Patterns everywhere!

With our senior kindergartens, we’ve talked about what makes a pattern. We’ve come up with: it happens over and over again (it repeats), and based on that, we can guess what comes next. We talked about patterns in our clothes and looked at all our classmates clothing to discover a pattern.

We then went on a walk to see if we could find patterns in nature. We found lots!!!

Patterns in plants,

Patterns in flowers,

Patterns in a milkweed pod,

Patterns in leaves, 

More flowers,

Even bees have patterns!

Patterns in footprints,

Patterns on seeds,

A zigzag pattern on a dandelion!

We thought that the lines of the clouds going horizontally across the sky looked like a pattern!

They were excited to point out patterns in the bricks! Patterns really are everywhere! Please encourage your child to locate patterns around them. 

Making applesauce

With the blue group today, we made some applesauce (we’ll repeat the experience with the red group next week!).  Each child got to peel their own apple using the apple peeler.

They were fascinated by how long the peels were. They clamoured to eat the peels! 

We added a small bit of sugar.

During our second lunch time, we got to sample our applesauce.

Yum!

Terry Fox Run

We had a successful walk/run this afternoon. Our students were real troopers and stayed pretty active walking and running for the entire half hour. 

We had a discussion beforehand about who Terry Fox was, why he was so brave, why he is a hero. There were a few funny questions. It was very heartwarming when we showed some video footage of Terry running through a crowd, and our class independently starting clapping!💕

It is a bit unfortunate that our school mascot is a fox. I am fairly certain, despite my best efforts to convince them otherwise, that some believe that they got to see Terry Fox himself!

Happy birthday everyone!

After listening to our students talk about having birthday parties, and “baking” cakes, we changed our house centre slightly with the addition of some birthday items. 

We’ve embedded a lot of writing activities in order to promote early literacy! They can write party lists of who they’d like to invite, they can make birthday cards and invites.

Chicka chicka boom boom

We have had some fun with this favourite book. After reading it, we’ve done some crafts and various activities to help us retell.

Seeds, seeds, seeds

With a prevelance of seeds around, we’ve been doing some exploration and investigation-involving plants with the senior kindergartens. We started off pretending we were plants, growing in the sun and rain, producing a seed and then wilting in the fall. Each child then “released” a seed (a paper ball). 

We talked about where they landed and if each of the seeds would have enough room to grow, water and sun to share. We decided that seeds need to move, but they don’t move like people!

We read a story that described how seeds move.

Then, we went for a walk, discovering lots of seeds, and trying to decide how they moved.

Even the birds like seeds!

Mouse count

We read the story: Mouse Count. 

The students loved retelling the story where a snake is hungry and counts 10 mice as he catches them. 

Today, they have been busy making their own snakes to tell the story.

Even some friends wanted to make their own book based on the real book!

We are thrilled when they take an interest in literacy based activities. Retelling stories in sequence is an important step in the process of learning to read.