Our last week of 2017!! December 18-22

Happy Holiday Everyone! We made it!!

A few things have been sent home for you to enjoy with your students. 

-Beautiful Junk Project - collect small items to add to our classroom art centre
Lids, feathers, jewels, rocks, string, small pieces of wrapping paper

-Holiday Journal - Take time to write and read together this holiday. We hope the students will share their journals the first week back in January

-Shoes and Clothes - check your children's clothes and shoes and please don't forget to return them in January!

Makerspace Adventure!
This week we went to the school's Makerspace! It is in the Library and Ms. Dias taught us how to use it. We made art, we built with Lego, we did Yoga too!



Holiday Cards
We made everyone a special surprise for our families! It is a card! Be sure to check our backpacks!
                                

Bye Ms. Coutinho!
Wednesday was Ms. Coutinho's last day in Kindergarten! She went back to her big school! She really surprised us when she gave us a book. It was all about us! It was so funny!
We will miss you!! Thank you for everything!
 


Winter Art Day
On Thursday we did had Winter Art Day. We went to all the Kindergarten classes and we did lots of stuff! We really liked watching the Paw Patrol movie! We got to make puppets and snowflakes too!
        

Big Buddies
We love our buddies so much that we made them holiday cards. We were excited to say Thank you to them. We were very surprised when they made surprises for us too!




Pajama Day! Hooray!!
What a relaxing way to end December! We had so much fun dancing and playing in our pajamas! It feels so cozy!
                             

Our Week - December 11 - 15

Hi Families,

December is nearly at an end! Just a reminder that next week the Kinder Star Assembly is on December 20th at 9:50am. And Friday, December 22nd is PAJAMA DAY!!!


Aquarium Reporters
We made a plan for our aquarium to decide where everything should go. We even brought out some new ocean animal puppets to use to move and tell stories. 
     

This week we became aquarium reporters! Small groups researched different ocean animals and made them homes in our aquarium. We looked in books and watched video clips to learn what each animal needed. We then reported to the class what we found out.
Did you know?

Stingrays hide in the sand!
                          

Clownfish lay eggs in anemones and their eggs are clear!

Turtles lay eggs in the sand!
                        

Dolphins swim using their tails and they swim with their family. 

Starfish have a mouth in the centre of their body on the bottom!    
                     

At an aquarium, the workers have an important job of cleaning the water tanks! They use scrubbers, water vaccuums, and nets to get the job done!
                  


Snow and Indoor Recess
We were so excited to have a snowy day on Wednesday! It was a beautiful day to play outside and have fun!
We also got to have indoor recess this week because it got VERY cold! We also had a recess dance party in Mrs. Harcharik's room!
                           

Gingerbread Houses
Ms. Darlow is helping us to make our own gingerbread houses from cardboard. We are making plans, working as a team, and creating beautiful structures.
                            

Sphero Maze
We had so much fun making coding mazes last week that we decided to make another one this week. We brought out Sphero - a round rolling robot - to try to move him through our maze.
                            

Water Experiments
We learned this week what happens when we put salt in water. It dissolves and disappears! We explored snow and water during our nature walk and tried melting and painting snow!
         
                

Our Week - December 4 - 8

Hi Families,

This week we celebrated the Hour of Code (well it was a week of Code for us!) and we used various learning tools to problem solve and communicate together. For more information about coding or the Hour of Code please visit code.org.  Here are some stories from the week!


Chicka Chicka Letters
We opened 2 new letters this week and our alphabet is halfway there!  We got the letters F and O. The F was a fish and the O was and owl and an octopus!


Hungry Monster
Ms. Coutinho read us a funny story called The Hungry Thing. It was about a monster who eats strange foods like 'schmancakes' and we had to figure out what the real food was through rhymes (did you guess pancakes?). We took turns to make rhymes with different endings and feed the monster in class!
                         

Aquarium Update
We now have water tanks for turtles, squid, octopus, and sharks! Next week we'll make a final plan for the aquarium and then it will be ready to open!

  Ozobot
'Cozmo' and 'Ozzie' our Ozobot friends came back to class this week. We used coloured markers to create roads for them to move on. We made straight lines and had our 2 Ozobots race! 

Robot Mouse
'Mousey Mouse' is a new coding friend in our classroom. He is a robot mouse than we can move by pushing buttons to give it directions. Mousey Mouse can go forwards and backwards and it can turn left and right. We have to plan, problem solve, and think as a team to help him get to the cheese!

  Big Buddies
Friday afternoon we celebrated coding with our Big Buddies. We used ipads, computers, coding mats, Robot Mouse and the Ozobots, Sphero, and Dash! We had an amazing time and we even taught the Grade 6s a few things about coding!



NATURE WALK REMINDER!!
Our Nature Walks were missed on this months calendar! We will be visiting the forest on the remaining Thursdays and Fridays!

Our Week in Kindergarten - November 27 - December 1

Hi Families,

What a fun week we had! Here are our stories!

Maze Coding
We made a maze at our construction centre to drive cars through. Then Ms. Ancona taught us about coding with a game called coding buddies! We made directions for our friends to follow. You had to walk forward, jump, or turn around. 



Being a Scientist
Ms. Coutinho worked with a group of scientists today to learn about what happens when you put different things in water. Today's experiment - mixing colours in water.

               

Feeling Angry
Ms. R taught the Chickadees about feeling angry this week. We listened to a Howard B. Wigglebottom story and then made pictures on our own about what to do if we feel angry. 

We feel angry when:
-People don't share
-Friends don't play with me
-Mom doesn't buy me candy
-I don't sleep in

We can start to feel better when we:
-Take a deep breath
-Belly breathe
-Count our fingers and toes
-Kick a ball
-Take a quiet break

Letter X
Our letter X arrived this week. We thought it might be an X-Ray or an eXit sign or a foX. 
We were so surprised when we saw it was a treasure map and X marked the spot! 


Flakes
Our Grade 4,5, and 6 students made a play called 'Flakes'. We got to go and watch the play on Thursday! Some of our big brothers and sisters were in it! We really liked the music!
                       

Rekenrek
In Math, we learned about the Rekenrek this week! it is a special tool we can use to count, add, subtract, and make numbers! We liked the sounds that the beads made as they moved.
                         

Our Aquarium
Our Let's Pretend Aquarium is beggining to take shape! We did a lot of thinking and research in fiction and non fiction books and started to make tanks for our fish to live in.
   

Our Week November 20 - 23

Hi Families,

Here are some stories from this week.

Aquarium
We brainstormed lots of great ideas for our Let's Pretend Centre and then we did a survey. The votes are in and we're going to make an Aquarium! We have started to research what an Aquarium is and plan out what we will need. 
                          

10 Frame
We experimented with a large size ten frame this week. A ten frame helps you organize things up to the number ten. We are using it to learn how to recognize numbers without counting (subitizing) and how to compose and decompose numbers (addition/subtraction).


10 in the Bed
Using our 10 frames we told the story song 'Ten in the Bed'. We enjoyed this story so much that we created a puppet show to go with it. We created puppets and props. Stay tuned for a special performance of this song at our assembly!


Name Tags
Every morning we begin the day by signing in using our name cards. Each letter of our name is in a box. We are using these cards to count the letters in our names and find the longest names and the shortest names.