Math

 

In the area of Math we will be finishing up a few things with two-dimensional shapes and then moving on to three-dimensional figures. I have made a couple of games to assist them with the conclusion of the two dimensional shape unit. The children will have an opportunity to create a shape creature and then name the shapes they have used and how many of each shape they included in their shape creature.

 

The expectation is the children will build three-dimensional structures using a variety of materials and begin to recognize the three dimensional figures their structure containers. This is where the use of the new small colour blocks will be very effective because they are made up of cones, cubes rectangular prisms, cylinders and square based prisms. The children will be introduced to the names of the three-dimensional figures, but more importantly to the number of sides (edges), corners (vertices), and faces each of the three-dimensional figures has. 

Construction Area

 

It was time to make a change to the construction area, so on Friday I put all the wooden blocks and the dinosaurs away for a little while. Out came the railway track and trains. Thank you to another donation the Kindergarten classroom now has two train tracks and little trains. When the children are creating the train track they will be working as a team and will be encouraged to listen and respond to others through the exchange of ideas, and espressing their feelings and opinions. This will be encouraged through some probing questions. This is where the purposeful play of the program comes into the various centres.  In order to encourage the children to participate in some writing experinces, they will be encouraged to draw and write about the experience in their journals.

 

On Monday, both the morning and afternoon children will create a list of other things that are needed to make the area more real to life and how will we get these things without spending any money. I am hoping they will think of ways of creating trees, houses, stores and highways that a real train passes by during the journey. I am also hoping they will think about railway crossing signs and other creative ideas. Many times the children's ideas are far more creative than ours.

 

I have left out the interlocking cubes for the children to create some things to enhance the journey of the train ride, and I have also left out the coloured little wooden blocks (which were another fabulous donation). On behalf of the children I want to thank all the parents for the wonderful donations you have made to the Kindergarten classroom.

 

Speaking of donations on behalf of Meadowvale School I want to thank all the parents for their overwhelming donations of food to Community Care. The front office area is packed with wonderful food donations that will be appreciated by all those who are less fortunate than ourselves. Thank you again for your generosity!

Retelling

 

Most of the week we read and reread the story of "The Three Pigs". I explained to the children good readers always reread a good book because they learn new things each time they read it. The learning can be a new word, something we learned from the pictures or from the story itself. After the fourth day of reading the story "The Three Pigs", one of the children commented they never realized the pig was wearing wolf slippers at the end of the story.

 

Then Friday in a little bucket, I placed a paper wolf attached to a popsicle stick, a big pig, 3 little pigs, a bag of straw, a bag of little sticks and a bag of Lego. These props were to assist the children to retell the events of the story in their own words. Luckily I had a parent volunteer who assisted the children and they seemed to have a great time retelling the story. The little bucket for retell will be a centre for this coming week.
This week I will add another two little buckets because we will be working on story "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" and "The Little Red Hen". Unfortunately most of the props for this story will be paper props. Hopefully the children will not mind.

 

 

Puppet Theatre

The puppet theatre is getting fabulous use, which enhances the children's communication skills and offers them an opportunity to use their presentation skills as well. The children are making up their own little stories and most of the children are speaking in an appropriate voice and in a kind manner. There is evidence where they are going to the other children to ask them if they would like to come and see the puppet show and be the audience.

 

The other day I over heard one of the children, who was the puppeteer say to someone in the audience, "you must sit down or the show will have to stop. Please remember to show your listening manners". I complimented the puppeteer for using wonderful speaking manner.

 

It is a wonderful experience to witness the children implementing what they have learned into their own play situations. 





The Pet Shop

 

The pet shop is a wonderful and exciting place in the Kindergarten room. The children are creating paper bags with pet food on the front and they decided to stuff the paper bags with paper towels and then to tie a string around the bag. I finally remembered to bring in some play money, which gave the children the idea of a pet store.

 

The pet shop is buzzing with kind words and on Friday the children were lined up at the cash register to buy the pets. I think the Kindergarten children had their own Black Friday in the pet shop.

 

 

Today I was at Dollarama and behold I found a little doctor kit with the case which I will be sure to add that to the pet shop. I did this because the other day one of the children brought their puppy back to the shop and told the sales clerk her puppy was sick. The salesclerk asked the customer if she exercised her puppy. I overheard the salesclerk tell the customer, "well put her back into her cage and let her have a little nap. When she wakes up you must exercise your puppy by walking it around the store three times. Puppies need exercise and I can tell your puppy has not had any exercise."

 

 

By Heart Words

 

For the week of November 26th our By Heart Words are:    "and"    "yellow".

