A Quick Update

Hello! A quick update from our students today (FYI, the next blog probably won't be until the end of next week). We have a very exciting week and students were very eager to share about it!

So what are some things we have been learning?

JE: "We can rhyme and then make it funny!"

We have been working on our rhyming and discovered that rhyming words have the same ending, but a different beginning! (We have also discovered that Miss K has special skills in making rhyming words into silly sentences - the students love to give me new rhyming words to see how I can twist it into a story, and they are getting more practice manipulating sounds to produce new rhyming words!)

JA: "Math is everywhere!"

We have also started learning about sorting/describing objects, and counting the ones in our groups. They thought it was very fun to look at a picture of a messy floor and find all the matching socks! We found out that we use sorting all the time! 

ZO: "Today I played a new game - a shark game. We had to try to get across on the islands without Miss K getting to us."
JA: "You can't get caught by the shark! Or go in the water!"
In physical education, we have been working on spatial awareness and gross motor development in the form of jumping vs. hopping vs. stepping. Today, we put hula hoops and mats (islands) on the floor (which was shark-infested waters). They had to step/hop/jump depending on my instructions only on the islands, or the shark (Miss K) might try to catch them!

LUk: "We did more sticky blocks with LUc"

JA: "I built an alien! They can stand with their own hands!"
AY: "We build houses with blocks."

Students continue to love to build and create and imagine - one of my favourite things to do is to listen to this group of students as they play with their sticky-block creations. So much vocabulary and oral communication growth!

AY: "I made a picture with a marker"
As students explore in the atelier, they practice important skills like cutting, drawing, writing their name, gluing, and all those other little skills that build fine motor strength and creative communication!

OW: "We did music... We got to be a kindergarten band!"
We have some new instruments in our classroom (Thanks, Mrs. H!) and today we practiced keeping the beat first with our feet, and then with unpitched instruments - I was so proud of the way the students listened to instructions and used their instruments in the right way! We sounded great!

So what is on our calendar soon?
OW: "Field trip!"
We are so excited for this! What a great way to deepen our learning about how things go!
JA: "Fire drill!"
Note to parents, particularly of those students who have not been in school before...Fire drills come with big, very loud noises, and a sense of urgency that can be unsettling. We will have a story and lesson about why fire drills are important and how it is just a practice, and there is not a real fire. This is an important safety matter - check with your child about what they learned about fire drill! This gives them a sense that it is good and safe and important!
LU: "We will have a new visit teacher because Miss K's sister has the wedding."
Our substitute teacher will still be checking envelopes, so feel free to send notes ect./things for the office, but know that I won't see anything for me until Monday. If you need me specifically and it can't wait, feel free to email and I will get back to you when I can.

Community Builders

From Miss K:

Everyone has a story. Our class has a story, and everyone in our class has a story. These stories are a part of God's grand story of love. 

Throughlines is a literary term for threads and themes that run throughout a story. Our class story has throughlines too, two of which are our stories as community builders and God worshippers. On one of our bulletin boards, we created a garden that will grow as we grow in our learning and being of these throughlines. 

From our students...

Tell us about community building

OW: Community building is when mom and dads come we need to say hi to them when they are visitors.

JA: We will also play with other kids we don't know (other classes)

Tell us about the mission statement:

ZO: It's what we need to do

HA: Go love people is like community building

AY: The thumbprints mean we're going to try to do that. We picked our colour.

Tell us about our classroom agreement:

TR: We listen to each other on the circle. 

.... And then the bell rang for recess and they all went outside!

 Our classroom  is what we agree to do so that we can do our mission.

Week Two - Inquiry!

Another wonderful week in Kindergarten! We explored many things, worked on attitudes of respect in our classroom - how do we act in a way that honours God and respects eachother - and started to get more used to all the different parts of our day. 

It is becoming increasingly apparent in our world that it is important to not just teach students what to learn, but how to learn! Are we excited about finding out new things? Can we ask good questions? Do we inquire about things we don't know? Are we passionate about finding our places in God's story?

One way to grow a student into a life long learner is through inquiry. In this model, I as the teacher and the guide watch for what students are naturally showing curiosity about, and direct the curriculum that way. Sometimes I may introduce topics by laying out materials for them to explore, and sometimes it comes out through their play during explore time. 

They have been quite fascinated with trucks in their play, so we set up a centre. There were books and models to answer their first question: "I wonder about different kinds of trucks." This centre also incorporates math (attributes of an object: same/different) and literacy as they draw/write what they've discovered.  Next week we have decided to narrow in on how trucks are used for building.

We also explored the use of technology. We have started literacy centres, in which students are split into three groups to work on focused parts of literacy. This could be alphabet work, phonics, reading skills, writing skills, or something else depending on our focus. An example day would be as follows: Centre 1: shared/independent reading - students gain stamina and skills as they look through books to find clues based on pictures, and can often find letters or words they know. Centre 2: iPads. The iPads allow us to practice skills specific to our needs and learning journey. For example, Senior K JE is working on building words, while Junior K AY is practicing her letters. Centre 3 is the guided centre, meaning I or a volunteer is there. We may work on the letter of the day, or a skill like cutting or pencil grip (this week we learned cutting and gluing). We may also take extra time to practice writing our name.  Students are at these centres for approximately 10 minutes each, which allows them time to learn, do together, and do independently, but also have a reason to get up and stretch and move and shift focuses, which their bodies need right now. 

