Whenever possible, our classroom topics of investigation or inquiry stem from student questions, interests or passions. I feel that my role in all of this is to carefully observe, listen, guide and build upon these interests. Based entirely on student questions and curiosities, we developed some new classroom centers this week. We now have a classroom restaurant, doctor's office, puppet theatre and animal jungle happening in our coatroom. The engagement that happens when the ideas come from the students is AMAAAZING! And look at all this writing! 

 

 

One of the recurring themes that keeps emerging in our classroom is animals. We have a few kindergarten animal experts who bring in interesting facts to teach us every day. This has inspired a TON of amazing dialogue about animals and an obvious direction to guide our learning. On Wednesday this week, students worked in small groups to video each other sharing things they know about where animals live and came up with as many questions as they could about what they would like to learn about animal homes. We will use these student questions to guide our work next week.

 

We learned some new number games this week to build upon our recognition of numbers and our subitizing skills. Subitizing is learning to recognize the number of objects in a group of items without having to count them. For example, seeing dot patterns on a die. We also talk about numbers who hold hands and are close to one another on a number line (the number 5 holds hands with the number 4 and the number 6). We are also learning to identify numbers that come before or after another given number. Do you talk about numbers at home? I would encourage you to integrate numbers into your daily conversations. Look for numbers in the grocery store, on street signs, menus and houses. Talk about what comes next, what comes before. Chat about how many plates we need for the dinner table or how many cookies will be left after we eat our dessert. As always, make it fun!

 

In honour of Remembrance Day, students created beautiful poppies inspired by the artist, Georgia O'Keeffe.  We created our poppies using chalk pastels. Students learned how to use shading and highlighting to give greater depth to their artwork. 

Thank you so much to those of you who were able to join us for the beautiful assembly today.

Classroom Reminders:

1. Next Friday, November 17 is a Professional Day for teachers. There will be no school for morning or afternoon students.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Miss Roberts