Star Wars adventures

Many of our students are quite enamoured with Star Wars as of late. We have tried to use that interest and excitement, and create some learning opportunities based on it. We've incorporated some learning about our own solar system as well!

Yoda, is that you?

Snowman snow

We went outside yesterday to feed the birds. With milder weather, , it gave us the opportunity to build a snowman. We built him and decorated him so he longingly looked into our classroom. Unfortunately, through the night he fell down!

Mouse Maze

Today, the students starting making some mazes. We decided to test them to see if Mr. Jeff's mouse could run the maze.

The idea was for the mouse to travel on top of the wood.

We said good bye to Ramone. But, he has inspired us to build some different mazes, some that are strong enough to keep Ramone on track!

Young Doctors in Training

We have changed our dramatic arts centre into a doctor's office. Already, it has been very valuable as students are measuring (height and weight), recording 2 and 3 digit values, counting for a purpose (heartbeats in a minute), identifying letters, and recording simple yes/no answers. If you have anything at home that would enhance our pretend play (i.e. medicine, bandaid or vitamin packaging-empty of course, pieces of doctor's kits no longer used, etc), we would be very grateful if you'd be willing to donate!

Young doctors at work!

Additional Letters

Earlier this year, I had posted the letters that we'd been practicing their sound and accompanying action. Here are the next 8 that we have been reviewing daily. Please let me know if you would like a paper copy of these.

3D shapes

We have started talking about 3 dimensional shapes. We have been naming them, counting the sides and points, and describing them. We have watched a video on YouTube called "Learn about shapes with Shawn's Roller Coaster Adventure" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBUjH2KJns4) it is a fun video to watch, and I know the students would enjoy watching at home too! These are the shapes we've been talking about:

A Cone

A Cube

A Prism

A Pyramid 

A Cylinder 

A Sphere 

Busy Builders

Kindergarten children are natural builders. Recently, in both the French and English classes, we have required that our students think about their creation, and plan and draw out their building before beginning. This definitely requires some forethought and planning. This week, some of our students have started looking elsewhere for inspiration and turned to a photo booklet we had in the classroom.

Here is Gabe creating the Parliament buildings, complete with flag and clock!

Owen built Pakenham's Five Span bridge! Then he decided that each end needed a ramp so that the cars could access the bridge.

Charlie drew out the plans and then built a desk.

Yummy snow!!!!

We have noticed how much our students LOVE eating the snow and ice from our yard! Tiring from saying, "don't eat the snow", we decided on a different approach. We did a science experiment. We gathered some of the cleanest snow.

We left it to melt all day. Then, using a coffee filter, we filtered out all the impurities.

It was amazing how many small particles of dirt were left behind.

Yuck, would you want to eat that? Well, we'll see if that makes an impact.😀

Oops

For families with students in the blue group, there was an error on the January calendar. As you are aware, the students rotate back and forth between English and French on day 5s. The calendar should have read:

*Thursday, Jan. 14-French

*Thursday, Jan. 21-English 

*Friday, Jan. 29-French

My apologies for the error.

Meaningful Play

Today, some of the students began building long stacks using toys called linking (or unifix) cubes. Eventually, they used the entire bin and had made a line across the length of the classroom, from one table to another. It was fascinating to watch the students build, noticing that their structure would fall without support. 

They began using chairs as support, but noticed that their line of cubes still sagged. Some students tried unsuccessfully to build vertical supports for this cube line. I overheard one student explain the cubes sagged since not all chairs were the same height, and the shorter chair backs made it less secure. 

Once they had used all the cubes, and could not make it any longer, we encouraged them to measure it. We gave them measuring tapes, and with some cooperation and teacher assistance, they discovered it was 703 cm long (not 703 km long as some proclaimed!!!😀)

Measuring gave one student the idea that he wanted to make his own measuring tape. He quickly went to work, cut a painting paper into strips and began putting on the numbers. He finally decided that writing these numbers was going to be a lot of work...he was going to take it home to complete at his leisure!

Madame Behnke came in to admire our creation, and posed the question"I wonder how many cubes you used?". This sent us on our next daunting adventure! With some prompting, the students realized that they could count the cubes to 10, then mark the ten as a tally mark, then we counted all the tally marks. 

We discovered that we had used 380 cubes in all!

What a simple, yet amazing learning experience that encompassed our entire morning and included many learners!

Outdoor time

With the milder weather later this week, we have enjoyed some outdoor time. There is nothing better than the simple pleasure of enjoying the great outdoors. We enjoyed jumping on and off of snow banks and tobogganing down Stonecrest's own sledding hill.

Their words:"I am all out of batteries!"😀