Quote for the week:

 

 

 

 

DREAM

 

"We all have our own life to pursue,

our own kind of dream to be weaving.

And we all have some power to make wishes come true,

as long as we keep believing!"

 

Louisa May Alcott

Language

 

Some parents of the SK students are asking when their child will be bringing home little reading books to practice. I know there are about four or five SK students who are showing a readiness in the area of reading and I will probably start sending home little readers for them after the PA day.

 

I do not want the students to read by memorizing the words. I want them to be able to blend sounds together to determine the word, rather than memorizing. The only words I want the students to memorize are the By Heart Words. I hope parents are having their SK children practise these words, since these are the words they will most frequently find in the early readers and when they are writing. I thank the parents for assisting their child in this area of their learning.

 

The jolly phonic sound for this week is the Bb sound. Some of the simple words we will work on are: bat, band, ball, big, bad, bag, but, bend, bent, bit, bib, bed. Parents can assist their child by blending the sounds for them and asking them to figure out what the word is. For example: You stretch out following sounds, over emphasizing them is a big help to the child    b   e    d and then asking your child to tell you the word. The more you practice this skill with your child the better they will become. You should print out little cards with one letter on each card and then put them in front of the child so they can visualize and hear each sound as you state them.

 

The word family for this week is the: ag family. Some of the words are: bag, gag, hag, lag, nag, sag, tag, rag, wag, drag, and flag. The students love working on these word families.

 

The By Heart word for this week is: look.

Mathematics

 

This week in the area of mathematics the students will continue with mass measurement. The focus will be measuring various items and determining which is heavy and which is light. The challenge will be to determine the heaviest item of all. The students will also be using balance scales and determining how many cubes it will take to balance the scale when measuring a variety of items. We may have to go into next week before finishing the unit on mass since Monday is a presentation day and Friday is a P.A. Day.

Dairy Farm Presentation

 

 

The Dairy Farmers are coming to Meadowvale School to do a presentation to all the classes on Monday, January 13, 2014.

 

They will do their presentation to the morning kindergarten students first thing on Monday morning. During the presentation the students will learn about the importance of dairy farmers and what they do for the community. The students will have an opportunity to make butter during the presentation. This sounds like a fun learning experience. The Dairy Farmers will do their presentation to the afternoon Kindergarten students at 1:40 in the afternoon. 

Math Journal

 

Some of the students have shown a keen interest in the area of Math. They are independently challenging themselves to create complicated patterns using the various coloured cubes and then further challenging themselves by finding things in the classroom that are the same length or longer than the length of pattern they have created.

 

This is proof to me the success of the Kindergarten program. The Kindergarten Curriculum states what strands the students are required to learn in the area of Mathematics. I offer the students mini lessons and then put out various manipulatives that I think will promote their learning. Then the students take the lead and often they challenge themselves by connecting what they have learned and often they incorporate two strands together in order to demonstrate their learning.

 

Just a reminder the Kindergarten program is a two year program. This means a JK student has two years to demonstrate their learning in the various Mathematical strands.

 

At this time the students are being introduced to the strand of measurement in the area of mass. Many of the students enjoy working with the teacher. Today the students were introduced to a Math Journal in which they were asked to draw (write) about two things in the classroom that were heavier than a water bottle and two things that were lighter than a water bottle. Some of the students rose to the challenge and completed the task independently. Other students required a little prompting from the teacher in order to successfully find something that was either heavier or lighter.

 

This was an excellent observation for me because now I know which students may require additional assistance to understand the term (heavier) or (lighter) and which students can move onto a more challenging task in the area of Mass. 

Language

 

The By Heart word for this week are two words, "said" and "all".

 

The word family is the "ot" family. Some of the words the students will be asked to blend together are: bot, cot, dot, got, hot, jot, lot, pot, rot, shot, tot and spot.

 

The jolly phonic sound is the Ff sound. Some of the words the students will be introduced to are:

fat, fan, fun, fin, fish, for, fast, fill, fell, fall, fib, fit, fix, fly.

 

Just a reminder the students voted to have the Dramatic Play Centre be a winter wonderland. Some donations of odd mittens, scarves, lids from shoe boxes (to make into snowshoes), sugar cubes (to make igloos) and some Arctic stuffed animals would be appreciated. The students will have opportunities to make snowmen, snowflakes, igloos and an other items they feel would be in a winter wonderland.



Welcome Back

 

Happy New Year to all the kindergarten families. This week will be a week for the students to return back to school. We will take the first couple of days slowly so they all have time to adjust to the routines after an enjoyable break.

 

In Mathematics the focus for this week will be on measurement of mass. The kindergarten students are expected to explain which things are heavier and lighter and tell how they know. The first day they will be asked to find things that are heavier than a water bottle and lighter than a water bottle. Later on during the week they will be using balance scales to find things that have the same mass, greater mass and lighter mass. At the end of the unit they will be asked to explain either orally or with pictures what the balance scale looks like when something is lighter, heavier or when the two items have the same mass.