Dear families,
I hope you are enjoying this mild last day of January! February is always a very busy month, with five special days to celebrate and learn about (Groundhog Day, Chinese New Year, 100th Day of School, Valentine's Day, Family Day)! As always, these provide many opportunities in Kindergarten for expanding and enriching our reading, writing and numeracy skills.
We are still learning about Penguins in the Antarctic and are working hard putting our measuring skills to work inside and outside the classroom. We watched the video "Standard and Non-Standard Measurement" by Sid the Science Kid, and did a follow up activity with the children measuring how many of themselves long the classroom was, i.e. "The classroom is 10 Stephens long." Their partner placed a block at the end of their friend to know where to start the next unit of measurement.
We learned about the words LENGTH, HEIGHT, CAPACITY and WEIGHT. The children are learning about capacity at the water table, with various-sized beakers (along with a few penguins frozen in ice for fun!); they are learning about length at various stations - measuring themselves with standard and non-standard tools (measuring tape, string, cube-a-links); they are learning about height in a similar way, using standard and non-standard units of measurement; they are learning about weight using the balance in our Measurement Centre, weighing and comparing different objects. We talked and wrote about how a balance works, and we also did an activity on the Smartboard called "Are you Taller Than The String?" The children also measured items in the classroom with cube-a-links and wrote the number. The children also used their traced footprint to measure and record the length of various classroom objects, such as their table, chair, the carpet, and the piano bench. Outside, they used sticks to measure parts of the playground. Here is the overall expectation from the Kindergarten Document: "The students will measure and compare length, mass, capacity, area and temperature of objects/materials and the passage of time, using non-standard units, through free exploration, focused exploration, and guided activity" (The Full Day Early Learning Kindergarten Program, M.2).
Continuing our Inquiry on Penguins, we learned a poem about different kinds of penguins, such as the Adelie, King, Emperor, Blackfooted and Macaroni penguin (their favourite!). The children labelled parts of the penguin on chart paper, and measured and wrote the height of a drawn penguin with penguin crackers, then ate them :) The children are taking turns playing Penguins on Ice in the Sensory Bin. If only the temperature would drop enough so I could freeze the water in the bin and the children could experiment with sliding different weighing penguin toys along the ice! Maybe this week. The children also enjoyed playing with my penguin nesting dolls, sorting them from smallest to biggest and talking about them.
The children read, coloured and drew "A Penguin Adventure" booklet. We also learned a fun "Penguin Song" on the Smartboard, watched videos of penguins in the Antarctic, and made cute paper penguins which are on display on the classroom bulletin board.
With our Reading Buddies, the children made lovely paper snowflakes. Thank you so much to Miss. Lindsay from Miss. I.'s class for the idea! They look beautiful! The children had to cut lines through six triangular pieces of paper, and their reading buddies helped them fold and glue them to make them 3-dimensional. They are hanging in the classroom and look beautiful!
Our Sharing Assembly was a great success this Friday and the children recited a cute Shel Silverstein poem called "Snowball," a copy of which I will send home, along with our penguin poems and song lyrics. Congratulations to Kosti, Chloe and Matthew who received certificates for Teamwork. Great job! Please remember that after Sharing Assemblies, if you would like to say hello to your child, please come to them in our line, rather than your child going to you through the crowd of families. Thank you.
This week we also had a very informative visit from Toronto Firefighter Shawn, who taught the children all about fire safety. He also put on his fire fighting gear, including his helmet and face mask, to show the children that he wasn't "scary" and that if a firefighter is trying to rescue you, don't run away.
Thank you to: Cole for bringing in books about penguins and ice water bottles for our Penguins on Ice Centre; Claire, who brought in a measuring tape and a terrific photo book about Polar Animals; Iris, who brought in a photo nature story book by the same authors as one we read in class; Tessa, who brought in a penguin stuffy for the children to look at in our snowflake building centre; and Theo, who is sharing his cute baby Emperor penguin toys with us at the Snowflake Centre. I love it when the children add to our learning this way. Thank you also to our parent volunteers for this week: Avery's mom and Martel's mom helped in the Computer Lab; Iris' mom was our Mystery Reader, and Hanna's, Martel's and Alexandra's mom helped with pizza lunch on Friday.
Thank you as well for remembering to send in used light bulbs, batteries and pop tabs for the Eco Warriors. Keep bringing them in!
The homework for this weekend is: JKs: do the mini read and write books IS and AM; SKs: do the mini read and write books COME and LOOK.
Next week we will continue measuring with standard and non-standard units and we will continue our inquiry on Penguins. We are filling two folders at once with all our work! We will learn all about Groundhog Day on February 2nd and we will have fun with the Aussie X team who will teach the kids about Aussie rules football.
The February Scholastic Order (which includes Valentines books) is due by Monday please. Thank you for supporting Scholastic, which in turn provides the classroom with books.
Valentine’s Day is on the Sunday of Family Day Weekend this year, so we will be doing Valentine (and 100th Day of school!) activities the week of February 8-11 (February 12 is a PA day). Please be sure to send in your child’s Valentine cards by Wednesday, February 10th. They will need time to
read their friends’ names and sort them in the Valentines bags I am providing.
Thanks and I hope you have a terrific week!
Mrs. Tyndall
