Our Week in Kindergarten - June 17 - 21

Hi Families,

It is hard to believe that this was our last full week of school together! 
Please remember that Monday will be a busy day! We have Play Day in the morning and our Kindergarten picnic at noon. The firetruck will be coming so be sure to send a change of clothes!

Here are some stories from the week.

Platinum!

We were so happy to find out this week that Black Walnut is now a PLATINUM Eco School! This is the highest level of Eco Schools!! Well done Wolverines!


Graduation
Our Bluejays celebrated their SK Graduation on Tuesday! We hope you enjoyed our songs. We had so much fun making decorations and walking across the stage! We all think we look a little taller now too!


Food Truck Festival
Wednesday was the school's Food Truck Festival! It was beautiful weather to come outside for a party! Most of our class was there and the food was so yummy!! Who had some ice cream?!


Not a Box
We read the story 'Not a Box' and collected boxes from around the school to create our own 'Not - a 'boxes' .  It is so much fun to use our imaginations!


Rainbow Flag
This week, when we went outside to water our garden, we were so excited to see Black Walnut's new Rainbow Pride Flag!
          

Nature Wonders!
While exploring nature this week we had to amazing discoveries! We found a toad in the Kindergarten pen that we rescued and took back to the forest! He was very big!
We also found a monarch caterpillar in our butterfly garden! We couldn't fin him on Friday though....so hopefully he's already in his Chrysalis!

What a Busy June! June 4 - June 14

Hi Families,
June had finally brought us some nice weather and we have been going outside as much as we can!
With SK Graduation next week and our Kindergarten picnic the week after, it's hard to believe that the year is almost at an end!!
To all parents who made it to our Volunteer's Breakfast this week, I want to say another Thank You! You have done so much for our school and for our classroom!
              

Just a reminder that next Wednesday (June 19th) the Black Walnut School Council is hosting an End of Year Celebration in our back field! There will be food trucks and ice cream trucks and activities and games! We hope to see you there!


Here are some stories from our week!

Love Boxes
What an amazing turn out of donations we had for our Love Boxes. We were given 1 box to decorate and fill with goodies for a child staying at Markham Stouffville Hospital....But we ended up filling 3 Love Boxes instead! We still had some additional donations that were given to the hospital! You are all so generous! Our class loved making messages and drawings to go in the boxes. 
 

Outdoor Classroom Day
Last Friday was Outdoor Classroom Day! We spent the day in our favourite place! OUTSIDE!! We visited the forest for some nature art and picked up litter. Then we went on a nature scavenger hunt! We found out that the caretakers have a secret garden near their office! We finished the day with some outdoor yoga!


Golden Shoe
Last Friday we also got a great surprise! We found out that we had won the GOLDEN SHOE for the week! This means we had the most kids that walked, biked, or used a scooter to get to school!! We were so excited! We all needed to touch the trophy!


Graduation Practice
This week, the Bluejays began to practise for our upcoming graduation! We're sure you've heard some of our songs! We can't wait to see you next week! So start spreading the news! Graduations starts at 11:30 on Tuesday - but the gym doors will open at 11:00am!


Caterpillars and Butterflies
What a wonderful surprise we had on Monday when we got to school! Our butterflies had all come out of their cocoons over the weekend!! It was too windy on Tuesday to let them out of the net so we went outside Wednesday morning to say goodbye and watch them fly. We all got a turn holding a butterfly up close. It was amazing to watch them fly away! We tried to follow them and some of them landed in our Butterfly Garden!!
             

Library News
Ms. Dias closed the library for the year. This means we all need to bring our library books in as soon as we can. before she closed the library, we got a sneak peek at the amazing artwork that the Grade 3s made! They have been collecting lids all year and they have used them to create a beautiful mural!
                 

Father's Day
We have been working hard this week to create something super for our Dads! We hope you like them! 
                       

Ms. Tamaki's Surprise!
Our fantastic student teacher Ms. Tamaki surprised us this week by sending us flowers! She is so proud of us and wanted to say hi! 

Our last week of May! May 27 - 31

Hi Families,

Even with the rain we had a wonderful week outside! Next Friday (June 7th) it is our school's Outdoor classroom Day! Please send your child with appropriate outdoor clothing:
-running shoes (and maybe boots)
-hats
-sweaters
-sunscreen
-water bottle
-pants (the forest has lots of bugs right now)

Here are some stories from our week.

Love Boxes
We started decorating our Love Box this week. We wrote notes and put stickers on them. We wrote our names on the box too. We have so many beautiful things to go in our box. We may need more boxes! Thank you so much for your donations!


Pavement Games
On Tuesday, we has special painters come to Black Walnut to paint on our tarmac! It was amazing to watch! They had a huge spray painting machine - we watched them paint the mirror game from our window! We wrote them a card to say thank you and they were very excited!


Flower Research
We have been working hard in the garden and we planted many new flowers. We researched them and added them to our garden book. Our garden has all sorts of flowers that attract butterflies and we hope some come soon!

Caterpillars and Butterflies
While we are waiting for butterflies to visit our garden, we have some caterpillars visiting our classroom. At least we did have caterpillars visiting! On Friday morning they were all in cocoons! Now we have to wait and hopefully some new friends will visit us next week! A Bluejay also gave us a butterfly poster that had a word search! We had lots of fun looking for butterfly words!


