How Many Days, Miss K?!

Christmas was officially introduced to BCS this Monday during assembly. The tree went on in the foyer and the countdown to Christmas is officially on!

We started to decorate our tree, made plans for the door decorating contest, and started making the house centre into a toy and Christmas store. At this store, students use there number sense to make money and decide the value of the toys and candy to buy. They practice pencil grip and art skills as they write signs and create the product to be sold.

             

                   

We finished our Bounce and Roll learning - as a class, we recommend the basketball for both bounding and rolling, and have discovered how important it is to make a fair test - that means to test each ball the same way. 

In literacy, we are working on the phonemic skill of intitial sounds - that is, being able to discern what the first sound in a word is. A fun way to do this is with puzzles!

We have also opened an iPad centre. This has multiple purposes. 1. To practice our Wildly Important Goals. The iPads have been loaded with numeracy and literacy apps that engage students in learning. 

2. This is way to teach students about using technology responsibly - we have agreements about length of time and what they are for.

                    

In addition, we built planes...

And synergized to make tall towers...

And a garage to fix the tower cars they made.

We also worked together to organize book buckets to go back in the library (I was so proud of our class watching them do this - they worked together beautifully and responsibly!)

Our final new centre was our Bible centre. We have two nativities here for students to retell the story of Christ's birth. It is so easy to get caught up in the season... knowing the real reason but getting distracted with Santa, and presents, and shopping, and business. It gets pretty busy in a school at Christmas as well. Therefore, my goal, my WIG for planning these next two weeks is to ensure that Christ is in the centre of the business. That we have quiet moments in the day to reflect on this miracle. May you also find those moments with your family.

Be blessed.

Miss K.

Book Stores and More

Hello!

We had a good week back to regular routine after the fun of student-led conferences. The students set up the dramatic play centre as a book store. We experienced amounts of learning here. Students displayed their connections to real life store experiences. They showed their understanding of books as they made books, some with pretend writing and some with real writing. They used their number sense as they created money to buy the books with. And tied up in all this they learned and practiced valuable social skills!

  

We also showed what we know about connections to real life through puppet theatre. Some puppet shows were about numbers, some about friendship, and some about needing to use 7 Habits!

 

 We also discovered more about bouncing!

We also created a hockey rink (great learning on sportsmanship!)

In math this week, we learned about position words (top, bottom, over, side, behind) and played games to see if we could use those words first to find things in our room and then to play a matching game. We continued on to learn 3D shapes like sphere and cube.

Happy weekend! Be blessed!

Highlights from your children: Dressing up like a nerd, pizza day, shape monster (one of our math games), making the hockey rink, and selling books at our book store,

Student-Led Conferences and Everything Else!

Hello parents! I hope you have enjoyed this week as much as our kindergarteners have! Everytime we talked about our "meetings" this week (which was a lot!) they broke out into big grins! While that was definitely the "big thing" of the week (and month), we also had some other fun experiences to tell you about.

We found some treasures outside that God made! Mrs. I. brought us a nest. We all had a chance to look and feel and describe it. Some said it felt soft, some wondered why it had harder hay on the outside, and some said it felt like a big comfy couch!

We also were very interested in making books this week. If your child brought home a handmade book, read it with them. If they used pretend writing, they may tell you words to go with the pretend writing, or may ask you to "read it." This interest in books and the use of illustrating and writing with letters or pretend writing are important pre-literacy and literacy skills. They also used our 7 Habits as they worked together on some of these projects. 

We used Habit 6, Synergize, to make an art gallery of dots, based on the picture book The Dot by Peter Reynolds. This story about a girl who discovers that she can make art through just "make a mark and see where it takes you" is rich in dialogue about creating, and also ties into our theme of fingerprints. Can we leave fingerprints, our mark, on people that show them God's love? Let's see where it takes us.

JA and KA also synergized to make a card for a Grade 8 student who drew a squirrel for our bulletin board!

The highlight of our week though was definitely our conferences! As a teacher, it was so wonderful to see these students interact with you, the parents, and see the encouragement you gave. What a wonderful way to celebrate learning! I encourage you to continue this at home. Ask them what they've done and talk about the pages they bring home. You are the first educators of your children; it is an honour to partner with you in that and watch your child grow. I hope you enjoyed this special time to spend with your child and see what they are learning! 

