Remembrance Day

In preparation for our Remembrance Day assembly next Monday, we have talked a bit about “peace”. We started by reading this book:

It was a wonderful introduction designed to get kids thinking about peace. When asked how they would describe it, we had some wonderful answers. “Peace is quiet! Peace is calm! Peace is music! Peace is love! Peace is friends! Peace is happiness!”

We discussed how peace could be in our heart, in our classroom, our home, our country, even the world! We then introduced the poppy as a symbol of peace. 
We read this book next:

From there, students have learned  a catchy song about “peace in our fingers”, they’ve made poppies from loose parts,

they have crafted various poppies and the red class has started making a beautiful egg carton wreath.

You may notice a lovely poppy painting come home!

Halloween Fun

We did a variety of activities this week all themed around Halloween learning.

After making our own giant sized web, good enough for a spider, the blue group weaved their own webs!

Once finished, they received a glittering spider!

The red class talked about patterns, then made patterned witch’s legs!

Many students enjoyed the song “The bats are all asleep”. (Be sure to ask your child about it if you haven’t already heard it!) and enjoyed making a book to follow along with.

We illustrated a bat poem with “5 little bats”.

We’ve been doing surveys and a variety of scary artwork.

Even our light centre was spooky!

Happy Halloween everyone!

Pumpkin carving

Each class had a gigantic pumpkin to carve this week. 

We carefully sorted through the pumpkin guts and separated the seeds. We then roasted the seeds. We added different flavours to them: salt and butter, cheddar and sugar and cinnamon! Each student tasted the different flavours and we then created a graph of their favourite kind!

Circle Time with Mrs. Farrell-October

More circle fun continued this month with new songs, stories and fun games! The children got to engage in a variety of activities and got excited about Halloween while learning lots of new things! 

The junior kindergartens focused on some simple 2D shapes, alphabet letters, and memory tasks.

We sang the itsy bitsy spider song with big, medium and small pretend spiders. We got to have some fun with the grocery shop shape song, we loved the Halloween memory treasure box game, played musical pumpkins and made some alphabet "witches stew"!

The senior kindergartens focused on last names, simple sight words, memory tasks and patterns. We got to make our own patterns with manipulatives, made some Halloween witches stew and had fun with the Halloween memory treasure box game!

Books we read this month:

Mouse's First Fall 

10 Fat Turkeys
Stellaluna

Go Away Green Monster

Glad Monster Sad Monster
It's Pumpkin Day Mouse
Room on a Broom
There was an old lady who swallowed a bat
Boo!

Of course we always end with the fun poppers! More to come in November!

Halloween writing

We have really been encouraging the students to complete some Halloween writing. Boy, have they ever respond well! If they made a little book with labelled Halloween pictures and words, they got a festive pointer.

This week, we did a Halloween rhyming book. If they spelled the words hat, cat, bat and rat, they got a witch’s finger to use as a pointer.