This morning we were fortunate to visit the library for Witch Waters' Halloween special! We did a few poems and songs, we read a Halloween story and played a Halloween guessing game. It was a great time. After lunch, Constable Chris came to visit us in the gym for an assembly. We learned all about how to be safe on Halloween night! This was another great presentation. After, we had a visit from Mario, our Roots of Empathy facilitator, we learned about a baby who will be visiting us next week. Our Roots of Empathy baby's name is Baby Adelyn. We are looking forward to her visit next week.
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We had our first lice check today during our morning exploration time. After recess, we came in for Brain Gym & Calendar. We then did some more measurement practice with our pumpkins as non-standard units. We then went to the gym with our friends from Mrs. Moore's class for primary stations. We practiced balancing, throwing, rolling and hulahoops! This was a lot of fun. We also had the chance to play a Halloween cooperative game with our friends. After lunch, we had music class where we practiced short songs and poems. We then came back to our room for Moccasin making. Today we started sewing our two pieces of fabric together to begin the toe part of the moccasin. This required a lot of patience and fine motor practice. Everyone did a great job! This will be an exciting and engaging journey for our friends. It is neat to see how dedicated and focused they are in participating.
This week we embark on Parent-Teacher Conferences. We will have the opportunity to discuss your child's transition into Kindergarten and listen to each other about how things are going so far. Before coming, please take the time to reflect on how the beginning of Kindergarten has been going for your child and your family. I will be asking you to start off our session with sharing from your point of view and commenting on your child's transition. Then I will share what I have been noticing and we will have a chance to discuss together. Then I will ask you what is your goal for your child this year in Kindergarten. I often prompt with this same question to help paint a picture of your hopes for your child this year and how we can work together to meet them. We will end with any questions and a quick check-in with your Fresh Grade experience, troubles and questions so far.
Two points to think about before coming: -How has the beginning of Kindergarten been for your child and your family? -What is the ultimate goal you would like to see your child work towards this school year? *BYOD (Bring your own device, if you need assistance with Fresh Grade. If there is a great need for support, I will put on a Fresh Grade after school or evening optional support session for parents. Please keep in mind that we only have 15 minutes for these sessions. We have been sharing many wonders and questions about our pumpkins. Yesterday we worked in small groups to measure the height of our pumpkins. We first estimated which we thought was the tallest pumpkin and the shortest pumpkin. We then worked in small groups to build towers with unifex cubes to measure the height of our pumpkins. This took a lot of discussion and direct comparison. In the small groups, each member had to be in agreement with the same amount of unifex cubes for their final tower. We then compared the different heights of our pumpkins. We agreed that the white little one was the shortest in height, the two medium ones were the same height and the largest one was the tallest, measuring 14 unifex cubes.
Today we will be measuring our bodies using the pumpkins. We will be having a discussion about using pumpkins to measure ourselves. Will it be accurate if we use four different sized pumpkins at once to measure our bodies? OR Will we have to use the same pumpkin for one person to be more accurate? Will someone that uses the smaller pumpkin be able to compare their height measurement to someone who used a larger pumpkin? Lots of thinking, questions and discussions will take place in regards to decision making and comparing whilst measuring our bodies. Friday afternoon, during playtime, was the scene for numerous weddings in our class. We opened up Mme Rebecca's big suitcase of dress up clothes and immediately became animals, brides, pirates, princesses, disco dancers and knights. Sooner than later, a wedding was taking place. The chairs were parted for an isle, guests were seated, music was playing and the bride was being marched down the isle to the marriage officiant who was dressed in a plaid housecoat and dark cool shades. About half of our friends ended up getting married this past Friday. What a magical Friday afternoon. The learning through play, magical moments and special memories with friends created in Kindergarten are timeless. The laughter, planning and organizing that goes on during our free exploration play times are irreplaceable.
After music class on Mondays we are fortunate to be part of a Moccasin making workshop with Jennifer, a past parent from George Jay. Jennifer will be guiding us through an Aboriginal Traditional art form of creating Moccasins. Each child will be sewing and designing their own moccasins to bring home when finished. This will take many weeks to complete. Yesterday we started off by tracing our feet, cutting our patterns and choosing our fabric. This was very exciting to feel all the different textured fabric that Jennifer brought to share with us. Next week we will continue on this art creating journey. Our pumpkin discovery has been intriguing. Yesterday, we read a special story about 'La plus grosse citrouille', the biggest pumpkin. We learned how a pumpkin grows from a seed and the different stages it goes through before looking like the ones we see in October. We then had some inquiry questions and sharing about the pumpkin growing phase, and completed illustrations of our understanding of how a pumpkin grows in our Wonder journals. Tuesday, we had the chance to explore and play with our DIY parachutes. We all went outside and had a parachute drop. Everyone climbed up to the top of the playground, and dropped down their parachute. We talked about which ones went fast, and which ones went slower... and what is the purpose of a parachute. We decided it was to help something or someone land slowly and safely. This was an exciting activity and we took lots of pictures. A couple of our friends have turned these pictures into a movie/slideshow. I will post this soon!
