We had so much fun in kindergarten this week! I can't believe how quickly these kiddos are learning to follow our classroom routines and take care of one another. We're becoming a team! 

We begin each day at school by signing our names and engaging in some calm, independent learning activities. This week's entry activities had us strengthening our fine motor skills with playdough and beads, exploring letters through hands-on play, and scissor exploration! 

This time in our day offered me an opportunity to check-in and see how our new friends are doing with their scissor skills. Some of us are experts and some of us are beginners. Kindergarten is a great place to practice! Try out some scissor activities at home this weekend :)

Did you know that September 15th is known as International Dot Day?! It's a day to encourage us all to embrace our creativity! We had so much fun celebrating this fun occasion together. We started our day by reading Peter Reynold's book, The Dot, learned about an incredible artist named Yayoi Kusama (who happens to reeeeally love dots) and created some collaborative dot art of our own! We even added dots to our ever-evolving cardboard collage.

Drawing is an important way children communicate their ideas in kindergarten. This week we learned that artists use shapes and lines as important starting points when they draw. The children worked hard to turn lines and shapes into pictures by simply adding a few details. 

Here are some photos from our free-choice exploration time this week. The addition of new babies in the house centre was a definite highlight!

Please see the following note from Mrs. Planden...

This week we began to develop our early foundational math skills! We are working to enhance our number sense (which means to have an intuition about numbers!) and the very best way to develop this intuition is to develop number relationships using the benchmarks of 5 and 10. We will be spending the next few weeks building our understanding of the benchmark of 5. 

In our math activities this week, we are incorporating lots of opportunities to see, use and relate our learning to the number 5. For example, we began replicating common dot patterns on dominoes for numbers to 5. We looked at how we could breakdown a whole domino into its parts.  We played a chair number game where the students sat down in a group of five lined up chairs, working collaboratively to count to five forward and then to count back from five. 

From there we created counting bracelets. We added 5 beads to a pipe cleaner and used this as a tool to notice the “friends of five” or number pairs that the number five can be broken up. You can have 0 and 5, 1 and 4, 2 and 3 and all of their reversals. Our bracelets were a really great visual to see all of the ways we can break down 5!

Classroom Info and Reminders:

1. Learning to be independent problem solvers is the name of the game in kindergarten! Anything you can do to promote greater independence at home will help your child to be even more successful at school (cleaning up after themselves, being responsible for their belongings, putting on shoes and coats independently, zipping zippers, etc). Any help you could provide in this area would be so very helpful!

2. I'm sure you've heard about the popsicle stick system by now. We're big on positive reinforcement around here and like to acknowledge when children have gone out of their way to be helpful, kind and respectful. When they have earned 10 popsicle sticks, children pick a prize from the treasure box. If you happen to be at the dollar store in the next few weeks and would like to donate a few prizes to our treasure collection, we would so greatly appreciate it! I generally buy things that come in a package of 8 or 10 for $2.00. (bubbles, stickers, mini notebooks, rings, small animals or dinosaurs, etc).

3. We are looking forward to seeing all of you at our virtual Meet the Teacher conferences next week. Please contact Katie in the front office if you're having any difficulty setting up your online account. She can also provide you with your chid's CBE ID number if you still require it. 

Have a beautiful weekend! I'll see you all on Tuesday. Mrs. Planden will be in on Monday.

Love,

Miss Roberts 💖🌻

check out these prize box treasures...

proud little artists...