday.

Enjoy the sunshine this weekend!

Miss Roberts

Inspired by our work with Quest Theatre, our kindergarteners have been learning about storytelling this week. Each of them have begun to create their very own fairy tale! We started by choosing main characters for our stories and came up with the main challenge that our characters will encounter. We will continue with our stories next week. 

To further develop our understanding of what it means to be peaceful, students reflected on what they could do to create a more peaceful classroom environment. We read a fantastic book brought in by one of our students called Peaceful Piggy Meditation and have begun exploring relaxing breathing exercises to start our school day in a calm, peaceful way. The kids really enjoyed this quiet time we shared together and have even asked if we can do it more often. It was a very lovely week :) 

Classroom Reminders:

1. The Family Dance is fast approaching. Please return the green form that was sent home if you would like to purchase tickets for this exciting school event! Ticket orders need to be returned by Tuesday, February 7.

2. Valentine's Day is coming! Your child is welcome to bring in Valentines to hand out to their classmates if this is something they are inspired to do. If your child chooses to bring in valentines, I have a couple requests:

-Organizing the handing-out of these things is a bit difficult, especially because not all students are able to read each other's names at this point in the year. To simplify the process, I am asking that students sign their valentines with their own name, but leave the "To" part blank. Or write, To: My friend. 

-We have spent a great deal of time learning to write our names with lower case letters, using a capital only at the beginning. As your child will be writing their name 21 times, pleeeease encourage them to write their name this way. 

-Each of our classes has 21 students. 

3. Teacher's Convention is taking place on February 16 and 17. There will be no school for students on these days.