Friday Update & Our First Learning Story :)

Good evening everyone!

I hope everyone had a nice day off :) Miss Smith and I got up to a lot of cleaning and organizing, and the Kindergarten team did a lot of planning together :) We're ready for a fun December!

Winter Clothing Update

This week was a little chaotic with it being our first snowfall! Dressing/Undressing 4 times a day is quite a lengthy process, but our little ones are getting into routine quickly :) Once again, please make sure all of your child's clothing is label somewhere recognizable. I see most are, which is great- thanks! :) Also, if you haven't already, please send in a pair of indoor shoes to keep at school. You can also send in extra socks incase their socks get wet from their boots, and we can build that into our routine!

Library Fun

Miss Smith took the iPad to the library this week to snap some photos of our little ones in action. Enjoy!

Going Undercover

I thought I'd post a video of students during tidy-up time so you can get an inside look. Cleaning up after ourselves is one of our classroom rules. I thought I was smart by changing the iPad's position half-way- sorry for the head cramps! I would like to post videos like this, such as during carpet time, etc. but I'm still deciding whether or not it's a good idea. I'll let it marinate for a bit, but here's one in the meantime :)

Literacy Update

On Wednesday, we introduced Mr. H's second friend, Miss C! Miss C and Mr. H love the rain. They love to go for walks in the rain and play in the puddles. However, they get so excited when it starts raining that they always forget to put their rainboots and jackets on, so they always get sick. When they’re sick, they start sneezing a lot and make the /ch/ sound!

Can you think of any words that start or end with the /ch/ sound?

Anti-Bullying Week

This week was anti-bullying week, and to help Kindergarten students understand it more, we had a Drama presentation on Thursday called Cinderella and the Frog Prince. It was a quirky little performance, but the message behind the play was all about accepting people for who they are- green skinned frogs included! We will continue to work on accepting people's differences in the classroom :)

Our First Inquiry Project

As most of you may know, the new FDK program looks different from the old one. We no longer do worksheets, matching/close-ended games, pre-made themes, etc. FDK uses play as the driving force for learning. After a couple of months of observing our students during play, we've finally decided what we're going to use to delve into some more learning. Here's an example of how this happens:

1. Students play at learning centres doing whatever it is they want

2. The teachers in the classroom observe students and find out what they're interested in

3. Teachers discuss their observations and decide what students are most interested in

4. Teachers guide students through different tasks using that topic as a main focus

As you can tell, it's not completely teacher directed (ex: "We're learning about apples!") or student directed (ex: "Let's learn about xBox!"), it's the teachers and students collaborating together :) If we use a topic students are interested in, they will be more likely to participate and eager to learn. The skills and information they will learn will stick with them for a longer period of time because it had meaning behind it. It's a win-win!

Our Discovery

Through watching students play, we've noticed that the majority of students love to play the "Lava Game", where they step on blocks to avoid touching the lava (carpet). This has been an ongoing interest to our students, and Miss Smith and I thought to ourselves, "Wouldn't this be a great way to spark some inquiry?".

We thought of some really fun stuff we could do that would hit a lot of learning expectations! We could make a volcano (Visual Art) and use lava to do an experiment (Science)! We could measure the amount of lava we poured into the volcano (Math) and write down what happened (Language). Needless to say, I was pretty excited about it ;) There was so much we could do with this idea, so we wanted to start right away!

During our afternoon carpet time, we asked students if they knew where lava came from. Andrew told us it came from a volcano. Other students knew too, which shows me they have prior knowledge of volcanoes and lava. Next, we looked at some pictures online of volcanoes and lava, and the "oohs" and "ahhs" ensued :) Students were so curious about them, so we came up with some questions together as a class that we would like answered!

Those are some seriously awesome questions! We can't wait to start researching it!

Miss Smith collected some materials from home for us to make our very own volcano! As a class, we talked about what shape a volcano is (triangle/cone) and students helped her make the foundation for our volcano. Then we started to paper mache the volcano- as you can imagine, they loved this!!

           

Nevaeha and Lily took the initiative to draw pictures of volcanoes using all the right colours! Awesome!

This is only the start of our first inquiry, so there will be a lot more to come. We are super excited to learn more about lava and volcanoes! :)

Additional Updates

• We have pushed back our Character Education theme of "All Aboard the Friend Ship" to next week :)
• December calendar's will be going home early next week.
• Please think about being involved in our holiday craft day :) We have 3 volunteers so far, so we only need 1 more craft! We will certainly have more crafts if there's an interest, or you could simply come in and help out :)
• Please submit your pizza money for Jan-Mar ASAP- we will need to put the orders in before Christmas break.
• We are planning on performing in our Winter Celebration assembly on Wednesday, December 17th if you need notice and would like to come!
• We are in need of toilet paper rolls and magazines for our creative centre. Any donations would be appreciated! :)

That's all I can think of for now- have a great weekend!

~ Miss Pliura