February 20-23

 Hello Families,

I hope that you had a fabulous Family Day weekend together.  It was wonderful to be back together this week as we started to notice that the sun is coming up earlier and earlier and we are coming to school in the sunlight again! Hooray!

Our word of the week was "Integrity", which is a BIG word in Kindergarten- but an important one. We know that integrity means "doing the right things, even when nobody sees".  We practice this when we follow the expectations in the Library, when we clean up after ourselves in the classroom, when we play with our classmates in the classroom and on the playground.  The Kindergartener students have been very proud of themselves for showing integrity as they follow the school rules doing "messenger jobs" like bringing down the attendance to the Office, or delivering materials to another classroom.  We have been noticing all of the ways we can show integrity- and how it makes us feel inside.

This week we were very excited as we took on the role of an Author! We are writing our very own Animal Fact books.  We have been learning how to gather information from non-fiction texts and practicing "research skills".  We all chose an animal that lives in Canada.  We are going to share factual information and discover what our animal does in the Winter time.  We will be working on these next week as well- and then we will be able to share them with our classmates and Buddies.  Then we will bring them home to share as well.  Make sure to ask your child which animal they chose.

The PM class was eager to use clay with their Big Buddy to create a sculpture of the animal they chose to research.  The AM class will be able to do this next Friday.

This week our letter of the week was Hh.  We continued to practice labelling in our word books and using our understanding of letter sounds.  We also began learning about vowels, and noticing them in words.  We counted how many vowels are in our names, and began to build words that were 3 letters long with a vowel in the middle.

Thank you to the families who have sent along Family Pictures.  We will be sharing these the first week of March.  I am happy to print off photos if you send them along to my email : kerupert@cbe.ab.ca

During centre times we have spent time outdoors enjoying the sunshine, putting on puppet shows, building with different materials,  painting, writing stories and making cards, playing in the house centre, learning a new board game called "Counting Campers", doing puzzles and building different animal habitats.

Here are some photos from our week! I am also sharing a picture of our collaborative art that we made with our Big Buddies! It is titled "A Work of Heart".  The Kindergarteners thought it looked sooooo beautiful when the Big Buddies showed them the final product of all their hard work:)

February 12-14

 

The word of the week was LOVE- perfect for our short, but sweet time together this week as we celebrated Valentine's Day and practiced showing love, kindness and care for our classmates and school community.  We had a fantastic time making and sharing valentines this week, learning how to draw hearts and handing out Valentine surprises. 

We read lots of stories about love this week- stories about friendship and finding ways to show we care.  One story we read was called "Box of Butterflies".  It was about a little girl and her robot friend who is curious to find out what love feels like, sounds like and looks like.  The little girl tries to find different ways to explain what love is.  We used this story to spark our imaginations, and to brainstorm different ways we could explain love.  We shared our ideas and thoughts in our journals- sketching them out carefully and then adding labels and letters to go along with our illustrations.  We are becoming confident in adding letters based on their sounds to our writing.  We also love to share our writing with one another and with the whole class.  
We also learned all about the letter L and the sound it makes.  We listed and drew pictures of things that start with the letter L in our writing books, carefully attempting to label each of our drawings.

During math times we are focusing on number formation and making our numbers correctly.  We also practiced our subitizing skills and counting forwards and backwards. 

Our PM class had an opportunity to create hearts for our giant collaborative art piece with our Big Buddies.  The Big Buddies are doing the final assembly of the hearts- together with our Buddy class we made 500 hearts! WOW!  

Something new and exciting in our room is our "Cutting Jar". We are working as a class team to fill our jar with cut paper.  We work on cutting different strips everyday when we come in.  This is an excellent opportunity to strengthen our fine motor scissor skills and work as a team to reach our final goal. We will be thinking together of our own special reward for filling it to the very top!

One last thing:

We are going to be starting to talk about Families in our classroom.  We will be starting to do this in the next 2 weeks.  Please send a picture of your child and their family to school for your child to share.  You can send a hard copy ( I will return eventually) or you can send an email copy that I will happily print out.  Your picture can include who ever your child would like to share- and they can bring/have more than one picture if they would like as well.  We want all families represented however your child chooses.   My one request- please label or write who is in the picture to help me support your child as they share their photo if needed.  We will also be learning how to print some of our family members names! It's very exciting!

My email is kerupert@cbe.ab.ca if you need it:)

Thank you for continuing to support your child's learning.

Here are some pictures from our week.

February 5-9

 Hello Families!

Mrs. Rupert missed most of the week due to sickness, so unfortunately there are not many pictures to share this week.

