I apologize for not updating for the past couple weeks. We have been so very busy with our Castle Inquiry project and setting up our Student Led conferences that unfortunately our blog has taken the back burner. But here we are again!
Lundi:
We had a wonderful assembly from a brass group from the Victoria Symphony called: Heavy Metal. We learned all about the different brass musical instruments, how they are made, the different sounds they make, the different relations between the instruments; it was great. We went outside for gym with our other kindergarten friends. In the afternoon, we had a very special activity. We had the opportunity to 'facetime' (similar to Skype) with another kindergarten class at View Royal elementary School. We sang them a song and the presented us a song, we had time for questions about their school and daily routines and then did a comparison between their school and ours. This was a great oral language activity and a great time for questioning practice (not stories!). It was in English, because we learned that the children learn in English at View Royal, but we did two songs in French for them. We are very excited about this new friendship!
Mardi: We did a lot of preparations in the morning for our Special Castle exhibit for Student Led conferences. We had journal time in the morning and did an Earth Day Art project using recycled CDs. We used the CDs to create planet earth mosaics, they are displayed in our classroom. After lunch, we walked to the spirit garden and looked for 5 flowers. We did an oral language French activity talking about the flowers, and then came back and used this for another journal activity. We then visited the music class, where we had a special Aboriginal presentation about storytelling and drumming. The visitor was dressed up and was very interesting, he will be joining us and leading this workshop for the next three weeks in music class. How exciting!
Mercredi et jeudi: We used the mornings to prepare and build castles as part of our student led conferences. On Wednesday we had gym with Mme Sunny and on Thursday we had computers with Mme Sunny. On Thursday morning, we worked in our journals using our new 'SPACE MONSTERS'. They are popsicle sticks with a googly eye on top that eats spaces between words (just as a finger is used to make spaces when learning to write). We then created scenes for our space monster in our journals and wrote about them using our own spelling and sounding out letter sounds to the best of our abilities. This was very exciting. We had an early lunch both days and went home early for Student led conferences.
Wrapping up our Castle Inquiry:
Our castle exhibit during Student Led conferences wraps up and displays all our work from our Castle Inquiry Project. When you come to tour the room, you will notice the four exhibit tables. Each table has a variety of projects (art, clay projects, writing work, ipads with movies and clips, created books) along with a bound book of the groups research and planning work. These projects are produced by the children in that expert group. Your child took part in one expert group that focused on learning about a specific topic. They will tour you around all four expert groups, because they are excited to share their peers' learning. Around the room are built castle exhibits, a big cardboard castle, royal portraits, our shields, castle shape art and light table building. We hope you enjoy learning about castles and sharing in our discoveries.
Lundi:
We had a wonderful assembly from a brass group from the Victoria Symphony called: Heavy Metal. We learned all about the different brass musical instruments, how they are made, the different sounds they make, the different relations between the instruments; it was great. We went outside for gym with our other kindergarten friends. In the afternoon, we had a very special activity. We had the opportunity to 'facetime' (similar to Skype) with another kindergarten class at View Royal elementary School. We sang them a song and the presented us a song, we had time for questions about their school and daily routines and then did a comparison between their school and ours. This was a great oral language activity and a great time for questioning practice (not stories!). It was in English, because we learned that the children learn in English at View Royal, but we did two songs in French for them. We are very excited about this new friendship!
Mardi: We did a lot of preparations in the morning for our Special Castle exhibit for Student Led conferences. We had journal time in the morning and did an Earth Day Art project using recycled CDs. We used the CDs to create planet earth mosaics, they are displayed in our classroom. After lunch, we walked to the spirit garden and looked for 5 flowers. We did an oral language French activity talking about the flowers, and then came back and used this for another journal activity. We then visited the music class, where we had a special Aboriginal presentation about storytelling and drumming. The visitor was dressed up and was very interesting, he will be joining us and leading this workshop for the next three weeks in music class. How exciting!
Mercredi et jeudi: We used the mornings to prepare and build castles as part of our student led conferences. On Wednesday we had gym with Mme Sunny and on Thursday we had computers with Mme Sunny. On Thursday morning, we worked in our journals using our new 'SPACE MONSTERS'. They are popsicle sticks with a googly eye on top that eats spaces between words (just as a finger is used to make spaces when learning to write). We then created scenes for our space monster in our journals and wrote about them using our own spelling and sounding out letter sounds to the best of our abilities. This was very exciting. We had an early lunch both days and went home early for Student led conferences.
Wrapping up our Castle Inquiry:
Our castle exhibit during Student Led conferences wraps up and displays all our work from our Castle Inquiry Project. When you come to tour the room, you will notice the four exhibit tables. Each table has a variety of projects (art, clay projects, writing work, ipads with movies and clips, created books) along with a bound book of the groups research and planning work. These projects are produced by the children in that expert group. Your child took part in one expert group that focused on learning about a specific topic. They will tour you around all four expert groups, because they are excited to share their peers' learning. Around the room are built castle exhibits, a big cardboard castle, royal portraits, our shields, castle shape art and light table building. We hope you enjoy learning about castles and sharing in our discoveries.