We had a lot of wintery fun in kindergarten this week. To reinforce our learning of the letter, S, we decided to bring in some snow and conduct a few experiments. Children were thrilled to explore the snow during center time and were quite surprised to see the changes that took place the longer the snow was inside. 

 

 

We continued our investigation of how animals survive the cold winter months. This week's focus was hibernation. We read books and watched short video clips to learn more about what happens during this long winter sleep. Ask your child to teach you some interesting hibernation facts. Here are some questions to inspire conversation around the dinner table:

What are some animals that hibernate? 

Why do animals hibernate?

What do animals need to do to prepare for hibernation?

What changes happen to an animal's body during hibernation?

Where do animals hibernate? Why?

In math, we are beginning to develop a vocabulary of words to help us build upon and understand relationships between numbers. Our math word of the week was MORE. Students learned a new game called Who Has More that had them comparing two quantities and identifying which is more. Try this at home by showing your child 2 numbers (or groups of objects) and having them say "5 is more than 3" or "10 is more than 7." It is important for students to use the word, not simply point to the larger number/group. 

That's all for this week! Have a wonderful weekend!

Miss Roberts :)

Many of the winter stories we've been reading in class have inspired some wonderful dialogue between students around what animals do in the winter. To dive deeper into this topic, children worked in pairs to brainstorm all of the things they already know about what happens to animals during the winter and created questions around what they would like to learn more about.  

 

Our letter focus this week was the letter N and we spent a lot of time talking about NUMBERS! We were inspired by the artist, Jasper Johns and decided to make some number art of our own. Through this activity, children learned about analagous colours (groups of 3 colours that are next to each other on the colour wheel) and focused on how to properly print numbers to 9. Extra practice with number printing at home would be beneficial for many of our young learners. 

 

Students learned a new number game called Fill the Houses which builds upon students' ability to subitize (recognize groups of objects without counting), accurately count groups of objects and recognize number combinations that add up to 10. This game has quickly become a new class favourite!

 

Our mission to spread kindness continued this week! We spent time each day sharing about the kind actions we are doing at school and at home and added many hearts to our kindness tree. Children decided that we should invite other classrooms in the school to add to our tree and spent our early dismissal Friday completing our very first kindness mission! We spent the morning cutting out over 400 hearts and delivered them to each classroom in the school. They were SO proud! 

 

Classroom Reminders:

1. Our volunteer schedule is active! To sign-up for a time to volunteer in the classroom, please click here or click on the link on the top right-hand side of the blog page (desktop version). At this point in time, I am inviting volunteers to come in on Fridays. I will add more dates and times as the year progresses. 

2. If you are interested in ordering Scholastic books, order forms are due back on Monday.

3. There will be no school for students next Friday, January 26.

Have a beautiful weekend!

Miss Roberts :)

Happy New Year! I hope each of you had a wonderfully restful and relaxing holiday. I am so happy to be back at school with all of your amazing little ones. We had a great first week together. 

We started our week talking about New Year's resolutions. Students reflected on the kind of person they would like to become and came up with a goal to work towards. Here are some of the incredible ideas our kiddos came up with:

"I would like to help my mom with her cooking."

"I am going to be kind and helpful to my little brother."

"I want to make new friends by inviting more people to play."

"I am going to be a better listener."

"I am going to empty the dishwasher and help with laundry."

 

We spent the next couple of days talking about what we did over the holidays. Students looked at work samples to come up with criteria for what makes a great drawing. They each drew a picture of their favourite thing they did over the break and worked hard to ensure that their pictures communicated where they were, who they were with and what they were doing. We drew these on transparencies (or invisible paper as one student called it). 

 

The following day, students painted their pictures and added some writing. We're writers now! Wooo hoooo!!

"I went to the pool and it was so fun."

"I went skiing with my dad."

"Me and Daddy had a date night and for dessert we had ice cream."

We spent a lot of time this week talking about kindness. What does it mean? How can we show it? Why does it matter? We have started a kindness tree that we add leaves to each day when we notice our friends demonstrating kindness and are on a mission to spread kindness throughout the school! Stay tuned for more of our kindness missions!

 

Classroom Reminders:

1. If you are a parent who would like to help out with a few cutting/gluing type activities at home, please email me to let me know (taroberts@cbe.ab.ca). Thank you in advance! For parents who would like to spend some time with us in the classroom,  I will have an online volunteer calendar set-up by next week. Information around how to sign-up will be communicated through the blog. Stay tuned!

Miss Roberts :)