Practicing for meetings

WIGS and Basketballs and Patterns

This week in Kindergarten:

On Wednesday, we had the Remembrance Day Assembly, led by the Grade 7/8's, who led with grace and respect for the people who have protected, do protect, and will continue to protect our peace. Our students had wonderful responses: "We need to always remember to be thankful;" "I feel filled up with love;" "I feel quiet inside;" "I feel kind of sad and kind of glad at the same time;" "I feel peace."

We are extremely excited for Student Led Conferences! Every morning at our morning meeting we count down the days left until our "meetings." Students had lots of previous knowledge of what a meeting was like by hearing about mom and dad going to meetings and dressing in nice clothes and talking about important things. They are realizing that their learning is important and are excited to lead their own meetings. 

In math this week we looked at patterns. First, simple ones - ABAB on our clothes, in our line ups, and finally with blocks and stamps. We then looked how to create more complex patterns. 

                                                 Create and Extend

We also started an exploration of bouncing and rolling, starting with what is a ball and moving on to how we can test which one is the best. As will everything, these explorations are designed to teach students new concepts about the way the world works, and even more important than that, processes of learning. In this instance, we are learning about true tests and measuring.

Learning how to test and measure which ball rolls the best.

Comparing the balls at the Bounce and Roll Centre

In literacy, we have continued working in our big beautiful books, and have learned about making connections with the things we read. This is a comprehension skill taught up through the grades - to Kindergarten students, it seems to come naturally! They love to tell stories - for example, if you read "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" to our class, you are likely to have several, if not all students, volunteer stories about seeing a mouse, touching a mouse, reading a book about a mouse, or watching a movie about a mouse. This strategy of connecting to self helps students understand and remember what they've read. We also worked on more letters this week, making them out of loose parts that allow us to create curve and shape while enhancing our fine motor abilities.

Finally, some of your students may have mentioned WIGS to you. Wildly Important Goals. For example, mine was to eat breakfast every morning (a habit I have tried several times to learn in the past). A WIG needs to be very important - it needs to be a game changer, have an impact on your life, and an impact that goes beyond the month or two that the Wildly Important Goal is set for. I had not planned to start student WIGS so soon, but our class is enthusiastic, so the ones who had a goal that was wildly important to them have come to have meetings with me to set it up. An example of a student WIG is the one that belongs to JA. He came to me and said he wanted to learn all his letters so that he could read. Reading is Wildly Important so letters are Wildly Important. And every morning this week he has practiced at morning table time. How exciting to have students engaging in, taking responsibility for, and initiating their own learning, not to mention verbalizing their understanding of why different learning is important!

 

I look forward to seeing you for Student-Led Conferences!

Peace, Habits, and Big Beautiful Books

This is the first normal week we've had in while, after the fun of leading Thanksgiving Assembly, having our Grandparents as guests, and having a short week for convention. As we moved through this week, there were three things in particular that I noticed.

1. Peace - it's a difficult concept to put into words or to understand, and as we discussed, every student came up with a "Peace is..." sentence, through reading books and discussing (once we made clear that we are talking about peaCE and not peaS!). 

2. We have put a big focus on writing and text this week! Students learned that writing is putting your thoughts on paper, and we've encouraged this in several ways, like playing letter games and co-writing the morning message.

And, we started writing in our Big Beautiful Books! Students learn to think about they want to write first, then make lines for the number of words. They can then pretend write words, sound out initial sounds and pretend write what they don't know, or "spell the letters like an adult." This approach to writing gets all fourteen students involved and excited about writing, which we will now do every day, and lets them progress at their own pace And they love it!

3. The third thing that really stood out to me this week was the leadership I am seeing in your children. This has been so exciting! I walk by during play time and here someone suggest making a win-win; I have a student come to me and say the centre they want is full but they will be proactive and find another one. I have another group of three students come ask me to see something they synergized to make! 

Habit 1: Be Proactive. Students solve problems, find creative things to do and ways to do it, and do the right thing even if no one is looking. 

Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind. Have a plan; set goals.

Habit 3: Put First Things First. Follow a plan. Prioritize.

Habit 4: Think Win-Win. I believe everyone can win.

Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, then to be Understood. I listen before I talk.

Habit 6: Synergize. Together is better.

Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw. Balance feels best. I do things that help my body, heart, soul, and mind.

Show these pictures to your children and ask them to explain what they were doing!