Have a wonderful long weekend! See you on Tuesday :)

Miss Roberts 

This week in kindergarten we talked about the letter Z. We have now spent time printing and talking about all but 2 letters of the alphabet. Most students are very confident with letter sounds by now and are able to confidently apply what they know when completing writing and reading activities at school. If your child is not yet easily able to identify most letter names and sounds, I would encourage you to practice these at home to build your child's confidence in this area. It is an expectation that students know a majority of letter names and sounds by the end of kindergarten and be able to use them independently to engage in classroom tasks. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or would like some suggestions around how to further support your child at home. 

We started to investigate Sea Turtles this week! Students were fascinated by many of the facts we learned and particularly enjoyed watching videos of baby sea turtles emerging from their nest (it's seriously adorable). Students were asked to represent what they learned in a detailed drawing that they will paint next week. 

Our kindergarteners were extremely excited about the opportunity to make something special for their mothers this week. They worked very hard at their beautiful zinnia flowers and cards for you. May all you mothers be spoiled with love and appreciation on your special day this weekend! You deserve it! 

Classroom Reminders:

1. Sports Day is happening on Thursday, May 18th from 2:00-3:15. As this is an afternoon event, the afternoon students will be participating when they are at school. The students in the morning class are welcome to come and join the fun but will need to be accompanied by an adult. The stations and activities will be taking place on the school field. Thank you so much to all of the parents who offered to volunteer for this exciting event! Please meet us at our classroom at 1:45 so we can divide the students into groups before going outside. It should be a fun day!

2. Friday, May 19th is a Professional Day for teachers. There will be no school for students on this day. 

3. If you have not already done so, please help your child to complete their ocean research questions and return to school this week or next. Thank you for your help with this! 

Have a beautiful weekend! Happy Mother's Day!

Miss Roberts

In honour of Mental Health Week, students in kindergarten learned about ways to keep our minds healthy! We focused on calming strategies and brainstormed a variety of things we can do if we find ourselves feeling frustrated. Here are some of the ideas our amazing kindergarteners came up with (all on their own):

If I feel frustrated, I can...

meditate

go for a walk

lay in my bed and take some deep breaths

spend some time in nature

read a book in my room

ask for alone time

talk about how I am feeling

It is incredibly exciting to see students beginning to implement some of these strategies in their daily lives, such as asking to take a break when they need one, or finding a calm, quiet spot to calm themselves down when they experience something challenging in the classroom. 

Thank you so much for your support with the at-home ocean research projects this week. Students who have brought back their questions have done an outstanding job of sharing their knowledge with their classmates. We are having so much fun learning new things from each other and students are loving the opportunity to play the role of the teacher. Please continue to send these in over the next couple of weeks :)

Students worked through an addition math challenge on Thursday. They used dice to practice adding groups and writing number sentences. These kiddos LOVE math! I stopped them after half an hour, but they could have kept going all day.

Our beautiful weather this week brought about many opportunities to get outside and enjoy the sunshine. Children are such natural explorers. We took time to look closely, observe the beauty of our surroundings and discovered some pretty cool things in our own school yard! Check out these amazing photos, taken by our very own kindergarteners.

Classroom Reminders

1. The warm weather has made our classroom HOT! Our big beautiful windows are lovely, but also bring in a lot of heat. Please make sure your child has a water bottle with them when they come to school to help keep them hydrated throughout the day :)

2. Sports Day is coming! This will be taking place on the afternoon of Thursday, May 18 from 2:00-3:15. We will require 4 or 5 afternoon parents to join us for the festivities and help our kinders make it through all of the stations. If you are interested in being one of our volunteers and have your approved security clearance, please email me (taroberts@cbe.ab.ca) to let me know. Morning students are more than welcome to join us for the afternoon, but will require adult supervision. I will send out further details as I learn more. 

3. If you would like to order anything from Scholastic this month, please return order forms on Monday.

Have a lovely weekend in the sun!

Miss Roberts

This week was all about starfish! Our kindergarteners had many questions about these cool ocean creatures and were quite curious to know what they eat, how they move, if they are alive and how they stick to things. These questions inspired some great conversation and gave us a great place to begin our investigation. 

Here are some starfish trivia questions for you to ponder. Your child can give you the answers :) 

How do starfish move?

Do starfish have eyes?

How does a starfish eat? (they love this one)

What do starfish and octopuses have in common?

How long does it take for a starfish to regenerate one of its rays?

What is the largest starfish in the world? What does it eat?

What is the most dangerous starfish? How does it protect itself?

Students drew beautiful starfish and used oil pastels and paint to make them come alive. We practiced our writing skills by recording some of the interesting facts we learned, working hard to vary how we begin our sentences. 

"I learned starfishes have no blood. They have water instead. 

I like that starfish have suction cups on their legs. 

I learned that starfish can stick to walls with their suction cups."

"It's weird how starfish eat. 

The sun star has twenty-four arms."

"I know that the sun star is the biggest starfish.

And they can do regeneration."

Classroom Reminders:

1. Wednesday, May 3 is Hats on for Mental Health Day! All students are encouraged to wear a hat to school on this day to promote awareness of positive mental health. 

2. Thank you to our volunteers who joined us for the Volunteer Tea today. I'm sorry I wasn't able to be there to thank you in person. I truly appreciate you and the time you spend with us in our classroom. We couldn't do what we do without you.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Miss Roberts

We dove into our ocean inquiry this week with a look at one of the ocean's most fascinating creatures...the octopus! We watched a variety of octopus video clips and learned a TON of interesting facts. Here are some octopus trivia questions for you... 

