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: