Week of April 3-7

Dear families,

I hope you're enjoying the gorgeous Spring weather today or are at least watching the Masters indoors!

Last week we continued our Inquiry on Ocean Life, learning about Pufferfish and Jellyfish. They made awesome "Jellyfish in a Bottle" with Miss. Santiago, the SKs made jellyfish from clear plastic for our bulletin board, and the JKs will make floating Man-O-War Jellyfish. With their Reading Buddies they completed Seahorse and Jellyfish adjective/fact sheets. We watched awesome BBC Earth videos about Pufferfish and Jellyfish including an amazing video of a Japanese Pufferfish making a nest with amazing precision. The children drew their own pufferfish and nests and also made a larger one for the bulletin board display. We also tried a toothpick/water experiment in which the 10 toothpicks moved to form a star. The children are starting to decorate their dioramas with ocean objects. Exciting!

Thank you so much to Ethan who brought in a shark's jaw and to Kate who brought in a real starfish! The kids loved touching them and looking closely at them! Thank you also to Sebastian's dad who told me about the "jellyfish cam" and the "live shark cam" at the Monterrey Bay Aquarium! We will look at these tomorrow!

Thank you to Ethan's dad who was our Mystery Reader and to Hannah who shared her awesome Ocean Book with the class. Maya brought in her "Littlest Mermaid" book and Menaal shared her seashells and Mermaid book with her friends.

On Thursday we watched a terrific presentation about Birds of Prey by the Mountsberg Raptor Centre in Halton. The children saw and learned about the American Kestrel, the Red-tailed Hawk and the Great Horned Owl, and then drew a picture and wrote about the presentation.

We also started learning about (JKs) and reviewing (SKs) 3D Shapes in the man-made and natural world, for example the puffer fish becomes a sphere, an aquarium is a rectangular prism, an owl's eye is a cylinder and so on. It was great hearing the children use this knowledge in conversation, such as "My lunch bag is a cube" "My yogurt cup is a cylinder" and "The bubbles in Bubbles' tank are spheres." Please encourage your child to describe objects with this vocabulary.

To celebrate Earth Day which is April 22nd, I sent a note home about making a toy or object our of recycled materials. We reuse and repurpose a lot of objects in Kindergarten! Our Mystery Object (a daffodil bulb) sprouted roots and leaves but didn't bloom. Maybe it needed soil!

Next week we will continue our Ocean Inquiry, learning about Mollusks and Sea Shells, which is a terrific way to talk about living vs. non-living things. We'll also be learning about Sand, which will end our Inquiry (did you notice we went from Largest to Smallest, starting with the Blue Whale?). We'll also celebrate Spring with a Craft Party! Thank you in advance to the parents who have volunteered for this fun day!

That's the news for this week :)