Your child is now pretty much an octopus expert. They can answer any that you don't know ;)

How many hearts does an octopus have?

What color is their blood?

If an octopus loses one of its tentacles, what will happen? 

Octopuses can squeeze into incredibly tiny spaces because_____.

What do octopuses like to eat?

What is the world's most poisonous octopus?

What does an octopus use its suction cups for?

Where do octopuses lay their eggs?

Out of approximately 150,000 eggs, how many will grow to become a full sized octopus? Why?

(I could go on all day! We learned SO many neat things this week!)

We finished the week painting beautiful giant octopuses! Students loved the opportunity to paint something large-scale and enjoyed learning how to gradually mix paint colors together and properly hold and control a paintbrush. This might be my favourite kindergarten art project I've ever done (in 10 years). They're so adorable. 

On our Early Dismissal Friday, the morning class worked through a math challenge. They used connecting cubes, beads and blocks to make as many combinations of 10 as they could come up with. Some students came up with 2 or 3 ways of making 10, most could come up with 5 or 6 ways, and a few of our math superstars persisted through center time to come up with 20-30 combinations! We've got some geniuses on our hands.

Classroom Reminders:

1. This is a friendly reminder that we have asked you not to send in food treats for your child's birthday. We have many students with severe food allergies and promote healthy eating at Briar Hill School. If you would like to celebrate your child's birthday by sending in stickers, bubbles, or some other non-food treat, you are more than welcome (but not at all required) to do so :)

2. It was brought to my attention that the June Early Dismissal dates are a bit off on the schedule that was sent home. Three of the dates listed are actually a Thursday. Sorry for the mix-up. The dates are intended to be June 2, June 9 and June 16.

3. Please see my post from last week about the Volunteer Tea coming up on Friday. 

Enjoy your weekend!

Miss Roberts :)

We had another bright and beautiful week together in kindergarten! Students began the week with a math problem:

Miss Roberts found 4 Easter eggs in her garden, 

3 Easter eggs beside the house and 

2 Easter eggs in a tree. 

How many Easter eggs did Miss Roberts find altogether?

Students were asked to solve the problem using pictures and numbers to represent their understanding. We learned that pictures need to be simple and organized in order to help us solve a problem.

To enhance and refine our oral language and listening skills, we spent some focused time talking and listening to each other this week. Students worked with a partner and took turns being the speaker and the attentive listener. We decided that good listeners make eye contact with the person they are listening to, face the person with their body and stay quiet while someone is talking. Afterwards, good listeners make comments or ask questions about what was shared. We had fun practicing these skills with each other. Have your child show off their new listening skills by enjoying some dedicated face-to-face time with them this weekend!

Exciting news...we are beginning an exploration into the wonderful, fascinating and interesting world of ocean animals! Students were instantly excited to begin sharing all of the amazing facts they already know about the ocean and thought of many great questions and wonders that will guide our inquiry throughout the next couple of months. 

We had a very special guest in our classroom this week! Flumper the bunny made a kindergarten appearance. First question on everyone's mind...is he the Easter bunny?!?! Soooo cute! A definite highlight this week :)

Classroom Reminders:

1. Monday, April 17 is a Professional Day for teachers. There will be no school for students. 

2. In celebration of our amazing school volunteers, our school will be having its annual Volunteer Tea on Friday, April 28 from 10:00am -11:00am. Please join us so we can celebrate YOU! 

Enjoy some special family time this weekend!

Miss Roberts

Happy Spring! We had so much fun on our first week back together. We learned about the tricky letter W and thought of many things that begin with this letter. Some students still get confused with this one, thinking that W makes a “D” sound and a lot get this letter mixed-up with the letter Y. Something to practice at home!

Our kindergarteners stretched their scientific thinking skills this week, working through their first Lego challenge! This was a hit! Students were given 7 different things to create out of Lego (a house, a flower, an animal, a fruit, a bridge, a tower, their name) and used our iPads to record their incredible creations. There was some amazing problem-solving, creativity and persistence at work here! 

Students had SO many stories to share about their exciting spring break adventures and I thoroughly enjoyed hearing every single one. They drew pictures of one special thing they did over the break, working hard to ensure that their drawings represented where they were, who they were with, and what they were doing. 

In math this week, students were shown a pile of cubes and asked, “How can we figure out how many of these we have?” This quickly prompted an incredibly rich and enlightening half-hour discussion around numbers. We heard many differing ideas around how to sort and organize the blocks and decided upon building sticks of 10 (a student idea). Another student excitedly shared that if we put 10 of the sticks together, that would make 100. Working together to group and organize the cubes, we figured out that we had 498 of them! Although these numbers are far beyond what students are expected to learn in kindergarten, their interest, engagement and rich discussion throughout this activity made it incredibly meaningful. Afterwards, one student suggested we put all of our 10 sticks together into one big long line. We were shocked to find that our line of cubes ran from one end of our classroom to the other…and even continued out the doorway into the hall! 

We had one of the Calgary Roughnecks Lacrosse players join us in gym this week! Bobby taught us some great beginning Lacrosse skills. We will continue with more of this next week. 

Classroom Reminders:

1. Thank you for your patience with the Volunteer Calendar. It has been a very busy week! I will post new dates ASAP…hopefully this weekend!  

2. Scholastic orders are due back on Monday.

Have a beautiful weekend!

Miss Roberts