 

The Jolly Phonic sound for this week is:  "g" sound. We will be learning to put the following sounds together to make a word:   go, get, got, gem, gas, gap, gay, and give. Most of the blending of the sounds are with the short vowel sounds and I try to think of only three sounds. This makes it easier for the children. If your child is an SK I strongly recommend you practise these words and the "by heart words" with your child on a regular basis. I also recommend all the children practise the letters and sounds of the alphabet when they are sent home, to assist them in the area of Literacy.

 

 

 





 

The Pet Shop   

 

It was a very exciting time in the Kindergarten room this morning and afternoon. The children were lining up patiently waiting for a time in the Pet Shop. They were so adorable and very understanding when told they may not have a turn until another day.

I placed pipe cleaners in there and the students were very busy making collars and leashes for the various animals. The bird and bird cage was a great hit and I thank Eryn and Evan's Nana for the wonderful donation. I found another little bird at my home so the children were thrilled.

The Creation Centre was buzzing with children busy making pictures for the pet shop and even one little girl made the sign Pets Wanted and drew pictures of some pets wanted for the centre.

The cash register was busy as customers were buying various pets and things for the pets.

On Wednesday, I plan to give them paper bags and perhaps they can decorate the front of the bags to represent the various pet foods.

This was a very exciting experience for me to see how attentive the children were to the pets. Our story for today was Arthur's Pet Business and the students were thrilled with the story.

I am hoping the students will come home and share their experiences from the Pet Shop with you and the other members of your family.



Something New and Exciting!

The District School Board of Niagara has a pilot program that they are willing to share with all parents and teachers. It is absolutely free for the time being and I wanted to share it with everyone.

 

 

The name of the program is pebble go. All you need to do is go to www.pebblego.com

Then use the username and password, provided in red below and the program is valid for your use until December 31st.
Mr. Fournier plans on taking to children to the program when he has them for computers. Enjoy this program and the time you spend with your child.

Username: dsbn

Password: trial

Pebble Go is an award-winning database for preK-5 students offered in three modules: Animals, Earth and Space and Biographies.  Each module features expertly-leveled text and navigation specifically designed for your beginning researchers. Enriched with spoken-word audio, text highlighting and audio and video clips, PebbleGo builds a foundation of research skills for every learner.

 

·       24/7 use from both school and home!

·         Unlimited simultaneous access

 



Reminder

 

I wanted to remind everyone that I will not be at school all day on Tuesday, November 20th since another teacher and I have been asked to create lesson plans for teachers to use with the Toronto Dominion Bank Book. Every year the Toronto Dominion Bank gives every child in Grade One a free book. This is to promote a love of reading in the children at an early age. My friend Pam Schonewille and have have been creating the lesson plans for teachers to use with the book for a number of years now. The board contacted me and asked if I would still be interested in working on the lesson plans even though I am teaching Kindergarten now. I love creating the lessons and Pam and I work so well together the ideas flow from each of us. 

By Heart Words

 

 

For the week of November 19th our By Heart Words are:  "look"  "green".

 

The jolly phonics sound for this week is the "d" sound. On the message each day I will write easy "d" words for the children to try to figure out. Some of the words are:  dad, did, do, dig, dug, dip, den, dog. The children are really enjoying the challenge of trying to figure out the words by blending the sounds together.

 

The little books the students will be creating this week are: "Here is"... The SK students print each sentence and make a picture of something and try to print that word. For example: Here is my coat.

 

Dramatic Play Centre

 

The students decided to change the dramatic play centre to become a Pet Store. On Thursday we brainstormed everything we would need to have a pet store. Their ideas were the following: pet food, little bowls for food and water, leashes and collars, different kinds of pets, cages, wallpaper with paw prints, cash register, money, paper and pencils. We painted boxes and drew black marker lines on them to represent cages. I had a cage and I purchased two toy pet carriers from Value Village. I also purchased a few stuffed animals. A donation of little hamsters, without the batteries. On the weekend I went to Pet Smart and picked up some of their flyers. The students will use the flyers to sort and classify the various pets. The students will have additional opportunities to add more materials to the Pet Store. The children are invited to bring their little stuffed animals (please not big ones) to the pet shop. Please make sure the children's names are on the pet. The children also decided it would be fair to have 4 children in the centre at a time. They will be making the sign for the centre on Monday. Everything is ready to go for Monday. This should be a fun centre.

