Teachable Moments

I'm going to break pattern a bit and tell you a story about my favourite moment this week! It was a teachable moment.. not a new term for parents or teachers or anyone else who works with children. These are the moments that pop up in a day when you didn't expect them and didn't plan them and that may actually interrupt your learning plans, but that provide fertile ground for seeds of learning.

On Friday, we had a great example of this. Two students came in from recess in a bit of an argument, and one came to ask me who was right. The question? Does Jesus love bad people or good people more? What a great opportunity, so we changed the plans for this section of the morning to talk this out with the class. I could not think of anything more important than exploring together the character and grace of Christ. 

The two students explained sincerely why they believed, respectively, good people and bad people were more loved by Jesus. Other members of the class all got to give opinions and then I asked where we could look to find out about Jesus. So we opened our Bible and read about God's plan of salvation - how everyone, even the ones that try very hard, sin. And how God, because of his Never-Ending, Never-Stopping, Never Giving Up, Always and Forever love, made a plan for us, through Jesus. And how John 3:16 says that He came to save the whole world - everyone. And as one of the original two said "So we were both right? Together?"

We prayed together in a circle and I wrote down some of the prayers after to share with you...

Dear Jesus, thank you for you.

Thank you for your never-giving up.

Help us make good choices.

Thank you for loving good and bad people and turning bad people good.

Thank you for our school to learn about Jesus.

Thank you for dying on the cross.

I'm so grateful to partner with you in nurturing their spirits to Christ. We started discussing Easter at the end of the week and will continue into next week. They have a wonderful, genuine faith in Christ and it's wonderful to see.

In other news, we now have a light centre table that students are using to explore light, shadow, colour, and design.

LA made the Montreal Canadians symbol and drew it as well, to record what he made!

 

A congratulations goes to JA and LA for their awesome job at Speechfest!

We also built literacy learning, reinforcing letter sounds and especially the correct formation of letters. It has been a goal in our Big Beautiful Books - to recognize our backwards letters and correct them.

Exploring with play doh has been a fun way to practice, letters, sounds, and word building while building fine motor skill and muscle development!

We also used it to create some of the animals we have learned about, and practiced stretching out the names "like bubblegum" to find the letters. 

We practiced more measuring as well!

As a table centre, students revisited the topic of length, with the added challenge of recording the lengths they found!

Our new topic was weight and mass. Both as a whole group and as an ongoing centre, we examined topics like heavier and lighter, and that bigger does not mean heavier! We brought down the scale to see if Miss Carrots has grown, and she has apparently outgrown our scale. The hunt is on for another! So instead, we measured our plastic rhinoceri, and again had the challenge of recording it!

On Thursday, we had Get Ready, Get Set, Read, and the SK's baked muffins during that time! To celebrate both the JK's and SK's leadership during those non-routine days, we had a class picnic with those muffins and some goldfish. So much fun!

We also used them to practice our estimation skills - we could fit 7 muffins on a plate (we also had a teachable moment about how to remember the direction of the number seven.)

Finally, the students who baked were asked what they would like to do with the extras! They put their heads together, decided to give them to the teacher's (what a good lead-in to Random Acts of Kindness Week!), made signs, and then distributed the very-much appreciated muffins!

Measuring and Problem-Solving

Hello! It's been a while...

These past few weeks since Family Day have not been routine; we've had snow days and Ready Set Read days and supply teachers and speeches.

In all this, I've been proud of the students ability to adapt to new situations and learn different things through different means. Change can be a hard thing at any age, and more so when students are younger. They have done an admirable job of jumping into whatever the new day is to bring.

I won't go into too much detail, as I don't want to leave you with a short novel to read. But, in short, some of the highlights of the past few weeks...

1. Finishing our Only One You inspired book. Students edited the photos themselves, typing their words of wisdom and getting it ready for print. Now we wait for the printing to be done!

2. We have measured and measured and measured! How do we compare objects if we can't move them? What does capacity mean? How can we see which holds more? If it's taller? If it's wider? What is full and empty?

We explored all of these questions and more and we used hands on experiments that lay the groundwork for students' later understanding of spatial sense, mass, physics, and more!

We also did a problem solving exercise - we had some guinea pig supplies that didn't have a home yet. So, after reminding students what we learned about length and capacity, I posed the question "How will we make everything fit?" I showed them what needed a home, the spaces we could rearranged, and sent them on their way. They put some toys into other bins to make room, shifted things around, and truly used their leadership skills to find a place for everything and put everything in its place!

