Dear Families,
Thank you to all of our Bluejay families who came to visit last Thursday evening and Friday morning and to all the Chickadee families who have come to visit so far this week. We have loved seeing you in our classroom!
Just a reminder that next week we have Scientist in the School visiting! Please visit school cashonline to make your payment.
If you are wondering what is happening at Black Walnut for the next month, stop by our school's foyer and check out our new school calendar!
Here are some stories from our week.
Nature Walk - Sledding
With all the snow last week we were so excited to get outside and visit our forest! We made tracks, snow piles, snow angels, and had fun making the snow fall! We even took some time to go sledding!
Chicka Chicka Letters
This week we opened 2 new Chicka Chicka letters!
T - was a tree and a tiger! It came all the way from Saskatchewan.
W - was a watermelon and a worm! It came from Alberta!
Dental Screening
On Wednesday, we all visited the dental hygienists that came to the school. They looked in all of our mouths and counted our teeth. We each got a letter to take home telling about our teeth.
Beautiful Junk
Our new art station opened this week - the beautiful junk station! We have different items of all kinds of colours and we can use them to decorate, to sort, or to make art! We have made necklaces, trees, faces, and more!
If you have any interesting lids, beads, or recycled pieces - feel free to send them into our classroom!
Popcorn
Students from our class have joined the 'Popcorn Club'. This means that we go to the office to help the Grade 7s sort and count the bags of popcorn to deliver to the rest of the school. We love counting - it is such a fun job! It's like we work at the movies!
Parent Night
Thursday night was a special parent engagement night at Black Walnut. We hope you enjoyed learning about about modern learning and well-being.
Name Tags
We have a new job in our morning routine. Each morning, we find our nametag and sign in. We are practising writing our names and are counting how many letters are in our names.
Hi Families,
We had a wet week in Kindergarten with a lot of indoor recess time but we showed Ms.Boag and Ms. Ancona how kind and responsible we are! We took time to enjoy nature, got mail, made a book, continued subitizing, took care of animals, and celebrated our friends achievements and Halloween!
Here are some stories from the week.
Leaf Pile Jumping
We went out to the forest on Wednesday - even though it was raining - and had a great time! We read the story Leaf Jumpers and decided to make our own pile of leaves. It was really hard work! We had to keep scooping and piling a long time! When our pile was finished, we took turns jumping into the leaves - they were so crunchy! It was so much fun! We brought leaves back to our classroom and made our own nature rainbows in our nature journals.
Chicka Chicka Letter Exchange
We have been working for a number of weeks on a special letter - the letter P! This week we mailed our letter P art to 25 different schools across Canada as part of the Chicka Chicka Letter Exchange. We now get to wait and see what schools will mail us in return!
We already got our first letter. It was the letter H! We made predictions of what we thought would be inside our envelope. When we opened it we saw that the letter H was made into a horse and a house! This letter came all the way from Alberta!
Ratuki
We continued subitizing this week with a new game called Ratuki! We were introduced to a new way to make numbers called tally marks. We had to match number up to 5! Ms. Boag is teaching us a game to play with these cards.
Kinder Star
On Thursday, we had our first Kinder Star assembly. We will have one each month to celebrate student achievements. Each month 3 friends will get an award - Good Friend, Responsibility, and Try My Best. We also had 4 extra friends who got an award from the Markham Fair! We watched Mrs. Harcharik's class perform 2 songs and NEXT MONTH, we get to perform at the assembly!
Halloween
In the afternoon, we visited classes all around the school for our Kindergarten parade.
We all dressed up for Halloween and took photos of our costumes. We are going to make a class book and write about our special day!
After the parade, we got to eat some yummy and healthy snacks. We had fruit, vegetables, cheese, and crackers. Thank you for sending these yummy snacks! We also got to play Trick or Treat and put special loot bags into our back packs for home!
When our snacking was finished we joined the other Kindergarten classes for a dance party! It was exciting to see all our Kindergarten friends in their costumes.
We Scare Hunger
The W.A.T.CH club at Black Walnut counted and sorted our canned food donations today! They will be delivered to the Food Bank next week! Way to go Wolverines!
Worms
On Friday, we opened up our Vermi Composter. When we closed the composter at the end of September, we knew it was filled with newspaper, dried leaves, some food scraps, coffee grounds, and red wriggler worms. But when we looked inside today all we could find was our worms and dirt! Somehow the food is all gone and now there is dirt! We will have to investigate this some more!
On Wednesday, we had a visit from Scientists in School. Scientist Lindsay taught us all about ways to protect nature! We studied worms, learned about how to conserve water, discovered many things that come from plants, and practised making litterless lunches! Our favourite activity was learning about birds and making our own bird feeders using pasta and cereal. 
