A Great Time for Learning!

It is hard to believe another month of school is over!  Where does the time go?  Well, we know that our time at school is very busy and full of great learning opportunities.  Take a look at the photos below to see just a peek of some of the  activities our students are engaged in.

Many of our student enjoy building with Lego and by putting the Lego into one of our sensory bins, the activity changed!  Before you know it, the children cooperated together to build "LEGO LAND".  We made roads, and signs and buildings.  We added words and letters to our play

Over the past 2 weeks, we have been enjoying stories by author Jan Brett.  This week we read the story, "The Three Bears".  After reading the story, some of the children noticed that this story is very similar to the story of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears".  We call this a "TEXT TO TEXT CONNECTION" when we compare different stories.  In Jan Brett's "The Three Bears", the story takes place in a cold, snowy place where a polar bear family lives in an igoo.  The children really enjoyed this story and shortly after hearing it, a small group of students became involved in making their very own "igloos" using cubes and bear manipulatives.  Great retelling! 

During playtime, we put out sugar cubes and marshmallows and the children got to work at building their own igloos, once again adding the little bears to retell the story.  We saw some very creative building at this center!

Our Super Science Wednesday activity continued with our "melting and freezing inquiry".  Over the past few weeks we have been talking about melting and freezing.  The weather has certainly provided a great opportunity for this exploration.  Today, we focused on melting, using a griddle, aluminum muffin tray and a variety of materials (e.g., candle, crayon, freeze, butter, hershey kiss, cheese, sugar cube, cupcake sprinkles and a marshmallow).  We made predictions about which item would melt the fastest.  We observed the butter melted very very quickly.  We were surprised that the marshmallow and the sprinkles didn't really change at all.  We were sure to explain to the children how important it is to be safe around heat sources (e.g., griddle, candles, fireplace, campfire).  As usual, we were impressed with the wonderful job the children did at following directions during this activity.  A small group of friends were so excited about this activity that they wanted to write about our predictions, observations and findings.  We have started a new bulletin board in our classroom that display all of our "Super Science" discoveries!

The Beauty Shop is Open!

We asked the children to brainstorm ideas of what we could make our dramatic play area become.  The idea of a beauty shop was suggested and immediately we got to work at making this a new imaginative play center in our classroom.  We talked about rules for this center, so don't worry, your child will not be coming home with a new haircut or his/her fingernails painted.

Check out some of our pictures of the fun the children had in making and playing at this new center.  We were especially excited to see literacy at work, as the children made signs and were even writing names in the appointment book!  The language the children is using is also very interesting to hear.  We are often hearing "Hi, do you have an appointment today?", "You can come in and someone will be with you in a moment" and lots of other great phrases!  There have also been lots of great opportunities for cooperative play as the children wait for turns and help each other out as they have fun together.  

Look what is melting in kindergarten?

During our first week back to school, our kindergarten students were very interested in exploring the snow.  We began the week by bringing lots of BIG snowballs into our classroom, so that we could observe the melting process.  We added some paint to the "snow table" and look what happened.  We made the snow into "Rainbow Snow".

Remember our beautiful "Rainbow Snow"?  We made some predictions about how long it would take for all of the snow to melt.  Well, after leaving it in our water table for 3 days, we ended up with a very different final product.  Our beautiful snow melted and the colours all mixed together to create....a mess!  But, as we all know, learning can be messy.  We worked together to clean it up and it turned out to be a great learning process for us all!

On Super Science Wednesday, we played "The Melting Game".  We used the following different methods to help speed up the melting of an ice cube:
1.  Blow dryer
2.  Blow on the ice cube
3.  Drop the ice cube
4.  Hold the ice cube in your hand
5.  Put sprinkles of salt on the ice cube
6.  Float the ice cube in water

 Run, Run as Fast as You Can, You Can't Catch Me, I'm the Gingerbread Man

During the week of December 10th - 14th, our class enjoyed reading different versions of the story, "The Gingerbread Boy".  We compared the different stories and discussed the differences in characters, setting and how the stories ended!  We read the "The Gingerbread Cowboy", "The Gingerbread Girl", "The Gingerbread Boy in the Library" and many more.  The children were excited to talk about how the stories were the same and different!

Well, you can't read all those stories about Gingerbread boys without baking your very own.  So, of course, Mrs. Allan, our wonderful baker, helped the students bake gingerbread cookies.  We baked a tray of little gingerbread cookies and one big gingerbread boy.  

Mrs. Allan and Mrs. Ducharme baked the cookies after school.  The next day, when we walked down to the kitchen to get our gingerbread cookies, we discovered the big gingerbread boy was missing!!!  We found rhyming clues next to the oven and then the excitement began!

Our hunt lead us to the office, where Mrs. Vickerd and Mr. Arundine helped us look.  We found more clues and we continued our hunt to the library!

After the library, the clues lead us to Mr. Klassen's grade eight classroom, but guess what?  The gingerbread boy had tricked us again.  Next we were off to the music room!

Finally, in the music room, we found the big gingerbread boy cookie.  Guess who else we found?  Our class "elf on the shelf" Jessie!  So, how did our gingerbread boy cookie get to the music room?  Was it like the story and he ran away?  Did Jessie trick us and hide the cookie?  

Even though the hunt was over, the children were still so very excited!  Many of the students drew pictures and wrote words to tell about our adventures.  As a class, we made a map to show where our hunt took us throughout the school.  We used our "best guess spelling" to label our map.  Some of the students went on to make their very own maps about the hunt!  What a great adventure in kindergarten!

Santa's Workshop Opens!

After lots of preparations, finally our Santa's Workshop center has opened!  The children have been playing very cooperatively in this center as they wrap, write names on gift tags, give presents, dress up like elves and just have a lot of fun!  It is great to observe the conservations that the children have in this center.  This center is sparking lots of conversations about how the holidays are celebrated in our different homes.  Do you recognize any of Santa's little helpers?

At the art center, the children used branches from evergreen trees to paint.  It was interesting to observe the effect that this painting tool made on our paper and how it felt different than using a paintbrush!