Launching our Hibernation Unit, Winter Fun and Advent J.O.Y.

After the students began asking questions about what happens to the bugs and snails outside, we decided to focus on hibernation.  I went to the library and got several books on the subject.

I started by reading The Mitten (Jan Brett). We also put out some fun winter activities for the children to try.

We put out some sticks, buttons, googly eyes, and milk carton caps in the play dough centre.

We also put some Epsom salt on the light table (pretend snow), animals, and a Ziploc mitten bag for the children to act out the story (another Pinterest idea) for sensory play.

We put out bingo dauber paper mittens for fine motor skills and hand-eye co-ordination (DLTK-Kids).

We put a Math problem out for the children to solve in the Math centre. We posed the question: "Can you make a tree by ordering the green rectangles from smallest to largest?"

We put snowflake stencils in the painting centre.

We also put out contact paper mittens for students to explore using tissue squares to decorate our windows.

This week, we are going to read The Looking Book (P.K. Hallinan). This book helps us rethink what we see outside in our neighbourhood and in nature.  We are then going to go out and see what we can see!

 

Engaging Student Writing With The J.O.Y. Bag

December 1st was the first day of Advent in our Catholic Faith.  In order to remember the true meaning of Christmas and to encourage writing in Kindergarten, we are rotating the J.O.Y. bag among the children.

The Joy Bag contains several items to help students understand The Christmas Story and to encourage reading with their families.

We also included a candy cane ornament (Dollarama) with the message: "J is for Jesus" for the family to keep.  Finally, there is a journal so that the students can write a message for us to read when the book comes back.

"Baby Jesus was born" written by Aliyah, J.K. 

The 2013 Teach Preschool Post Card Exchange Collection

We have received many postcards from our new friends in Canada, U.S.A. and New Zealand.  We made a display outside of our classroom.  Thank-you to all of the great Preschool and Kindergarten classes that sent post cards to us!

Fun in the Snow!! Where Have the Creatures Gone?

Today we came to school and there was some snow on the ground. The children were all very excited and could not wait to get out and play.  Before we went out we talked about what nature we would find to bring inside.  This lead to questions about where snails and other creatures/animals go when the weather gets cold.  The children knew that some animals hibernate for winter so we talked about what they thought that meant. We wondered together: Do snails and bugs hibernate?

We read the book, Over and Under the Snow (Kate Messner) which I ordered from the library. The children told me what kinds of animals we might find outside (some birds, squirrels, etc.). Then I asked them to look and see if we see any snails or bugs out in the snow.

They dug around in the snow. They were so excited to touch it and soon began collecting ice balls and snow balls to hand to us teachers to save for later.  We then decided to go in and get a bucket to bring the snow inside.

We had great fun digging in and collecting the snow!!  We didn't find any other nature but we will continue to investigate hibernation and winter...stay tuned!

Caring and Sharing With Q-Bear

Last week was Bullying Prevention week. In order to ensure that the children in the classroom are safe and happy,  Ms. Switzer and I have started to use The Skills For Growing Program (Lions Quest).  This program is sponsored by The Lions Club of Canada and its purpose is to teach social skills to children in a fun way.

The Program teaches through a classroom Mascot called Q-Bear.

This Q-Bear is a Build a Bear that I made in New York for the purpose of the program.

The students have been working on and practicing nice manners and polite ways of asking for things such as, "may I" or "can you please" to use with others, including teachers and classroom peers.

This week, we had a lesson on "Caring and Sharing". Using the book, Franklin is Bossy (Paulette Bourgeois) and the unit on caring and sharing from Skills for Growing, the students collaborated on classroom 'rules' that will help all of us feel safe and happy at school.

Together, we discussed the Learning Goal: We want to be safe and happy.

Through a series of scenarios from the program, we came up with a list of criteria to help us meet this goal:

Be good to others.

Treat everyone nicely.

Work and play together (including inviting others to play).

Listen to others.

Help others.

Don't put others down.

To help us include student generated criteria, the children drew pictures showing how they would show caring and sharing using, "This is me..." language which was scribed by the teachers.  We posted it for all of us to see and refer to when needed.

Please ask your child about our rules for caring and sharing. It may help us to be one step closer to eliminating acts of bullying in our school.

Pumpkin Plants and Beetle Metamorphosis in One Week!

Last week we planted pumpkin seeds.  We came in yesterday to find that our plants have sprouted seeds. Ms. Switzer and I set out a recording sheet and some snap cubes for the children to observe and record the growth of their plants.  We talked about the parts of a plant and that even though some plants were not showing the stem and leaves, they had roots starting to form in their cup.

We thought it was interesting that the seed was still attached to the sprout!

The children got to work measuring their plants.

We will leave the cubes and recording sheets out for the children to track the growth of their plants.

Our Mealworms Have Morphed into Beetles!

This week has been an exciting one for inquiry.  Our mealworms have finally started to change to beetles!

The children even foundone walking around today with the pupa (cocoon) still attached to it.

The Great Pumpkin Inquiry!

The week after Halloween, we started our Pumpkin Inquiry.

We took the pumpkins from our Pumpkin Patch dramatic centre (which is now a grocery store). Ms. Switzer sat with students and cleaned out the large pumpkin.  We saved the seeds and I dyed some with food colouring (another Pinterest idea).  We put out some twigs and glue as an invitation to make fall trees.

It took a while for everyone to visit the centre but this is our completed board.  We glued the finished trees to a colour tile patterning activity that I got from a problem solving resource titled The Super Source (by Cuisinaire).

We also had some un-carved pumpkins left so we put them at the inquiry table.  We cut the pumpkin in half and put some spoons and bowls on the table. We also set out books about pumpkins and we waited...

                     

The children had fun digging out seeds and exploring the books.

We also put out cubes for measuring...

I put some of the leftover seeds on a plastic container to use for planting but we didn't get around to it last week.  In the meantime, an interesting thing happened: the seeds began to sprout roots!!  How exciting!  This week, we began planting the sprouted seeds.

We also took some of the dried out seeds and put them out in the Math centre for counting and number matching.

We added some of those number sets to our Math wall.

After two weeks of playing with pumpkins we thought it might be time to ask the children what they know about pumpkins.  We were AMAZED!! The students came up with so many facts:

"Pumpkins have seeds inside and squishy stuff"

"Seeds sprout roots"

"Pumpkins start out green and turn orange"

"Some pumpkins are white, green, orange, and even blue"

"Some pumpkins are big and some are small"; "Some are oval"

"You can cook pumpkins"

"You can bake it in the oven and make pumpkin pie"

"You carve a pumpkin to make a jack-o-lantern"

"You can put fire inside a jack-lantern"

"You can play with pumpkins!"

Finally, I gave them a sheet to record their thinking on their own.  We wrote down what they wanted us to say.

Who knew that children could learn so much from a play-based inquiry on pumpkins...we are just flabbergasted at what the students came up with.  Let's see where our plant growth leads us!  Stay tuned...

 

Other Things Happening in FDLK:

 

We Have Grade 8 Reading Buddies!

 

Mr. Asaro's Grade 8 class has been coming to our class every Wednesday morning to read with our children.  Each child has a special "buddy" who reads to him/her. It's a great way to get individual reading experience and we also get to teach the older kids how to be kind and caring to the little ones.