April 8-12

 Hello Families!

This week started off with a very special event- an eclipse!
We learned about what an eclipse is- and although we did not view it at school, we were able to see some footage of the eclipse online- as well as create our own solar eclipses. 

This week continued to be an eventful one as we welcomed our first "Mystery Readers!"  A HUGE thank-you to the wonderful parents who visited our class to read a favourite story.  The Kindergarten students LOVED hearing the clues, trying to make guesses and then seeing who the "Mystery Reader" was!  It was wildly entertaining to listen to stories read by someone new.  We also loved the opportunity to ask our Mystery Readers a few questions to get to know them better.  We are so good at asking questions to get information- and we are continuing to learn the difference between asking a question- and telling a story, and practicing this skill is the best way to learn it!  If you would like to be a "Mystery Reader" in the class- please let Mrs. Rupert know and we can coordinate a time that works.  It's lots of fun.

To top off our exciting week, we came to school one day to discover that have a new and important responsibility.  We have EGGS!  Mrs. Rupert brought in an incubator with 6 eggs this week- and we don't know what is inside the eggs yet.  We learned about what creatures come out of eggs, and made some guesses or predictions about what is inside.  Our word of the week this week was "COMPARE".  We needed to carefully compare the eggs to one another and the eggs of other creatures to make a good guess.  We had a chance to learn how the incubator works, we were able to touch the eggs and we even had a chance to take a peek inside with a flashlight as Mrs. Rupert candled the eggs.  Some of us could hear little sounds coming from the eggs, we could see them rolling in the incubator and some of us were even able to see a heartbeat and shadows of movement through the egg with the flashlight.   Our eggs should hatch next week- and you will get to hear all about it.

Our letter of the week was "V", and we practiced writing the letter Vv and listening for it's sound in words.  We also practiced our phonics skills by listening for initial sounds in words and substituting initial sounds in words (say sip, take away the s, what is left?  Now add a d- what do you hear? Dip!). We continued to practice rhyming words, sounding out new words to do labelling and putting 2 words together to make a compound word. 

We began our Measurement unit this week, learning about the word "Length".  We know that length is "how long or high something is!" We referenced our word of the week "Compare" while looking at different things in our world that are Big, Medium and Small.  We created a class poster to show our understanding of different sizes.  We practiced finding and comparing lengths by measuring our shoes this week- to see who has the longest shoes and who has the shortest shoes.  We will continue to explore measurement in different ways over the next few weeks.

Lastly, we spent time with our Big Buddies, played in our Grocery Store, created signs for our store, took care of our pumpkin, went on a scavenger hunt outside for tiny things,  built ramps, created a lightbox, read stories to each other, painted, made creations with legos and enjoyed the sunshine.  

Next week should be a very interesting and exciting week!  We can't wait to tell you all about it.

Here are some pictures from our week!