This week in kindergarten, we discovered about a zillion things that begin with the letter S and had so much fun exploring an exciting new topic... SSSSPACE! Your children know A LOT about this already (even more than their teacher). Making discoveries alongside children is one of my favourite things in the world. We explored books, watched many videos, spent time staring at distant galaxies and had tons of interesting conversations about the universe. It was a pretty special week. I have a feeling this topic will continue in our classroom for quite some time.

Check out our cool new space blocks that Mrs. Planden made...

S is for STORIES! We are learning to become super storytellers and discovered that most fictional stories have a few important things in common:

1. A main CHARACTER

2. A SETTING where the story takes place

3. A PROBLEM that happens to the main character

4. A SOLUTION to the problem

We used this visual to help us remember the main story elements:

After creating about a dozen silly stories about ourselves together, children were challenged to create simple stories of their own using materials in the classroom. This was so much fun! 

 

The following day, we learned how to represent our stories through drawings. Ask your child what their story was about!

I would encourage you to have your child start identifying the 4 main story elements in the fictional books you read together at home. Ask your child who the main character is, where the story is taking place, what the main problem is, and how the problem gets solved. Or make up your own simple stories! We shared many giggles doing this :)

We have a new story centre where children are learning to create simple books on topics they are interested in. Check out this writing!!! SOOOO PROUD!!!! 

"Dinosaurs"

"Stegasaurus"

In math, we have taken up a fun and exciting new unit on patterning! On Monday, we furthered our explorations of patterns using pattern blocks. At first, we had a free for all exploration time and our friends loooved creating beach scenes, rocketships and so many other interesting pictures using the geometric shaped blocks. After the free exploration time, students were asked to create an example of a pattern using their pattern blocks and then a non-example of a pattern. Can you see which of the patterns below are examples of patterns and which are non-examples? Please talk to your child about what makes a non-example of a pattern NOT a pattern! 

Our pattern explorations continued throughout the week in many fun and exciting ways. Please practice making many different patterns at home and help your child to name their patterns with letters (AB, ABC, AABC, etc). The first pattern below is an example of an ABCD pattern...

We attempted our first word problem! We learned to underline important clues in the problem, and that we could represent the story using pictures, words and numbers! We even learned that joining together two amounts is called a SUM. Please discuss this word around the dinner table tonight!

Have a wonderful weekend everyone! We look forward to chatting with all of you at our conference times next week :)

Love,

Miss Roberts and Mrs. Planden