Gardening
We created sticks to go in the garden to label where each flower and plant was. We wrote the names on the tags and then we got to water the plants. 


Beehives
While we were outside we noticed 4 little beehives growing on the windows at the front of the school. We let the office and the caretakers know by writing them letters. Ms. Thomas asked us to make an announcement for the school reminding the kids to be careful.

Birds Birds Birds!!
We still love birds and this week we started this with an amazing tweet reply from Barbara Reid! We wrote to her last week to show her our bird art and she loved them! We decided to turn our bird paintings into a book - so stay tuned!

We went outside to do some bird watching. We made a tally mark each time we saw a different kind of bird. Since we have been doing our research we know that we saw 8 different kinds of birds! 



Pokemon
We still love Pokemon in Kindergarten! This week Ms. Boag bought her own Pokemon cards and let us open them for her! We sorted them based on their type (water type, dragon type and more!) We are really loving learning about Pokemon and trying to draw them!


Bike to School Week
This week was Bike to School week. Many students and families participated by biking and using their scooters to get to school.

Raptors Day
Thursday was Raptors day and we were so excited! We wore red, black, and white, and even some Raptors gear! We learned about some of the players from our Toronto basketball team and cheered for them on Twitter! Let's Go Raptors!!!


Loud Day
Friday was dress LOUD day! It is a day to support and celebrate those who are deaf or hard of hearing. We started the day by signing O Canada instead of singing! 


Kinder Star Assembly
Friday was our final Kinder Star assembly for the year! We have all grown up so much this year and are truly becoming responsible students, great and kind friends, and kids who always try to be our very best!! Well done Blue Jays and Chickadees!

Our Week - May 21 - 24

Hi Families,
Thank you to all SK families who have sent in their baby photos. It's hard to believe that June and our Kindy Grad are almost here!

Next week is Bike to School Week! If you or your children are biking to school please remember that it is the law to wear a helmet. Our school area is very busy before and after school so please put safety first!

Here are some stories from the week.

Domino Parking Lot
We love playing with dominos by lining them up. This week, we looked at the number dots on the domino and played the game domino parking lot. You flip over a domino and try to match it with a space on your card.


Learning About Birds
This week we've continued to be on the lookout for birds in our area. We were excited that we could add 2 new birds to our list - Morning Dove and the Blue Sparrow

Paintings
We painted pictures of the new birds and have begun to research our birds and write stories about them. 


Eggs 
We realized this week that all birds lay eggs - but their eggs are different. We used plasticine to create eggs and nests for each bird we have made so far. 


Story
We read the book 'Now I know Birds' and created our own chart story. We also read Barbara Reid's book 'Have you Seen Birds' and created plasticine pictures of our birds.


Books
Ms. Dias helped us find some books in the library to help with our research!

Our Week - May 13 - 17

Hi Families,

It's hard to believe that it's already time for the May long weekend! We did not have outdoor day today. It had been rescheduled to Friday June 7th.  

SK Families please check your e-mail next week for your invitation to this year's SK graduation.

Here are some stories from the week.

Rover
This week we found out that our Rover has been recalled! We cannot use him anymore this year. We sang him a goodbye song and wrote him a goodbye letter. Now we have a whiteboard to write our morning message on. It is fun to write our own message each day.
                        

Books 
We are becoming authors in our classroom! We made a list of topics that we know a lot about and we've started to make our own books. Some of us have painted pictures for the pages and some of us are drawing pictures that we have looked at from books and photos. We sort the pages to decide which order they go in and we read and edit our story to be sure it makes sense. When we finish we get to be the teacher and read our stories to the class. 
                  

Kingdom
We have some new blocks in our construction centre that gave us a great idea to make a Kingdom! We have castles, horses and a carriage, knights and dragons, and a king and queen. We've made a plan of the things we know go in a kingdom and now we are starting to make the kingdom ourselves!
         

Dominos
We got a new box of dominos and we're using them to make mazes. We like lining them up to see them fall. We are trying to see how long of a domino line we can make before it falls.

A World of Kindness
We needed a reminder this week of what it means to be kind and be a friend. We read the story A World of Kindness and talked together about ways we show kindness to others. We realized that we all have something we are good at and something we are still learning and we can show kindness by telling our friends that we are proud of them!
                   

Nature Walk
We have started learning about circles and cycles and the important symbol they are to the Anishinaabe people. We see a circle on our clock to tell the time of day and we talked about the circle of the day. We wake up when the sun is rising and go to school and eat lunch when the sun is high in the sky. On Thursday, we went out to the forest to continue our learning. We got into 4 groups and explored the forest in 4 different directions - East, South, West, and North. We slowly walked away from each other and collected things as we travelled that we brought back to our circle to share at the end. Can you think of a circle or a cycle in your life?


Tulips
We visited the school gardens this week and were so excited to see more tulips growing! Now we have red, yellow, and white tulips! We spent time outside creating kindness rocks and left them in the garden to help make it beautiful. 


Birds
We have been watching out our window as more and more birds fly around. We started a list earlier in the year of birds we have seen but have added 5 new birds to our list this week! We started to research these birds and have drawn and painted amazing pictures. We even found a special egg shell on the ground outside and we figured out from our research that it is a robin's egg shell!