Tuesday, April 14, 2020

Hello sweet kindergarten friends!

Have I mentioned that I miss you?! It’s getting worse by the day! I am looking into new ways of having us interact with each other while apart, but in the meantime, please keep sending me photos! I absolutely love seeing your smiling faces and the incredible work you have been doing at home.

I have prepared a new weekly schedule for you, filled with fun activities for you to try with your families. Click HERE to access the schedule in our Google Drive folder. As always, feel free to work through the activities at your own pace. If you don’t get to everything each week, no problem. Please do what works best for your family. 

TUESDAY

Our new letter this week is Z! 



Just like last week (kids thrive on predictability!!) start with Starfall and the letter videos of the week:

 


Then head to YouTube:


(We usually skip the first 2 minutes of the squiggles videos…but feel free to watch it if your child is interested!)

and one more fun one... 

Now it’s time to show what we know! Print off the Z printing sheet if you like or have your child practice their Zs on a lined piece of paper. After printing, we always draw and colour at least 4 things that begin with our letter of the week. Feel free to draw more if you can! Children then sound out the word for each thing they have drawn. Please remember that our kiddos are learning to be independent writers. No need to correct their kid-spelling. Encourage them to S-T-R-E-T-C-H out each word and say it slowly so that they can hear the dominant sounds. Feel free to have an alphabet sheet nearby as a resource to help them if they get stuck. Click HERE to download a copy of the one we use in class.

At some point throughout the week, we usually watch an Art Hub drawing video for something that begins with our letter of the week. If you have time and your child is interested, here’s an Art Hub video on how to draw a zebra. They LOVE these videos! 

Art for Kids Hub 



WEDNESDAY

Each week, we will highlight 5 new sight words for children to focus on. These are words that children should begin to immediately recognize in the books they read, without having to sound them out. When talking about these words with the kiddos, I usually call them POPCORN words because they keep POP, POP, POPPING up all over the place (and it’s way more fun).

Although we focus on a few new words each week, your child may begin to notice other “popcorn words” in the books they read. Children will often suggest to me what our next popcorn words should be as they begin to recognize these small connecting words in the text they read.

This week’s sight words are:

I    YOU    UP    GO    A

Start by doing a WORD HUNT for these words in books you have around the house. How many can you find in each book? We sometimes use a magnifying glass to make it more fun. You could even try making a chart and keeping a tally of how many times you see these words throughout the week. 


Wondering what to do with all those eggs hanging around your house? Try this fun game!


Write each sight word on the top of an egg. I used a whiteboard marker so I could erase the words after or change them for next week.


Find a small item that you can hide under one of the eggs. Have your child guess which egg it is under (by saying the word on the egg). Continue guessing until you find it. Thank you @early_childhood_fun101 for this super idea! I like that this game can be modified for almost any age/ability level. You could try a modified version of this game with siblings working on anything from colours and shapes to math equations!

Each time you sit down to read a book with your child this week, do a word walk through the book before reading to see if they can find any of the popcorn words. When your child is doing their Raz-Kids reading, have them flip through the pages before reading to see if they can find any of their new words. 


Write the words on sticky notes and post them around the house. Practice reading these words when you’re eating breakfast, brushing your teeth or going up the stairs. The more familiarity they have with these, the better. Make it fun!

Carve out a bit of time to check out some of Ms. Lecocq’s music activities today. All music activities can be found within our Kindergarten Goodies folder. 


THURSDAY

Time to get creative with some small world storytelling. This is going to be fun! 


The development of children’s oral language skills go hand in hand with the development of their writing skills. Before children are able to write their stories and ideas, they must feel confident talking about their stories and ideas. Oral storytelling is a way for children to see themselves as storytellers before ever picking up a pencil. 


A good portion of our free-choice centre time in kindergarten is spent engaging in small world play. Your task today is to create a small world scene with your child to facilitate some rich oral language! 

 



Today’s activity involves 3 parts:

STEP 1: Create a small world setting with characters and materials found around the house or backyard. Think outside the box here! Decide on who the character/characters will be and then choose a fun setting where your child can act out and play with their story idea (dinosaurs in the backyard would inspire a very different story than dinosaurs in the kitchen). Think of the different stories that could result from these different settings…

 




STEP 2: Spend time playing with your child and see what ideas they have for their story. We have spent a great deal of time in kindergarten learning about the elements of a story. Most stories have a main character (who the story is about), a setting (where the story is happening), a problem (something that happens to the main character) and a solution (how the problem gets fixed). Today is all about oral language. So get them talking! 

 
 Playdough makes a great base for a story!



 @joysofkinder


@redvioletstudio

STEP 3: *OPTIONAL* Have your child use drawing and writing to record their story. Nothing fancy. Perhaps 3 pictures that show the beginning, middle and end of the story with a sentence to accompany each one. You could even make it into a book! If that is too much writing for your little one, just have them focus on drawing really detailed pictures and ask them to label their drawings with single words. Feel free to use the journal page provided in our literacy folder. 
(Please note: there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all approach in kindergarten. We have such a diverse group of learners. Please don't overwhelm your child with writing sentences if this feels like too much for them right now. BUT, if they can handle it, by all means! This may be something you work on over a few days.)
This picture closely mirrors the steps we take when drawing and writing in class:

FRIDAY

Congratulations to those of you who have already started your passion project! I am loving the topics and questions that have come in so far. 


Today, you get to teach the teacher! Your task is to spend some time investigating your topic. What have you learned? Start by searching for answers to the questions you wrote down last week.

Use pictures and words to show me what you have discovered so far.  Record your ideas in a handy notebook to keep them all in one place. 



If your child has not yet started their project, no problemo! Please see last week’s blog post for details and start there :)

 Have fun with your at-home learning this week! Let me know how it goes :) Thank you for all the photos. Keep 'em coming! Mrs. Seddon and I are working hard to respond to every single email as fast as we can. 
Sending Love,
Miss Roberts 💖




I loved seeing your Y trees!!

 



Check out this amazing sensory play!



 This is frozen tea! So beautiful!



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