Fairy Tale Land!

Building a Fairy Tale Land

This construction project began in the second week of October and has not stopped! Our students have developed an interest in castles and fairy tales. It started with just a few towers then expanded into a whole Fairy Tale Land.

We collected fiction and non-fiction books on the subject of castles and several fairy tale books.The students looked through these books and decided what our Fairy Tale Land needed. 

"I see a Bridge".

"They have windows".

"Castles have big towers"

"Kings and queens and prince and princesses live there".

"I see pathways". 

Students worked together and created such beautiful pieces of art such as, towers, bridges, carriages, treasure chests, princes, princesses, kings, and much more.   

After reading many Fairy Tales we learned more about the princesses we love and added things to Fairy Tale land that were important to their stories. The students added an ocean and a ship for the Little Mermaid and a forest for Snow White. The students also thought the princesses would like a place to relax and have fun, so they made a tree house!

Our Fairy Tale Land has allowed students to engage in conversation, ask questions and use their imaginations to create stories with the characters they love.

Here is our castle! The fun continues.

Looking ahead…

Students are developing an interest in writing letters to their favourite Disney characters. We are hoping to send these letters out to Disney Land!

What is Peace?

After reading Todd Parr's book called "The Peace Book" students reflected on what peace could be.
This book inspired our class to create a video as to what peace means to them.

Peace is when you share. Peace is helping the world be clean. Peace is being free. Peace is being nice. Peace is helping your neighbours. Peace is hugging people. Peace is being quiet. Peace is when you don't hit people. Peace is when someone loves you. Peace is helping people. Peace is when you share with friends. Peace is when you share a flower to somebody. Peace is being helpful. Peace is when everyone has a home. Peace is making a world a better place. Peace is when you love your mommy and daddy. 

What Can You Do With a Pumpkin?

Last week each math group was given a pumpkin and the question - 'what can you do with a pumpkin?'

 

We read a number of pumpkin stories and non-fiction texts and got to work!

 

Each group measure their pumpkin in a variety of ways to see how tall, how fat, and how heavy the pumpkin was.

 

We asked a lot of interesting pumpkin questions:

-Why do pumpkins turn orange?

- Why is one side of the pumpkin flat?

-Do pumpkins grow on trees?

-What animals eat pumpkins?

 

And we experimented with our pumpkins to find some answers:

 

Do pumpkins float in water? Yes, they do!

 

 

How can a kid move a pumpkin when it is too heavy to list it? We can attach it to string and pull it!

 

How far can we push a pumpkin? Let's have a bowling race!

 

 

We opened our pumpkins and sorted the seeds. We made predictions of how many seed were in our pumpkin, and we discussed together different ways to count our seeds. By 2s, by 5s, and by 10s.

 

 

Then of course, we made faces on our pumpkins. One is happy, one is a star, one is scary, and one is a picture of Sad Monster!

 

Creating a Dinosaur Zoo!

 

It all began when  students were sorting our dinosaur manipulatives and had a great idea! Why not create a Dinosaur Zoo so that all of the dinosaurs would have a place to live!

 

They created a pen for each of the types of dinosaurs, added fences, walkways and an entrance. Next, the students used small parts and materials from around the room (blocks, corks, paper, lego, unifix cubes) to create trees, meat, fish, and a pond.

 

As the group got bigger, the students began to look in books to find out the names of the dinosaurs. They also sorted our books into fiction and non-fiction piles.

        

Looking in books has helped us to answer a lot of our questions!

-I wonder why some dinosaurs have long necks

-How did these authors make dinosaur books when the dinosaurs are not here anymore?

-Are dragons dinosaurs?

- Why do dinosaurs lay eggs?

-Why are dinosaurs so big?

 

 We now have made a list of what food each dinosaur eats and have begun giving a daily report to the class on each dinosaur.

 

 
 Our Dinosaur Zoo is now open to the public! Boys and Girls from the class can visit our zoo to learn and play.

 We have drawn pictures and made labels to help everyone visiting the zoo. We also made a list of zoo rules to keep everyone safe!

 

We hope you visit soon!

Sad Monster Visit

We were so excited to have the opportunity to meet a REAL Monster! Sad Monster comes from the magical world of pretend, but today, he and his friends came to visit the Kindergarten and Grade 1 students at Black Walnut!

We met Anique and Kurt, the authors of the book Sad Monster, Lilly and Maja, the two girls from the story, and Sad Monster himself! He is so big!

 

 One student made a wonderful connection to the story. He realized that his shoe had a hole in the toe just like Sad Monsters shoe.
We worked this week to make pictures, cards, and letters for Sad Monster and next week we will mail them to him in the Land of Pretend. Stay tuned...maybe he will respond to our letters!

Welcome to Kindergarten!

We are so excited to be starting a new year together! We welcome back our bluejay (SK) friends and say hello to our new chickadees (JK) friends!

We enjoy visiting Rover, our classroom smart board, each morning. We read  our morning message together and sing our favourite youtube song 'The Letter Sound Song'.

Our snack centre is a popular place throughout the day! Here, the students save a spot using their name tag and enjoy a snack (after washing hands). Once finished, the students put their tag in the box. That way Ms. Ancona and I know who has or hasn't eaten.

Our puppet theatre is where we can go to retell favourite stories. To start the year, we have props to help students retell 'The Wheels on the Bus'. It is always fun to hear the students creating new parts to the song.

Our Kinder-Garden Project

We have been busy gardeners this past month in Kindergarten learning about plant life cycles. It began with a small maple tree seedling that a student brought into the classroom one morning. The students were so curious as to where it had come from and how long would it take to become a tree. From there, many different seed growing projects have begun.

We bought some radish seeds and planted them as a class. Radish seeds -according to the packet- only take 28 days to reach maturity. This means that we could see our fully grown radishes before the end of school!

        

Each learning group also chose a different seed to plant and observe. They have written and drawn weekly observations and wonderings for their plant.
 


Each plant looks very different but every group has realized that growing plants is hard work and it takes a lot of time and patience! They still remain very excited.

 

 

Our Vet Office

 

We have had a wonderful time creating, playing, and learning in our classroom Vet Office.

The students researched different pets they would like and how to take care of them and created different pens/cages for each animal - the bird pen has perches to sit on and a nest, the turtle pen has a pond, and the fish tank has seaweed and an underwater castle.

 

 

 

The students had an amazing idea. They created an x-ray machine from the house centre's microwave - what imagination!

We contacted a Vet Office and they gave us samples of different animal x-rays to look at after each animal has their check-up.

After looking at the X-Rays, some students painted pictures of our pets and labelled their different parts. This has been very helpful at the animal check-ups. Now the doctor and the pet owner can tell what part of the animal is hurt.