The Opening of the Grocery Store

Our dramatic play area has changed once again.  This time the children have worked to make it into a grocery store.  It took some discussions, but finally a name was decided upon...Banana Store (named after No Frills ).  Take a look at our children at work and at play at this exciting new center!

We talked about how grocery stores are divided into different sections.  We made our own signs to show the fruit/vegetables, desserts and meat departments.  The children soon realized they were sorting as they put the different food pictures into groups.  

Mrs. Allan brought in a real cash register.  The children were so excited to try this out.  It was interesting to see them scan the grocery items and to hear the language they used as they took on the roles of cashier and customer.

Taking a look at the grocery flyers to decide what to buy!

We discovered that we can read many of the labels in our grocery store.  

Mrs. Ducharme modeled to the students how to make their very own shopping list.  The children were very interested in this and before long we had a group of children writing their own lists using their "best guess spelling".  We posted their grocery lists on the wall.

Happy Valentine's Day

On Thursday February14th, our kindergarten class celebrated Valentine's Day.  We began the day by giving out our Valentine cards.  Great job to our friends for printing and reading their classmates' names.

The children participated in a variety of learning centers with our friends from Mrs. Burkhart and Mrs. Lounsbury's class.  The children played games on the Smart Board, created Valentine art, decorated a yummy cupcake, played heart bingo and played alphabet movement games in the music room.  A very special thanks to the many parents who helped out at school for this day!

Valentine's Fun, Shapes, More Lego and Super Science Discoveries

Valentine's Writing Center

This week our writing center became a very popular place!  We even had to add another table to make room for all the friends that wanted to work here!  We turned our writing center into a Valentine's Writing center by adding stickers, heart shaped paper and Valentine words.  Mrs. Allan worked with some friends to create a special mailbox and our little writers are busy filling the box with letter for their classmates!

Exploring 2-D Shapes
We have been exploring circles, squares, triangles and rectangles.  The children have been learning to identify the characteristics of of these shapes, such as the number of sides and points.  We have read many stories about shapes and have used shapes to create artwork.  We are now ready to begin exploring 3-D shapes!

More Fun with Lego
As mentioned in a previous blog entry, building with Lego is a favourite activity in our classroom.  We are always looking for new ways to use the Lego to encourage further learning and discovery in our class.  We filled our sensory table with snow and let the children build in the snow with the Lego pieces.  What an interesting event this was and of course this lead into a discussion about melting!

Super Science Wednesday
If you walked by our classroom on Wednesday, you would have heard lots of excitement coming from our kindergarten room. We began our Super Science Wednesday by talking about how things change when they are mixed together.  The children looked at a container of cornstarch and then looked at shaving cream.  We used a variety of describing words as we looked at these materials.  

Well, you can imagine what happened next....that's right, we mixed the cornstarch with the shaving cream.  The children all had an opportunity to experiment with this mixture and discovered that it it could be molded into different shapes!  We made a list of new words to describe this mixture.  You may wish to try this activity at home...all you need is a box of cornstarch and a can of shaving cream.  (As you may have seen in the pictures....this is a little messy!)