High frequency words

We have a variety of words that literacy learners need to be able to recognize immediately when they see it when reading, and know how to spell it when writing. We call these high frequency words. We have little songs/poems for many of them. Some of the words we practice are: is, in, the, see, go, no, the, my, to. Right now, with senior kindergartens especially, we practice them in many ways. Our SK students must form these words using wikki sticks!

Code breaking

This week, we have focussed our “spy senses” on breaking secret codes. There is a code that correlates numbers with letters, so our students must find the number and write the corresponding letter and reveal a secret message. They’ve been having lots of fun, and it’s a great way to ensure they are writing.

Once she “broke the code”, she revealed the message: get a tattoo! (We had sine sticker tattoos she could choose from!)

Winter experiments

During last weeks cold snap, we did some experimenting with boiling water, throwing it up into the air, and observed what happened. They got to watch from the comfort of our classroom!

apparently the boiling water evaporates into steam and in the cold freezes. It creates a cloud of vapour falling from the sky.

We’ve been watching the snow melt, predicting how much water will remain.

Most days we look at snow on top of our light table.

Spies

Here are a few photos from our spy area!

Working collaboratively on our sign.

Spies like us!

We have been making secret agent ID badges. The students are eager to make their own personal badges that include their photo,their hair and eye colour ,their fingerprint and their top secret “code name”. This is a great exercise to encourage writing as everyone seems to want their own badge!

Don’t mess with these secret agents!

Discovering winter

Winter is officially here! This gives us the opportunity to experiment and make discoveries about snow, ice and snowflakes. We are doing various activities with snow, including watching it melt at the science centre, making geometrical snowflakes, art activities with snowman, looking at snow and ice on the light table, writing about snow, making symmetrically matching mittens etc.

Outdoor time

Our junior kindergartens have had a bit more outdoor learning time this week. With the extreme switch in temperature, what we have done outdoors with each group has been very different. Hi n Wednesday, it was warmer, thus the blue group JKs got to roll snowballs and build a snowman.

 The next day was so blustery and cold, the JKs from the red group got to take a walk through the swamp (collecting cattails!) and hiking through the forest, discovering where squirrels and mice had left behind their footprints!

We thought we had discovered a mouse hole!

Look at the tracks!

Our “international spy ring”

With the new year upon us, we were listening to the students, trying to figure out what to change our dramatic arts centre into that is of interest to them. We noticed a bunch of students using our classroom binoculars to “spy” on one another. We have disguises, periscopes, maps, binoculars, spy glasses. Going forward, we will try to make spy badges, do some fingerprinting, etc. For now, they are pretty excited little spies!