In math, we inquired about where math is! What a great question to jump start our year. We started finding numbers everywhere, and found out you can count anything! We also talked about how sorting and describing is math, and how you can find patterns that God made in time (we do this during our morning meeting).

In this picture OW is using our "tickle feathers" to count the letters in the morning message.

Lastly, our other major wondering this week was how should we be as a class? It's a big question for our youngest students. We talked about how just like in a book we read, crayons are each special but can work together to make a picture that is more beautiful than what they made on their own, our class is best when all of the "wonderful me's" in our class work together to learn and to love God. 

The first thing we needed to think about what what our job was - our mission. This is what they came up with: We will GO learn, GO pray (our class loves to pray - what a wonderful thing!), GO grow, GO enjoy creation, GO love people, GO love God, and GO have fun!

Next, we needed to agree on some guidelines for action in our class. What does this look like day-to-day. Our devotions this week included things like manners, how to respond if someone does something you don't like, and making win-wins (Habit 4). This was all framed around the idea that God created us to be community-builders. How will we do that? Some things we talked about - use kind words. be careful with your body, respect each other and listen (we will unpack this further on Monday).

So, that's what we were up to this week! Have a wonderful weekend with your families!

In Him,

SK

A Great Start

What a wonderful start to the year! As you may have guessed, the pace of Kindergarten is fast, especially in these first few weeks as we get used to everything and grow our routines.  Pictures are an important part of assessment in learning - I document their social growth and academic learning as we progress through the year, and through this blog I will share some of those photos with you.I took dozens and dozens of pictures as we were doing so many things, so these are not in any particular order! At the end, for those who like going a little deeper into the why's of our classroom, I will explain a few ongoing threads that will run through the story of our Kindergarten year.TR and LU work on table centres in the morning - every morning we go straight to the tables for centres - these rotate between fine motor, math, literacy, and problem solving. Students collaborate, expand their vocabulary, and strengthen skills as they work. Our bus craft helped us practice drawing, gluing, and were a great end point for our learning about bus safety!Kindergarteners are so creative. They are competent and capable learners and this comes out in special ways during our explore time. Several of our friends have started to think about their own explore time learning and have drawn/written what they are doing to share with the rest of the class.In literacy, we found words that every student could read! These are environmental words, like the STOP on a stop sign, restaurant signs, and cereal brands. It was a big boost to our confidence to have a jumping off point for our literacy learning. We also started literacy centres, reading books, practicing our letters, and practicing our names!Something you may notice is that right when you come into the room, we have empty frames on the wall, and all of our art and creative supplies in that area. That is our atelier, which is a fun word for workspace or studio. Having all the supplies in this space, laid out nicely, is an invitation for students to create! This isn't a centre - rather, it is a space that students go to to create things to expand their other centres. For example, ZO made a computer, one that opens and closes! LUC made a dinosaur that is walking! The frames express to students the value put on their work and creativity!The following pictures are the ones that the students were most excited for me to share with you - we practiced sorting today! In math, we count with Mr. Bunny, who is very hard to wake up, but when he does, we hop up and down with him to count! After all that excitement, we got to work in groups, practice Habit 6, Synergize, and sort by the colour rule together! RO made a really great connection to our learning about sorting by colour - we sort every day when we clean up, putting the animals in the animal bin, the trucks in the truck bin, the markers in the marker bin.

Another blog to come in a few days! PS. I promise they won't all be this long!

Now for those who'd like to read more - a few things you may notice in our Kdg 2016 Story:1. Habits and the Leader in Me! BCS promotes leadership in all of our students. We are not preparing students to be leaders in the future, but we are equipping students to be leaders now! "Good habits make great leaders" - your children will learn 7 Habits that will be incorporated into everything we do. Imagine a student who prioritizes, who takes charge of their own emotions and responses, who takes care of their bodies and their spirits by exercising and spending time with God - these are leaders. To read a brief summary of each habit, click here.

2. Through the Throughlines, we are finding our place in God's story. God's story is one of creating the world, humans sinning and leader to the fall of man, and God redeeming us through Christ's death and resurrection. We have our own place in God's story, and Throughlines are identifiers to our place in that story:

"1)    God – Worshipping: Students understand that worshipping God is about celebrating who God is, what God has done and is doing, and what God has created. Students see worship as a way of life.

2)    Idolatry – Discerning: Students will understand that when other “things” are more important to us than our relationship with God, they become idols. Students will be challenged to identify, understand and discern the idols of our time and to then respond prophetically.

3)    Earth – Keeping: Students will respond to God’s call to be stewards of all of creation.

4)    Beauty – Creating: Students will celebrate God as the #1 CREATOR and understand that when we create things we show that we are made in God’s image. We offer praise to God by creating beautiful things. Our creativity makes God smile!

5)    Justice – Seeking: Students will act as agents of change by identifying and responding to injustices.

6)    Creation – Enjoying: Students will celebrate God’s beautiful creation.

7)    Servant – Working: Students will work actively to heal brokenness and bring joy.

8)    Community – Building: Students will be active pursuers and builders of communal shalom.

9)    Image – Reflecting: Students bear the image of God in their daily lives. All humans are image reflectors.

10)  Order – Discovering: Students will find harmony and order in God’s creation." (CCS, 2016)

The following quote is one of my favourites... 

“There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our 

human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over 

all, does not cry, Mine!” - Abraham Kuyper. 

 Let our class reflect this!