News for May 19

News for May 19

The big news for this four-day week was the sprouting and planting of the student's bean seeds. The children learned about the roots and stems and leaves and when planting the sprouted seed, to put the roots in the soil and the stem outside to get the sun. The children took home their plants this week. Now the class knows beans and bean plants very well, we also read aloud the fairy tale, Jack and the Beanstalk. We compared the bean seed to the seed of an avocado, which is much larger and a different colour. Students also had a chance to taste avocado at the snack table.

In math, we started a unit on money. The children learned about the six different Canadian coins. We learned about the different names, sizes and colours of the coins. The first activity was to take a box of "play money" and sort the coins into the six different types.

The senior kindergarten students reading levels were formally assessed this week as required by the school board.

We reviewed the different ways to tell a story by reading Robert Munsch's book, Moira's Birthday and watching the video. The students are getting very good at paying attention to the differences in the story book and the movie. As usual, more information about the books we read together can be found at our sister blog:

http://planet5books.blogspot.com/

The big news this week was the arrival of our new fish! Beta is now in our fish tank to be a new friend to Alpha and George. The children were all very excited and made some very good comparisons to the "old" Beta. For example, they were able to comment on the size of the fish (much smaller - Alpha now looks like a giant!), the colours and the shape and size of its fins.

Update from Ms. R

I must apologize for neglecting to post the information about our school's Scholastic Book Fair in the library. Books will still be available for purchase on Monday, May 16th.

The words to the song "Swimming" were sent home with your child on Friday. Please remember to have your child read/sing the words to you.

Note:

Friday, May 20 - P.A. Day - no classes

Monday, May 23 - Victoria Day Holiday - no classes

Thursday, May 26 - Spring Concert - 6:00 to 6:45 Kindergarten Concert and 7:00 Grades 1-6

News for May 13

News for May 13

We've had another busy week in Room 101 researching seeds, exploring Marbleworks and talking about memories and how to treat living things!

Our plant unit is in full swing. This week the children put bean seeds on damp paper in ziplock bags to get them to sprout. By the end of the week, the seeds had swollen up and sprouted a root! Last week we noted that the dry seeds each had a small, white oval and the students noticed that the root came out near the white oval.

We learned about seeds. We read the book, Seeds, and we learned that every seed has the power to become a new plant. Peas, coconuts and corn kernels are all seeds. The class also learned how seeds are distributed so the plants can live in new places (by wind, sticking to clothing and even in bird poop!) The children looked at seeds that you can eat and even had a chance to eat corn (as popcorn), pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds. So when you are eating popcorn, you are really eating seeds!

Our student teacher worked with both the morning class and afternoon class to listen to them as they explored the Marbleworks activity. Ms. Griffin wrote about what she observed:

"My name is Fanny Griffin, and I'm finishing up my teaching degree at OISE/University of Toronto. I've been focusing on the role and importance of play-based learning in the kindergarten classroom, and this weeks' Marbleworks activity is a perfect example! We all explored how the tubes connected to create endless combinations of routes for the marbles. We used our problem-solving skills to figure out why some pieces didn't work the way we originally thought, and applied that new knowledge and understanding to create bigger, more amazing structures. Keep reading and you'll see some of our creations and our thinking behind the play!

We talked about building “structures” (Nina) and “experimenting” (Finn) to figure out how best to construct our creations. Some of us made predictions about what route we thought our marble would take; Natali, Anagha and Oliver actually changed their structures to make the marble go the way they wanted. There was a lot of cooperation going on, at one point Zachary exclaimed “I have a great idea guys! What if we put all the marble works together?”. There were also a lot of connections being made, with Nicholas exclaiming at one point “it's like snakes and ladders!”, and others were comparing the activity to water slides and roller coasters they'd been on.

This was such a fun activity: it made us think about what we were doing, and how we could use the tubes to create the structures in our imaginations."

The students drew and wrote a page for May for their monthly book. Next month each child will assemble the book and reflect on how their drawings and writing has changed since September.

