November 20-24

It was wonderful to meet with so many families during conferences this week and share all about the amazing things the Kindergarten students are learning.  The students were so excited to have a chance to share their journals, pictures and art creations with their families.  I want to send out a HUGE THANK- YOU to the families who visited the book fair and completely blew me away with their generosity in blessing me and our classroom with so many beautiful books.  I was speechless and I thought my heart was going to explode with happiness when I had new books delivered to the classroom.  I can't wait to share so many new stories with the kids in the next weeks:)

 This was another short week, but we had lots of new things happen in our classroom!

This week we welcomed Mr. Arcila to our classroom.  He is a practicum student and is learning all about teaching and learning in Kindergarten.  He will be with us until mid December, and then returning in the Spring to spend more time with us.  As you'll see in our pictures from this week he has been very busy with the students, and has even had a chance to visit the "Kindergarten Hospital" for a check up:)

We also had our first snowfall- we loved watching it out the window as it fell in the afternoon and couldn't help but jump into our winter gear to make snow angels, create foot print tracks in the snow and slide down the hill.  Thank you families for continuing to send lots of great winter gear to make sure we can explore outside!

This week we also wrote our very first sentence!  We learned the difference between letters, words and sentences and we discovered that "sentences make sense!" and letters work together to make words, and words work together to make sentences!  It was very exciting as we used word cards and our own ideas to create our own page of an animal book.  Our illustrations that went along with our sentences were probably our most detailed and colourful drawings yet.  

Our word of the week was "Observe" which was perfect as we began learning more about our 5 senses.  We read about how our eyes work, and how our sense of sight help to keep us safe, and help us learn all about the world around us.  We went outside on a nature walk and took "pictures" with our "Eye Cameras"  to record some of the cool things we could see around our school.  We came back inside and created our own poster about all the things we could see with our amazing eyes.  We had lots of fun playing "Optometrist" giving each other pretend eye exams in our Hospital center.

In math, we continued to work in our number journals and practiced representing the number 6 in lots of different ways.  We also played some math games to continue to develop our subitizing skills. 

Next week we will continue to learn more about our senses, introduce a couple more letters, write more sentences in our journals and continue to work on developing our number sense. 

Here are some pictures from our week!

November 15-17

 This was such an odd week- coming back on a Wednesday!  

I hope everyone had a refreshing fall break.  The students were so excited to see each other and be back together.  

We had a short, but sweet week together- enjoying the sunshine, practicing skills and learning new things.

We were excited to see the freshly fallen snow, and went outside to look for animal tracks.  We found rabbit tracks and bird tracks and dog tracks too and followed them outside to investigate where they had gone.  We also loved making our own prints in the snow, making snow angels and writing our names with our fingers and sticks.  We were using our 5 senses to look, touch, and listen to the sounds of snow in our own environment.

In Literacy we practiced letter formation of letters we have learned together.  We have been practicing the letters and letter sounds for "A, S, P, T" and we did some sorting of pictures based on the first sound.  Students are practicing saying words slowly to identify the first and last letter sound in words.

We also listened to a funny story about " More Pies" to find words with the P sound.  We are learning the difference between fictional stories and non-fictional stories.  We are practicing making predictions about what is going to happen next in a story and we are retelling the story by sequencing what happens in the correct order after we read it together.

Our word of the week this week was "Subitize".  It is a math word that means "the ability to recognize a number of objects instantly- without having to count them",  We say "When you subitize, you only can use your eyes!"  We have been practicing our "Super Subitizing Skills" all week with dice games, ten frame cards and speed practice on white board.  We even played a game together on our smartboard with a dots that would disappear so fast- we had to try to guess the number before it vanished.  It was lots of fun, and I can see students ability to subitize developing significantly over the last few weeks.

We practiced representing the number 6 this week in various ways and read a story called "Six Sticks".  We used our creativity and imagination to create our own 6 Sticks pictures using popsicle sticks.  We are excited to share them with you at the upcoming Parent-Teacher conferences.

On that note, please remember to go online and book a time for Parent-Teacher Conferences next week. A reminder that there is no school for students on Thursday or Friday because of Conferences.  We will also be taking the students to the library this week to preview the Book Fair.  Any items can be purchased from the Book Fair during the conferences if you would like.

Lastly,  we have been playing or exploring the outdoors as often as we can.  Our Kindergarteners are doing fantastic in getting themselves prepared for the outdoors- however, some items have been getting mixed up or have gone home with the wrong person despite our best efforts (so many similar items, similar sized items etc).  Please, please, please help by labelling your child's items so we have a better chance of making sure items make it back home.  Also, if something comes home with your child that doesn't belong to them- please send it back or let me know.  I appreciate it so much:). We'll get this all running so smoothly before the real winter cold! 

Here are some pictures from our week!

As always, please reach out if you have any questions.  Thank you for all you do to support

November 6-8

 Hello!

This was a short week, but an important week as we learned all about our word of the week: Peace.

We learned about Remembrance Day and why it's important to stop and remember.  We also learned about Poppies and how they are a symbol of Peace.  We talked about ways we can be "Peacemakers" with our friends and families- finding ways to keep the peace, listen to one another, and stop conflict by choosing to show kindness and love.  Lest we forget.

We made our own poppies this week to bring home to help us remember, and to share with someone else that a "Poppy is for Peace".  We read stories about Peace and discovered how Peace feels and sounds to us.  We wrote a journal response about times that we feel "at peace".  Students had lots of fabulous ideas.

During Literacy times this week we did some letter review, and learned all about the letter Ss, which is actually one of the trickiest letters to print.  So we practiced and practiced and didn't give up even though it was hard.  We can identify words that start with the "S" sound.  

We began learning about the 5 Senses and played a fun guessing game to identify which senses we use with different objects.  We realized that we use our 5 Senses everyday to interact with the world around us, and that we often use more than one sense at a time.  Sometimes we use all 5 at the same time. 

We have also been observing the changes that have been happening to our pumpkins.  We noticed they are growing fuzz, getting speckled and changing colour.  We put our pumpkins in a bin and covered them with dirt and watered them.  We can't wait to see what will happen next.

Next week:  We are going to be jumping back into letters and numbers and continuing to explore our senses through some fun experiments.

Hope everyone has a wonderful fall break- with lots of sunshine and family time.

Here are some pictures of the week.