 

 

 Reading Comprehension Strategy - Retell

Story Retelling

The ability to retell a story helps children to focus on what has been read. The children will learn to organize their thoughts and gather information as the story is read to them. Overtime, students will learn about the setting, the characters, and putting the events of the story in sequential order. Young children need to begin learning about story retelling. After you read a story to your child, he/she should be encouraged to retell the events from the story in the order in which they occurred. Some simple stories we will be using at school to start learning about story retelling are these stories that have predictable text:

The Little Red Hen

The Three Little Pigs
Goldilocks and the Three Bears
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do You See?

Gingerbread Boy

Gingerbread Girl

Gingerbread Man

We will do a comparison between the three gingerbread stories.

We will be spending about one week on two stories.

 

The Retell Strategy will take us over the rest of November and most of the month of December. The children are young and require lots of practise orally retelling the story in the proper sequential order. Usually they tell too little or too much. The goal is for them to tell the important events that occurred at the beginning, middle and end of the story.

 

To reinforce this skill at home, begin with stories that your child knows and loves. When the story is over ask your child:

1. the setting (where did the story take place).
2. who were the characters in the story (who were the people or animals in the story).
3. finally ask your child to put the events of the story in order by asking, What happened first? What happened next? What happened at the end of the story? You can also see if your child is able to tell you the problem that occurred in the story.

Mathematics

 

In the area of Mathematics we will continue exploring and experimenting with two dimensional shapes. Most of the students are aware of the names of the shapes, oval, circle, square, and triangle. Now they will have opportunities to make the various shapes and tell others how they know a circle is a circle. There are a variety of math stations the children will be working at in order to reinforce their understanding. They will also be given opportunities where they can orally share their understanding of the various shapes and what makes a particular shape different from another shape. 

         

 



 



 

 



The Jolly Phonic Sound

 

The sound for this week is the "m" sound. In order to assist the children to blend sounds together, each day on the Daily Message (which I do for the morning and afternoon group), I plan on writing the following:

 

____ en       _____ an     ____y     _____ e   etc.   Then we will do each of the words in the following manner. For example, the first one I say:   this part of the word is "en" put "m" at the beginning and the word is "men". If a JK wants to answer the riddle I say:  this part of the word says en put a m at the beginning and the word is   m   en. The STAR for the day gets to take the Daily Message home and you will see how this works. If your child is a SK practise this strategy with your child periodically.

 

 

 

 

Materials Wanted

 

I am still collecting small boxes and tubes and other recyclable materials that can be glued in order to create a beautiful structure. The children are loving this centre which is open every Friday. Be sure to congratulate your child on the creation and ask them to share what they made and what it can be used for. Monday is the day the children bring their creations home, since the glue is dry and things are stuck together. 

Bat Cave

The children have decided they want to have the Bat Cave for another week so we are keeping it as part of the Dramatic Play area. The children have really enjoyed going into the bat cave with a partner, using flashlights and reading the nonfiction books about bats. Ryker told me he loved the bat cave so much he has made one for he and his brother at his house. That truly shows the great learning that is taking place and he has made a connection between school and home in order to further his learning.

I hear the children discussing what bats eat, they don't have a beak and they hang upside down.

They have also learned that bats are nocturnal. Gregory shared that he thought he is nocturnal like a bat because he doesn't like to sleep at night just like them. This opened the door to explain this means they hunt for food all night and sleep during the day. The children have decided they don't like to sleep (go to bed) at night, but they are not nocturnal. The children were able to tell me that, skunks, raccoons, possums, and owls are some other nocturnal animals and why they are.

Wonderful learning is taking place all because of a bat cave and bat books!

 

Mathematics

 

Students are going to learn about and investigate traditional and non traditional 2 dimensional shapes. I don't want the children to just be able to name the shapes, although this is important it is more important they be able to describe and compare shapes using number of sides, length of sides, and number of vertices (corners). Have your child explore shapes at home. Try this activity at home. Imagine that your backs are drawing boards. Take turns using a finger to draw shapes on each other's backs. Try to guess the shape that the other person is drawing. Talk about what the different shapes feel like . Do they have straight sides or curved sides? Do they have vertices (corners). Now draw the shape on paper and talk about what it looks like. The shapes the children are expected to know are triangle, square, rectangle, and circle. However, to challenge the SK's and prepare them for grade one we will also investigate hexagon, trapezoid, and rhombus.

Some of the children's learning will be to be given a circle and in the circle cut pictures from magazines and flyers that are a circle in the real world. We will do the same with a square and rectangle this week.