3. We had speeches! I was blown away by their confidence, memory, and dedication to truly wonderful presentations! In moments like that, I find it hard to remember that they are only 4, 5 and 6 years old! Thank you for working so diligently to help them succeed! Some of the "I likes..." that we saw were standing still and not fidgeting, using your strong voice, having expression, and knowing the whole story. Several students gave exceptional speeches; a special congratulations to JA and LA for representing our class at Speechfest on Wednesday.

4. Thank you to those who sent in cereal boxes - we had fun finding more "Everyday Environment Words." We also talked about finding them out in real life, so don't be surprised if your child points out a stop sign or billboard or on/off switch. We are learning that reading is everywhere! We continue this topic this upcoming week.

There... a brief (very late) recap!

P.S. From Valentines - our suncatchers are up in our classroom!

Valentines!

Hello!

First I would like to say how much I appreciated chatting with you all at the parent-teacher conferences. I left those meetings grateful for the opportunity to partner with parents to provide a foundation of love for Christ in these students.

This week, students were very interested in Valentine's Day, as a special day to love our friends and other people we might not always give a note to. 

We had a screen so our friends wouldn't see their surprises

We sorted beads and then made friendship necklaces for our classmates

We made heart puzzles

And made valentines for our Grade 3/4 buddies

We also made a list of people in the school that we don't always see that we could give a valentine. Different students volunteered for different staff members, and put them in our mailbox to be delivered on Friday.

 
On Friday, we had a wonderful party - thank you to those who brought food and for the valentines! We had our buddies come in to make a craft, and enjoyed the day.

In other news, we measured things - this picture is HO in unifix cubes, as the smallest member of our class, next to the tower representing the tallest member of our class - me (I'm 96 cubes high, just in case you wanted to know). This activity incorporated measurement skills, fine motor skills, collaboration skills, and counting skills!

 They also worked on showing and recording other things they measured.

We also deepened our knowledge of the body at the dramatic play centre, as students explored temperature, ears, and what exactly a doctor does. They had wonderful connections to share with their own experiences of what a doctor is.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Measurement, Creativity, and Experts

I'm fairly sure I sent you home some tired Kindergarteners today! What a lot of learning and new experiences this week!

First, we worked on our Only One You - inspired book. 

We painted our clay rocks to be fish.

Then we created our alternate background. In the original book, the author put her rock fish on photos of underwater scenes, and some of our students have chosen to do that. Other students wanted to take those underwater pictures. So we filled a bucket with sand

 

Then used blue food colouring in water 

Then placed props...

And finally took pictures, with sharks and whales (donated by Mrs. H - thank you!) as the supporting characters. 

Next, we add "wise words" to these on the iPads (developing technology and letter skills). It's been so interesting to flesh out the idea of wisdom with the students. We talked about this with the 10 commandments, the 7 Habits, and now this book. I've prompted the students by asking what they would tell a little brother or sister about how to be nice and obey Jesus - we have some excellent advice coming out!

We also started a new math unit on measurement!

We sorted out furniture for mama, papa, and baby bear in the story of Goldilocks,

and examined the concept of shortest to tallest, with books, with our classmates, and piles of unifix cubes!

Finally, we finished our guinea pig project!

Of course, we continue to care for it, and will use Miss Carrot's weight and food to apply what we know about measuring, graphing, and recording - the learning never stops!- but we have completed our final project of this Project-Based-Learning unit!

We practiced all week to share what we know with an expert. Having a veterinarian technician hear what they have learned and read their published book provides them with an authentic audience, one who can give informed feedback on their work. 

Mrs. Nicole came in as our expert - the students worked very hard this week decided what they wanted to tell her (they decided on showing our book, and writing a song about guinea pigs), planning how to set up the room, and then moving furniture, and practice, practice, practicing!

They did such a great job! After finishing their performance, Mrs. N. showed students how to determine if a guinea pig was healthy, and how we can check in our own class if she's doing well. Every student even got to listen to her heart beat with a stethoscope!

The dramatic play center is now set up as a vet office (thanks for that as well, Mrs. N.!) I'm sure this will provide lots of fun learning for next week! 

I look forward to seeing all of you parents next week at parent-teacher conferences!

P.S. Examples of the puff paintings we got to do last week for winning the recycling contest!