We read two books this week that prompted a lot of discussion. Something From Nothing is a lovely book that has a repeating text which encourages children to read along. It also focuses on family and memories. Hey Little Ant promotes discussion about how to treat living things. As always, more information about the books we read together can be found at our sister blog at:

http://planet5books.blogspot.com/

Update from Ms. R

The children are all excited about the cards and gifts they made for Mother's Day.

I would like to wish all the moms a very happy Mother's Day!

The words to the song "Mister Golden Sun" were sent home with your child on Friday. Please have your child sing the song to you and read (sing) the words together, pointing to each word as it is said.

News for May 6

News for May 6

The big news for this week was the preparations for Mother's Day. The children each made a card and a beaded necklace. When making the necklace,

each child chose and counted out 10 beads and used their "pinchy fingers" to thread the beads on elastic cord. Students remarked that the classroom was like a jewellery store! The children then wrapped the gifts in tissue paper and fastened it with tape.

We have started our unit on plants. This week the children looked at bean seeds and used magnifying glasses to look at all the features. This is an important step, as the seed will go through many changes as it grows into a plant and the students need to appreciate and remember the characteristics of the bean seeds. We recorded words like, black, brown, hard, smooth and the fact that each seed has a small white oval on its side. We read a book about vegetables that grow above and below the soil and the class looked at a picture of a fully grown bean plant. I asked the class to take a good look at the bean plant and the bean seed and to think about their theories on how the plant grows (i.e. Is there a tiny plant inside the seed that just gets bigger?)

The students also learned the 3 things that plants need to live: soil, water and sun. The class learned the words to the song "Mister Golden Sun" to help them understand the importance of the sun to our world.

As always, more information about the books we read in class can be found at:

http://planet5books.blogspot.com/

We took the weather details that we tracked for each school day in April and graphed the information as a pictograph. We learned that most days were sunny and we only had one cold day. This lesson also introduced the concept of reading information off the y-axis of a graph (i.e. you don't have to count the pictures, you can just read the number off the y-axis on the left).

The children are learning to apply their math skills to new situations. I set out a bin of plastic animals and some students made repeating patterns, other sorted them by colours and others put them in "10 frame" grids in order to count them by skip counting by tens.

Update from Ms. R

Ah, the last week of April and there are now less than 40 school days left!

A copy of the spring poem we learned this week was sent home with the children. Please read this poem with your child.

Important Dates:

May 8: Mother's Day

May 23: Victoria Day - no school on this day

May 26: Spring Concert - Kindergarten Concert @ 6:00 to 6:45; Primary/Junior @ 7:00

June 19 : Father's Day

June 4 : Davisville Fun Fair

June 29: Last day of classes

News for April 29

News for April 29

Another 4-day week for the students in Room 101!

This week, the students decorated the "tree" in our classroom to reflect spring. They used coloured tissue paper and glue to put leaves and flowers onto the branches. It's surprising, but this small change to our tree really brightened up our classroom.

The students are working hard on developing their reading strategies. It is important that children automate these strategies in order to improve their reading fluency/speed. The students are taught to use letter-sound knowledge, small word in the big word and clues from illustrations to help them decode (read) the words. One way we did this, was to use a read-along big book to read a variety of texts (fiction, non-fiction, poetry). As always, more information on the books shared in class can be found on our sister blog at:

http://planet5books.blogspot.com/

We continued to talk about building structures. We read the book, Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel and talked about how buildings need a foundation to help make them more stable. The children reviewed the names and characteristics of 2-D shapes and then used these shapes to design buildings.

As we reached 40 more days of school, the classes are now counting backwards each day. We also continue to practise how to count by two's to ten.

Because of the weather, we had our physical play time indoors. One of the children's favourite games to play is The Freeze Game, as the students dance around to music.

Our afternoon class was happy to welcome Ms. Griffin to our class. Ms. Griffin is a student teacher from OISE/UT and she will be with us for 4 weeks.