 

 

By Heart Words

 

For this week the By Heart Words are:   here    blue

 

The children will be creating We like books this week. I bought two small packages of animal stamps from Winners this weekend. I thought they would be good for the JK children because they could print:  We like  and then stamp an animal. The SK's will continue to print We like print the word of what they like and make the picture.

 

I have created a new game to reinforce the use of these words. The game is called Spin a Word. On a sheet of paper there are six by heart words. The children take a little spinning top and spin it. The word the spinning top lands on the children print that word on their sheet. The first word to get all 5 spaces filled wins.

 

 

Reminder about Friday Novemer 16th

 

 

Friday, November 16th is a P. A. Day. This means there is no school for the children on Friday. For the children who attend Kindergarten in the morning and go to Day Care after Kindergarten, the pizza lunch will be on Thursday, November 15, 2012 instead of Friday. That means the order forms will be going home on Wednesday, November 14th this week.

 

 

Construction Area

 

Dinosaurs have been added to the construction area. For this week the challenge for the builders will be to build a structure that will keep 10 dinosaurs safe and the children must build something that the dinosaurs are not able to escape from. There must be a door and a window so the dinosaurs have can look out at the world around them. The boys and girls love a challenge and very eager to build and design something. This is a wonderful opportunity for team work and cooperation. When the children are pleased with their design their will recreate the design by drawing it in the journal and I will write what they want to say about the design. 

 

Thank You

 

I want to thank all the parents for their kind comments about the blog. To answer your question it is not a lot of work because it helps you and I to be connected with the learning that takes place in the Kindergarten classroom. I try hard to update the blog once a week and it is usually on a Sunday afternoon. So be sure to visit the blog once a week so you are up to date on what is happening in the classroom.









Bat Learning

This week the children will be learning about bats. The Dramatic Play Centre has been set up as a bat cave. I have placed two small tables together and covered it with an old brown blanket. I attached cotton batten to the underneath part of the tables to represent spider webs. Two or three children will be able to lay inside the cave and read books by flashlight. I also picked up a couple of plastic bats and made a couple of bat head band (made from construction paper) for the children to wear.

 

The learning about bats will assist the children to learn the differences between nonfiction books and fiction books. I will record the children's learning on chart paper which will be posted outside of the classroom. The St. Catharines Library had a number of nonfiction books (that I felt were at the Kindergarten level) so I was able to supply the classroom with about 6 or 7 bat books.

 

Our poem this week will be about bats and we will be doing a bat fingerplay that begins with 5 bats and goes down to one bat, which reinforces the early concept of subtraction. The children will have an opportunity to place sentences strips matching into a pocket chart, that match the finger play sentences.

 

The math is related to bats in a number of ways. The children will be able to stamp a bat pattern because I purchased some bat stampers from Michaels. I also made a booklet where the children count the number of bats on the page write the number and show the number on a ten frame. It will be interesting to see how many of the children are able to subitize when counting the bats.

The children wanted brown and black play dough but I explained that it would be too messy. So they opted for red and blue.

 

 

New Math Expectation

 

Starting about Wednesday the children will be introduced to a new math expectation where they will learn to describe, sort, classify, build and compare two-dimensional shapes, such as triangles, squares, circles, and rectangles. The children are expected to learn the names of each of these shapes and to identify the shapes. In the area of comparing the shapes, the children will learn to learn how many sides the shapes have and the number of vertices (corners). They will also be introduced to hexagons, trapezoids, and rhombus. However, they do not need to name and compare these shapes but being aware of them will assist the children in grade one. 

 

By Heart Words

 

For this week the by heart words are:   we    red. I have decided that each week I will add a colour word since the children are required to know these words by heart also. Parents please be sure to keep practising these words. Next week the children will print the word and stamp the word as additional practise with these words. The children love using the stampers and this assists them to recognize the letters of the alphabet. Another activity to assist the children to recognize letters of the alphabet is where they roll a number cube that has letters of the alphabet on it and the letter they get when rolled they colour that letter. The first letter to have all the slots coloured wins the little game. I love using games and centres to assist with the children's learning because many skills are being reinforced but all they know is that they are having fun.

 

 

Little Books

 

Many of the children really enjoy making their little books. This week the books will be:

I see books. The children have 4 pages in their books and print I see a on each page and then make a picture of what they see. For example, I see a dog. The children who are SK's

I help them to print the word by making the sounds for them. While talking about writing the sounds, writing is a very difficult task for young children. If they feel that words must be spelled correctly they will rarely challenge themselves to write. I want them to love to write and to believe that they are writers and authors. Therefore, I tell them to write the sounds they hear and then they become more confident in the area of writing and write more detailed stories.