It's official, spring has arrived! Our kindergarteners did such an amazing job of investigating this for me last week. Thank you for your help my friends!
Thank you for continuing to support your child's learning at home each week. You're doing an amazing job! Find a summary of this week's activities HERE.
TUESDAY
Our new letter is K! It's one of my favourite letters because KIDS and KINDERGARTEN start with that letter :) We only have 2 more letters to go and we will have completed the entire alphabet. Yipppeee!!
Here are the links to our K videos:
After watching the videos, draw a few things that begin with K and write a sentence that has a K word in it. Writing tip of the week: Did you know that letters are lazy? They always like to sit on the lines. It’s hard work floating in the air all day long! Can you make sure that the letters in your sentence today are sitting on the lines and not floating above them?
BONUS ACTIVITIES:
No need to complete any of these activities! Pick and choose what your child is most interested in. When in class, some children completed their letter work in about 10 minutes every Tuesday and some took 45 minutes. So for our quick little bunnies, I always want to offer additional ideas.
Cool animal fact of the week:
Measure the distance of a kangaroo jump on your floor or on the sidewalk outside of your house. How far can you jump?
Interested in learning some facts about koala bears? Check out THIS video.
It's Art hub CHOICE day! You can draw a kangaroo OR a koala…OR BOTH!
Get your body moving with these 2 hilarious dudes:
Koo Koo Kangaroo
Take a look at these Art Hub drawings from last week. Are you kidding me right now?! These are INCREDIBLE! Nice work my little artists!
WEDNESDAY
This week’s sight words:
CAN AM WE SEE THE
Today’s activity combines art and literacy! As I sit here staring out my window, it got me thinking…what do YOU see when you look out YOUR window?
Sit in front of your window with a piece of paper and a pen. I like using permanent pens so I can paint my picture afterwards, but you can use whatever drawing tool you like. Start by drawing the shape of your window and make sure it takes up almost all of your paper. Set a timer for 10 minutes and start drawing what you see! 10 minutes might feel like a long time and THAT’s OK! When you think you’ve drawn everything, start looking more closely. Challenge yourself to see more detail. This is when your picture starts to come alive. Trust me. And if you truly can’t think of anything more to add, then simply sit and enjoy a few quiet minutes of quiet contemplation.
Once you have finished your drawing, please take a picture of your sketch before you add any colour to it. I often prefer a detailed sketch to a coloured work of art, so please take a moment to capture it for me. If you choose to add colour, take your time with this. Don't ruin your masterpiece by rushing to colour it! I chose to add watercolour paint to my picture.
Many famous artists in history have tackled this same task! Check out what these artists saw when they looked out their window:
(Each of these amazing images are part of the Tate museum collection)
After your masterpiece is complete, write a couple sentences (using some of this week’s Popcorn Words) to tell me what you see when you look out your window. See if you can squeeze in a descriptive word or two.
I can see fluffy rabbits hopping by.
I can see fresh buds on trees.
I can see friendly faces walking by.
I can see trees blowing in the wind.
I can see prickly bushes.
(Only the sight words need to be spelled correctly. Have your child use their phonetic spelling for the rest.)
Another fun sight word practice idea for the week…make your own board game! Find some blank game boards HERE or make your own! I made this one in about 5 minutes. Have your child write the words in each space for extra spelling practice!! Once you've created the game board, write each word on a small piece of paper and turn it over. When it is your turn, choose a word and move to the next space where that word appears (like Candyland).
Or try playing tic-tac-toe, but instead of playing with Xs and Os, each player chooses a sight word.
I love seeing what you guys came up with at home for sight word practice last week!
THURSDAY
Sink or Float?
(Thank you FunLittles for the photo!
https://www.funlittles.com/science-experiments-for-kids-floating-stone-experiment/)
Today you’re going to conduct an experiment to determine what sinks and what floats. Find a variety of items around your house to drop in water. BEFORE you start throwing things in the water, make a prediction whether each item will sink or float. Ask your children why they made the predictions they did. Then try each item, one at a time. Create a T chart to record your findings. What conclusions or guesses can you make about things that sink and things that float?
AFTER you conduct your experiment, watch this video, which gives a brief explanation about why certain objects sink and certain objects float.
For extended observation, try setting out 2 jars with labels on them and have the kids sort the materials into the jars. (Thank you for this great idea Fun Littles!)
PASSION PROJECT FRIDAY
Check out what our little researchers were up to last week...
Thank you for keeping me posted on these amazing projects. It makes my heart so happy to see our kiddos learning about things that they are passionate about. Our topics range from mermaids and rainbows to deep sea dragons and the golden gate bridge. How cool is that?!
Feel
free to create some play experiences around your child's passion project topic. Giving children opportunities to play with the concepts they are
learning will help to solidify them.
I consider myself to be a very child-centered teacher. My ideas come from the kids. Many of our classroom activities are inspired by a question or comment from one of the children…which makes teaching from a distance particularly challenging! I love to observe them as they play and work to determine how long to stay with a particular topic or activity. When things are going well, I go with it! We dive deeper. When it starts to fizzle, I add a new element to the play or change directions completely. Because I am not with you to see the reactions, hear the squeals and experience the excitement, can you please let me know if your children are enjoying their free choice Fridays? Do you enjoy the openendedness of this day? Or would you prefer I give you a more structured idea to end each week?
Don’t forget to check out Ms. Lecocq’s music activities for the week. Click HERE for her latest choice board.
Enjoy your time together this week! I can't wait to see what you create together.
Sending Love,
Miss Roberts 💖
