Making Bread

Today, the green group got to make homemade bread and we even made our own butter.  A huge thank you to Sarah, Dylan's mom who came in and helped for the day, we couldn't have done it without you! We used a recipe for potato bread, an old irish recipe.

We started out by mashing the potatoes.

Checking to see if we have the right amount of water.

We added the potatoes, oil, sugar and salt and mixed and mixed and mixed!

Everyone seemed to love kneading the bread!

Sticky hands!

We let is rise for one hour....

Wow, look how big it got!

Eventually, we formed them into loaves and let them rise again.  Then they were ready to go into the oven.

In the meantime, everyone took a turn at shaking the cream.

Eventually, the liquid had turned to solid, and ta-da, we had butter!

Half an hour later, yum...the most delicious smell was wafting around the school, and we had the scrumptious homemade bread and butter!  It seemed to be a hit!

Ahoy Maties!

After listening to some of the students express an interest in treasure maps, and designing a pirate ship, we decided to use that as a theme, and change our dramatic arts centre.  What a week it has been! We designed a large (ish) pirate ship, complete with mast and anchor.

We've been reading different books about pirates.

One book, a pirate is looking for his crew, and decides to advertise. We thought this was a great way to learn about media literacy, so we encouraged the students to make their own "Wanted" poster. We brainstormed for the attributes which might make a good pirate and included some of these ideas on our posters.

We've been making pirates.

And we used a different technique to create a wavy ocean upon which our own designed ships could sail.

We have lots of treasure!

We even dress up like pirates!

Stay tunes we have lots of "swashbuckling" learning planned for the upcoming weeks!

A Wintery Hike!

On Thursday morning, the sun was shining, it was a beautiful cold morning and the blue class went for a hike in our forest.  Our job was to look for evidence of animals, maybe animal tracks, or maybe even animal homes.  The keen eyesight of our students spotted blue jays, a woodpecker, a nest, lots of tracks and many potential animal homes in the base of trees or amongst the dead grass and under rocks! The students returned to the class excited, but tired.

One student who was dragging behind, struggling through the deeper snow, all dressed up in snowpants was skeptical of our adventure.  He looked at Ms. Byrne, who was at the end of our line with him, and said "Ms. Byrne, are you sure about this?"😀

Christmas Baking

On Monday of this week, we did some Christmas baking.  The blue group made delicious reindeer cookies, while the green group enjoyed making and baking some scrumptious gingerbread men!

All in all, it was a delicious day!

Snowmen

What a wonderful day for snowmen making, with the green class, we made a whole class of snowmen!

What's a snowman without a "magic hat?"

Our frosty friends outside our window will be sure to keep an eye on us!

Using your WITS!

In an effort to address bully prevention, our Principal Ms. Alce held a short assembly where she quickly reviewed what bullying was and how to use a strategy that empowers children called WITS in order to deal with confrontation. WITS is an acronym.  W stands for "walking away", I is for "Ignore", T is for "Talking it Out" and S stands for "Seeking teacher help".  Each of the strategies was modelled for all the Kindergarten students.  We also review them in class on a regular basis.  We are lucky, as Mrs. Kinsman had previously introduced this approach so our students were somewhat familiar with the terms.  On an ongoing basis, when the students tell us about something they are unhappy about, we ask them if they have used their WITS!! Maybe your child has told you about it, but it is definitely a strategy that can be used outside of school as well.

In an effort to understand and address any bullying issues, Ms. Alce also mentioned to the students that if they were speaking to an adult, it is important to tell them how many times someone was bothering them.  Obviously, bullying is not an incident that happens once or twice, and before making any decisions about  consequences, it is imperative for the adult to know how often it is happening.  

Thank you so much for your understanding and support!