Dear families,
I hope you are enjoying this lovely weekend.
It's hard to believe that there is only one week until the March Break! We still enjoyed the snow last week though and did a lot of snow-themed activities. To finish our Book Study on The Snowy Day, the children completed an art project with a pop-up scene that had five different elements of the story. They coloured, cut and glued the pictures and then had fun glueing cotton wool "snow" on it. The children also wrote and illustrated a little book about snow, and I taught them all the compound words we can make with "snow." The SKs wrote them out and also matched the pictures to words. We learned a poem called "Snowman" and the children also drew a picture of themselves wearing their snow clothes. Then they made a "snowstorm" on their picture using marbles and white glitter paint. Their art is on the hall bulletin board. The children also made chalk art of a snow scene at night. The SKs competed a winter word match and the JKs counted "frosty friends" and practised counting and writing numbers. The children also finished their "text-to-self" connection work, comparing themselves with Peter from the story. This week's they drew "I dream" and "I feel sad." Empathy is one of the TDSB character traits and this story teaches it well. Finally, we finished our comparison of The Snowy Day to Thoams' Snowsuit, and the children completed the sentence, "This book is funny because..." This finished Book Study folder went home in Friday's mailbags.
The JK homework for this weekend is to cut and paste snowman melting sequence. They did a similar exercise in class this week. The SK homework is to unscramble and write the sentences.
This week's snowstorm was an easy introduction to the saying that March "comes in like a lamb and goes out like a lion!" In Friday's mail bag you will also find the new March words and homework bingo.
This week we also continued our Jan Brett author study, starting with her retelling of the Ukranian folktale "The Mitten." We watched a video of Brett drawing the bear from her story. Following the theme of mittens, I gave each child a paper left and right mitten and asked them to colour and decorate them the same (symmetry is the math skill here). They did a fantastic job and I was really impressed with how carefully they matched their mittens. They are on display on our classroom bulletin board. With their Book Buddies, the children and coloured a booklets called " Where are my mittens?" The JKs read the booklets, and the SKs had to fill in blanks by writing. I prepared mittens on card stock with a dot-to-dot alphabet, but instead of using a pencil, the children practiced their fine motor skills by threading through each hole punched where the dots would be. I think they really enjoyed this activity and were surprised at how challenging it was! In the classroom I use dull tapestry needles, which you get at a craft store.
Thank you so much to Chloe's mom who was our Mystery Reader this week.
The Scholastic order is due by Monday at the latest. Thank you.
The children also made mini read and write books of the sight words BY and COME. When they are finished I always ask them to spell the word for me.
A note about safety - please remember that the Kindergarten Yard is closed after school and is for the use of the B and A program. Children need to be supervised at all times and to follow the playground safety rules posted on the fence. On weekends, the yard is not to be used as a dog park. Thank you.
Next week we will continue our Author Study of Jan Brett in the mornings, and in the afternoons we will do lots of fun numeracy and literacy St. Patrick's Day activities. We'll also make rocks with gold coins in them and will learn about rainbows in Science. In Art we'll make a leprechaun.
I hope you have a terrific week!!