We have been exploring and inquiring about pumpkins. We were given three pumpkins and we have been observing them, holding them and feeling the outsides. Yesterday we did an observational drawing of what we are noticing about our pumpkins. We will be talking more about our wonders and our plans for our pumpkins this week. This week we have also been creating spooky art to go along with learning our new Halloween French words. On Tuesday we worked on using pastels to draw stars and then using water tempera paints to create a spooky sky painting over top to see the resistance of the oil pastels. We will now be adding ripped paper to create a spooky tree. This is different media exploration and fine motor practice whilst being creative. Thankful, parachute creation, rolling down hills, brother visits, leaf hunts and picture day!10/11/2015 What a busy week we had in Kindergarten. I hope you all enjoy your long weekend and have a happy thanksgiving or family celebration time together.
We had many discussions, this week, about thanksgiving, being thankful and saying thanks. We did discussion activities, drew in our journals and created thankful place mats to come home as special keepsakes, enjoy! This week, the continuation of parachute creations was very popular. The parachute creation station has been full and busy during our exploration play times. We have lots of different types of parachutes being created for our flight test sometime next week. The collaboration, helpfulness and idea sharing at this station is inspiring. We spent lots of time outside at our nature playground rolling down the 'hill' that has been added to George Jay. Children may have come home a bit muddy, but laughter, playing and memories were all shared during this process. On Friday afternoon my brother, Freddie, came to visit us. Freddie is currently at Uvic completing his Bachelor of Education to become a high school teacher. Freddie is focusing on Physical Education and French at Uvic. He will be visiting us some Friday afternoons. We had lots of questions for Freddie, and he helped us by responding in French. This was exciting for lots of our learners, to see a young man speaking in French answering their questions. He stayed for our play exploration time, and had many friends building, designing and chatting at the Lego table with him. On Thursday we read a story about leaves. We learned and talked about the different colours leaves might be, throughout the seasons and depending on what type of tree or plant they are from. We then went out and hunted for leaves. Once everyone had found a special leaf, we organized them in sizes. We had three groups: small, medium and big. We then lined all our leaves up from biggest to smallest. This was an exciting time outdoors together doing math. Once inside, we all took turns painting and using our leaves to create leaf prints. We then added fall-ish colours by sponge painting to our print work. Beautiful artwork to come home next week! Picture day, what a special day it was. Everyone had their picture taken and prints will be coming home for you to see hopefully in the next little while. Picture day is a special day, one of many to come. Enjoy your snapshots of your kinder! Yesterday, one of our friends brought in a hand made parachute that his older brother had made. This was very neat to have him explain it and demonstrate how it works to us. We had lots of questions and ideas surrounding the idea of parachutes, parachute making and how they fly. We decided to come up with a list of materials we would need to make our own parachutes, similar to the one that was brought in. We then decided to have a parachute making station in our class with paper bags, coffee filters and plastic shopping bags all to use for the parachute part. We started this station today. One of our friends made a picture collage of different pictures taken from our parachute making station.
Today when we visited the library, Madame Rebecca found many books about flight, parachutes, things that fly and inventions that fly. Lots of our friends chose to look at these books throughout our reading times today. We brainstormed ideas and questions about parachutes today as a group. We have four big ideas that we are interested in: -How do the parachutes take off and land? -How do we build parachutes? -All about the designing of the look of the parachute. -How does it poof open, how does the air go in, how do they float? Madame Rebecca found and showed a neat video on why people choose to use parachutes and how they help to slow people that are falling down. We watched this video as a group. Tomorrow, we will continue with our parachute building and designing station, and continue to research in our books about our parachute questions. Yesterday and today I attended Edcampvic. An UNconference for educators, pre-service teachers, parents and students. My brain is feeling full and inspired and am hoping to continue with this momentum. My one question for you as families is: At the end of the day, at the end of the year, at the end of your child's public school system education, what do you hope for your child? As educators, we are currently looking at the implementation of the new BC ED plan curriculum. In my opinion, it is filled with great possibilities, a positive openness and flexibility, more of a focus on the development of skills than rote memory and regurgitation. This brings many challenges, fears, opportunities for educators and learners, as do all new ideas and changes. Our Ed system is shifting, our ways of educating and supporting children NEED to shift and this is an exciting time. With a this all filling my brain. I would love to hear your answer to my question. Here it is again: At the end of the day, at the end of the year, at the end of your child's public school system education, what do you hope for your child? Merci!! We started off our day with morning exploration. After snack and outdoor play, we came in for brain gym and calendar group time. We then went to the music class. After, we came back for a story about a turtle to help us with self-regulating our behaviour and feelings. Tucker turtle talks about: thinking like a turtle when you're feeling upset/mad/frustrated, stopping your body, tucking into your "shell", taking 3 deep breaths and coming up with a solution to help you feel better. The children acted this out and we brainstormed possible problems and solutions as a group. We then did a bit of alphabet singing and repetition. After lunch, we went out and ran laps in support and memory of Terry Fox. This was a great experience, everyone did a great job. We then came in for Paul et Suzanne and quiet time. We then had free exploration time. Lots of us started working on tracing and cutting out leaves for an art activity this week. It was a nice Wednesday. *lunch program forms due asap. |
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