We had another fantastic week kindergarten! Students worked through their very first science challenge. They were given the task of building the tallest structure they could with a variety of classroom building materials. Students loved learning to use rulers for the first time and had so much fun measuring the height of their creations. They were totally engaged throughout this challenge and came up with some great reflections afterwards:

"At first, everything we made kept falling over. When we made the bottom really wide and flat, our tower went so high!"

"We made a square at the bottom to make it stable and then kept stacking on top of that."

"We discovered that you need to just keep going, even when your tower gets knocked over, just like Pete the Cat!"

To develop our early addition skills, we worked through a math activity where students were given 6 stones and challenged to this problem, “How Many Ways Can You Make 6?” They needed to find as many possible combinations of arranging the stones as they could. For example, 3 and 3, 5 and 1, 4 and 2, 2 and 2 and 2, 1 and 2 and 3, etc. Students represented their answers with pictures and numbers. Although not an expectation, some of our kindergarten math geniuses added addition symbols as well.

We continued to talk about the concept of peacefulness this week. I asked the children to think about whether they would prefer to spend time in a classroom that was peaceful or not peaceful. Students recorded their reflections with our iPads and enjoyed watching themselves on video afterwards. Every single student shared that they would prefer to be in a peaceful environment :)

Classroom Reminders:

Our Early Dismissal schedule for next Friday, January 27 will be slightly different than usual due to our Quest Theatre performance. BOTH morning and afternoon students are asked to come to school at 8:40 for an early morning rehearsal. Parents are invited to join us for the celebration performance. This will take place at 10:30 in the gym and is scheduled to be approximately 45-50 minutes. ALL Kindergarten students will be dismissed from the classroom immediately following the performance (at approximately 11:15/11:20). Hope to see you all there!

Happy Saturday!

Miss Roberts 

This week in kindergarten, we talked about the letter R. Students drew pictures of things that begin with R and practiced printing this letter in their journals. At this point in the year, I am looking to see that students are beginning to experiment with writing by listening for beginning and ending sounds in the words they are attempting to record (eg. RN for rain). Students who are more comfortable with their letter sounds are now recording all of the sounds they hear in each word (eg. RANBO for rainbow). 

To reinforce our learning of the letter R, students created their very own robots this week. We read stories, watched artist videos and looked at many images for inspiration for our invented robot drawings. Students had a lot of fun coming up with names and stories about their robots. 

On the following day, we learned about WARM and COOL colors and the feelings associated with each. Students chose either warm or cool colors to paint their robots. We used our brand-new liquid watercolour paints for these and they turned out great! 

Learning to appreciate and foster a peaceful learning atmosphere is an important part of our kindergarten social studies curriculum. We spent time this week talking about the word peaceful and what it means to each of us. We had great discussions and even a few laughs listening to a variety of sounds and looking at a variety of pictures deciding whether or not they brought about feelings of peacefulness. Afterwards, students had an opportunity to share what they had learned by taking videos of each other on our classroom iPads.  

Classroom Reminders:

1. Quest Theatre is coming to our school! They will be working with students from January 23-26 to create a performance we will be sharing with you on Friday, January 27th at 10:30 am. Although this is an Early Dismissal day for the afternoon class, we will also need the morning class at school for a portion of the morning so they may participate in the performance. I will send more detailed information home about this in your child's folder next week, but wanted you to have an early heads-up so you can add this exciting event to your calendar :)

2. Scholastic order forms are due back on Monday.

Enjoy some fresh air and sunshine this weekend!

Miss Roberts

Happy New Year!

We had a great first week back to school. Students were very excited to share about their holiday experiences and reunite with their friends. We spent time on Tuesday looking at a drawing continuum. Students evaluated drawing samples and put them in order from least to most developed. The purpose of this rubric is to help students self-evaluate where their drawings fit on the continuum and identify what they can do to move their drawings to the next step. Students drew a picture of something they did over the holidays and identified where their picture fit on the rubric. Later on in the year, students will use this rubric to self-assess their writing as well.

Have a look at our wonderful writers!! Many students have begun experimenting with writing sentences now. Some students have even begun to use spaces between their words. I am SO proud! 

I had my aunt over for Christmas.

I am watching Tree House at the farm.

 I played ninjas with my cousin and my brother.

I went to my grandma and grandpas.

We worked through a wintery math problem this week: If you were going to go outside to build 3 snowmen, how many snowballs would you need to make? 

Much to my surprise, this problem caused a great deal of difficulty for many students. The overwhelming answer that many children gave was 3, despite numerous prompts, reminders and varied explanations of what altogether means. We'll keep practicing! There were of course, many students who did understand the question and solved it almost immediately. We are a diverse group of learners :)

Inspired by the beautiful snow outside, we wanted to bundle up and do some outdoor exploring on Friday morning. But alas, the weather was colder than -20, which kept us inside. We decided not to let the weather get in our way and brought the snow indoors! The kids were ecstatic about this idea. They had a ton of ideas around what we should do with it:

"Are we going to build a snowman?!" 

"Let's play with it and see how it feels."

"We should put little drops of water onto it and see if it melts."

"Let's make a mountain!"

"Can we paint it?"

...and my personal favourite...

"Let's throw it in the air and pretend it's snowing!"

We decided to try everyone's ideas (except for the snowing suggestion, unfortunately). Students LOVED this snow experiment and made some great discoveries along the way:

"It's turning invisible in my hand!"

"There are particles attaching all the tiny bits of snow together."

"I'm making water!"

"If you add the snow to the water and stir it around, the water gets colder."

"I see sparkles!"

 I love my job :)

Classroom Reminders:

1. I've added new dates to our volunteer calendar. You can find the link to sign-up on the top right-hand side of the blog. Please remember that you need your approved security clearance completed before joining us in the classroom. 

2. We have quite a few students with overdue library books. Please remember to send back your child's library book each week so that they may take out a new one. Morning students go to the library every Wednesday. Afternoon students go to the library on Thursdays. 

3. If you would like to receive an email notification each time our blog is updated, enter your email address underneath where it says Follow by Email on the top right-hand side of the blog.

Stay warm out there this weekend! 

Miss Roberts