You have likely heard all about the different Guest Teachers who came to our classroom this week.  I was so very proud of the reports from all of them about what kind, responsible and hard-working students are in our Kindergarten class.   Our word of the week was "Flexibility" which seemed to fit considering how flexible the students were in their routines and approaches to learning this week.

This week while Mrs. Rupert was away students learned all about the letter Rr and the letter Uu.  They learned about their sounds, and were able to sort pictures of items that begin with those sounds.  They also practiced their labeling skills this week as they continued to label their illustrations and make research notes about animals that Migrate- like caribou.

Students learned all about Lunar New Year (February 10), and were able to identify various symbols that represent this holiday.  We found out that the colour for Lunar New Year is red, and that it is going to be the year of the Dragon.  

During math this week we practiced printing numbers and playing different spinner and subitizing games with dice.  We are continuing to practice our number fluency skills.  We are so good at subitizing and counting forwards and backwards.

During center times we enjoyed playing in our new rice sensory bin, playing board games, building towers and making comics and cards.  The AM class was super helpful in setting up a new puppet theatre center for next week.  The AM class also was able to meet with their Big Buddies on friday to work on our "super-huge-full-of-love-collaborative-heartwork" artwork!  It is going to take a few more days, and the PM class needs to add their part- but we can't wait to share it when it's all done.  

Just a reminder:  Next week students are welcome to wear Red on Valentines Day (Wednesday).  They can also bring Valentine cards to share with their classmates.  Please do not address the cards or put names on the cards for their classmates- just write your own child's name on the cards so they can be handed out easily and independently.  There are 22 students in the AM class and 18 students in the PM class.  Please remember that we do not allow sharing food or treats at school.

Have a good weekend, 

We're looking forward to a fun and healthy week next week! 

January 29-February 2

 Hello February!

We finally said good-bye to January- and we could even count all the way up to the number 31 on the calendar by the last day.  Oh my!

Our word of the week was "Group Plan".  We read a story that explained that the Group Plan is when everybody is thinking about the same thing, and doing the same thing in the classroom- like going to gym together, playing a group game together, lining up together, cleaning up together.  We have been doing lots of "Group Plan" activities this week, and noticing how everyone feels much happier when we are all doing the group plan- and not just our own plan.  We had lots of fun practicing the "Group Plan" when we did our Letter G scavenger hunt.  Students all worked together to find and record 12 words that start with the Gg sound.

During our phonics time this week we have been practicing substituting beginning sounds to make new words and identifying the medial sound (middle sounds) in words.  We are continuing to review our letters and our letter sounds all through the week.  

We also learned about labelling this week and loved making our own labels for the classroom.  We worked together to sound out words, and identify beginning letter sounds to create sticky note labels that went all over the furniture, walls and bins.  We had to take our time to sound out what we wanted to label and did a fabulous job.  We transferred our labelling skills into our writing- by using labels in our drawings to represent new facts and information about winter animals.  We read a non-fiction book about Bears to learn more about hibernation.  We were able to make research notes and drawings in our journals that we could look back at and share.  

We have continued to learn about animals in winter and read the story "Over and Under".  We practiced our sorting skills creating our own winter scene that shows where different species spend the cold months.  We learned new words like "burrow", "den", and "camouflage".  You can ask your Kindergartener if they can tell you where different animals spend the winter- over or under the snow.  They are definitely becoming experts.

This week we practiced representing the number 10 in different ways.  We read the story "Ten on the Sled" and were eager to act out the story, singing the Ten on the Sled song and practicing counting down from the number 10.  We also practiced our subitizing skills and worked on number fluency with our morning number talks.  Right now we are practicing talking about "how we know" and explaining our thinking process when we are looking at numbers.

During centre times we explored colour mixing and block building using shaving cream,  continued to play in our Vet Centre, created tracks and rollercoasters at the building centre, learned new memory and matching games, built with lincoln logs and drew comics.  The PM class learned a little bit about Groundhog day- making our own predictions about whether he would see his shadow or not.   We were able to make our own Groundhog puppets and practiced a Groundhog poem with our Big Buddies.

We also loved going outside to play in the sunshine- although we also did a bit of slipping and sliding like penguins out there!

One last thing!
Now that it is the second term, we are ready to welcome parent-volunteers into the classroom.  If you are interested in coming in to help in the classroom, play some small group games or be extra hands or a guest story-reader please send me a quick email and we can set something up.  You will need to have a completed police clearance on file with the Office.  If you have any questions about that process, please reach out.

Here are some pictures from our week: