November 6th, 2018

Ms. Gray, what's wrong with your voice?!

Great morning in SK. Because Ms. Gray was unable to talk very well today (lost my voice)... we ran morning meeting! We did SUCH an amazing job that Ms. Gray thinks that we should run morning meeting every day!

For language today we worked on our letter Hh. We sounded out words that begin with Hh on our worksheet. For example, there was a picture of a Horse, Hat, House, and Hippo... Ms. Gray was giving out A LOT of stickers today because our friends were so kind to Ms. Gray, asking if she was okay and making sure to encourage each other to make Green Choices! :)

Gym was SO much fun! Ms. Yustin says we had a FANTASTIC day! Ms. Gray was so excited to hear this. After Gym we had indoor recess! We wanted to go outside, but it was raining "cats and dogs" out there!

For Math we practiced our patterns. First we sat in our own personal space, so that we were only looking at our own paper, and we drew a pattern. Once we drew the pattern, Ms. Gray had us identify the pattern AND circle the core! After this we worked in partners to practice our patterns.

During our UOI today we did a few things... we used our senses to do our experiment for the science fair but we also finished up some of our fall work! We framed our beautiful artwork for the hallway! :)

When we did our first trial of our experiment, we could not contain our excitement!! :)
We used the scientific method: What melts ice the fastest?
Our hypothesis was: apple cider vinegar/ salt/ sugar/ water/ oil melt ice the fastest...
We did the procedure, and found that SALT was the fastest to melt the ice!! None of our friends had a hypothesis to say that Salt melted ice the fastest.
We can't wait to do our next experiment! :)

Reminders/Announcements: 

1. MATH TEST THURSDAY on Patterns... Please have the kiddos practice the packets that I sent home!!
2. No School Friday -- November 9th
3. World Kindness Day -- November 13th -- If students bring $2.00 they can have a casual day.
4. Science Fair -- November 16th!
5. November 22nd -- Picture Retake Day!
6. Homework sent home was a pattern packet to practice on Friday, if there are still pages left in that, complete that this week! I will send home a new one tomorrow with things to focus on. :)
7. I have heard from a number of parents how incredible RazKids is and how much it has helped their child. I have seen an improvement with the kiddos that have been doing RazKids!! Very impressive!! :) Keep practicing reading, friends!

November 5th, 2018

Awesome Monday! 

Today we started our day off working on the letter Hh! We were able to brainstorm 20 words that begin with the letter Hh! Then, we learned the new song and motion for the letter Hh! We earned stickers for getting right to work on our phonics journals and making good choices! We now have friends pointing out when others are making "green" choices! So exciting.

During our inquiry into Math we practiced patterns for our test! Our test is on Thursday! We worked with partners to create a pattern and then waited for Ms. Gray to see our pattern. We had to tell Ms. Gray what the core of the pattern was and what kind of pattern it was. Ms. Gray was very impressed with their work!

During our Unit of Inquiry we were learning more about the senses. We worked on the sense of touch. We learned about the neurons that send the messages to our brain from the nerve endings in our skin! We did an experiment with a partner, closing our eyes and the partner put their finger on our wrist and moved it up our arm and we had to tell them when to stop when we felt that their finger was in the crease of our arm. We LOVED this... it was so silly and we were all very ticklish.

We then worked on our journals and then packed up for Music!! We have been practicing our song for the Christmas Concert! It is ADORABLE!!

Reminders:

• Math Test Thursday on Patterns -- Please, please, please practice patterns with the kiddos. I have sent home LOTS of worksheets.
• No School Friday -- November 9th
• World Kindness Day -- November 13th -- If students bring $2.00 they can have a casual day.
• Science Fair -- November 16th!
• November 22nd -- Picture Retake Day! 
• Homework sent home was a pattern packet to practice on Friday, if there are still pages left in that, complete that this week! I will send home a new one tomorrow with things to focus on. :) 
• I have heard from a number of parents how incredible RazKids is and how much it has helped their child. I have seen an improvement with the kiddos that have been doing RazKids!! Very impressive!! :) Keep practicing reading, friends! 

November 1st, 2018

Day after Halloween.... Welcome to NOVEMBER! 

Today during our inquiry into language arts we worked on the letter Rr. We learned the song for Rr and we wrote in our phonics journals. Ms. Gray gave us a class sticker because we all finished our phonics journals before we left for Gym!!! Woo!

After Gym we had indoor recess......... wish we could have gone outside to play. But we made the best of it...

After lunch we had so much fun practicing our patterns with a partner. We had centers where a group of friends was working with playdough creating patterns that Ms. Gray told them (AAB, AB, ABB, AABB, ABBA)... then we had centers where friends were working in partners to create a pattern and the other partner was completing the pattern. After the pattern was created, we would talk about the CORE of the pattern, which is the part that repeats. We really had fun and did not want Math to be over... but on to UOI.

During our UOI today we learned about the way your ear works... We watched an informational video about all of the parts of the ear and then we played a game to guess that sound. A LOT of our friends got them correct... except when a friend said "that sounds like my mom sleeping".... it was a growling dog... #someonesnores These kids make me laugh.

After our game we had another round of indoor recess... some of our friends did not even realize the gold in our own classroom... We blew through Ms. Gray's classroom like a tornado, tearing things off the wall, opening every box possible... The positive, I saw all of our friends take responsibility for our classroom and clean up after all of our visitors! #proudmoment I also overheard my friends asking visitors to use their manners and to use kind words please... "Could you please say that in a nicer way?"...

We practiced writing a list during our journal. We will be working on this tomorrow as well! We also started practicing for the Christmas Concert!!! We have SUCH a fun song! :)
We had a fantastic day! I can't wait to see what tomorrow brings!

Reminders:

1. Math test next week (Thursday) on patterns. I sent home a few different worksheets for practicing this... I will send home more practice over the weekend. I will be reading their test to them!!

2. Words of the Week due tomorrow & Show and Share!

Halloween!

HALLOWEEN!!

We started our day off with a fashion show to show off our costumes! After this, we talked about our costumes and then we started on our language work. Because it is HALLOWEEN, we did something fun for our Rr words today! :) We cut out 8 legs and a body for our Rr spiders! Then we wrote words that begin with Rr on the legs!

During Math we played a fun game where Ms. Gray would throw the dice and we would have to draw a bat, pumpkin, candy, mummy, spider, or moons. We had SO much fun! After this we worked on our Halloween packet of fun! We did some review and we did some new things! We had some patterning to do!

During UOI we used our sense of hearing to dance to the MONSTER MASH! Ms. Gray would play a Halloween song and we would freeze when we wouldn't hear the music anymore! Each time someone kept moving they were out! Their sense of hearing was not working properly... We played this a few times before we started to get ready for the fun house game!!

Reminders:

HAVE SO MUCH FUN TONIGHT!! :)

1. The packet that I sent home, does NOT need to be done today. Their ONLY homework tonight is to have SO, SO much fun trick-or-treating! :) 
2. They are required to know how to write a list (kindergarten benchmark). We will be practicing this all week!

• List Requirements:
1. title 
2. bullet points for each idea 
3. pictures

October 30th, 2018

Awesome Tuesday!!

During inquiry into language arts we wrote in our phonics journals and we practiced our letter Uu. We also worked on a letter Uu worksheet sounding out words such as bus, jug, sun, and mug... etc. Our friends worked very hard and we had almost everyone finish all of their morning work! It was a fantastic morning! :)

During math we practiced patterns!! We used candy as our manipulatives. Ms. Gray would make a pattern with the candy and she would call on someone to finish the pattern. Once we had the pattern we would tell Ms. Gray the core of the pattern. Each time, we would repeat what the core of the pattern means... without Ms. Gray asking! After we were done working as a whole group we each went back to our seats and worked individually on our workbooks. We made all different kinds of patterns. **I will be sending some extra work home to practice patterns tomorrow.**

During UOI we did a super fun activity! Yesterday we coloured our pumpkin seeds with food colouring. Today we used our senses to talk about the pumpkin seeds. We each got to touch, smell, hear and see the seeds. Ms. Gray asked us to use describing words for how the pumpkin seeds felt, what they could see, what they could smell, and what they could hear.
Pumpkin seeds feel: smooth, soft, rough, and some feel hard.
Pumpkin seeds look: pointy, some are broken, very colourful, some look dirty, some look rotten
Pumpkin seeds smell: like rotten toes, like popcorn, and some of our friends think they smell disgusting
Pumpkin seeds sound like: my mom cooking, my mom frying, sand and water, like the ocean/waves, like small rocks, or kicking sand

Reminders:

• Tomorrow is Halloween!! Character Dress Up / Harvest Day! 
• Students are encouraged to dress up in a costume or in fall colours! Remember that costumes should not include weapons, masks, or anything too scary for school. Please ensure your child's costume is school appropriate! 
• Remember while packing lunch for your child that we have friends in other classes that may have nut allergies or our siblings may have nut allergies... any contact with nuts (smelling or touching) could cause an allergic reaction. We have lunch in a common area where other classes each before and after us. Please try your best to send foods that do not include nuts directly. We appreciate that very much! Thank you! :)
• They are required to know how to write a list (kindergarten benchmark). We will be practicing this all week!
• List Requirements:
1. title 
2. bullet points for each idea 
3. pictures

October 29th, 2018

MONDAY!

During our inquiry into language we listened to the song for Uu and we practiced the sound for Uu. After that we sounded out words for Uu and made Ms. Gray draw some interesting drawings. After this we took 10 minutes to talk about the Christmas Concert and listened to the AWESOME song that we will be singing and dancing to! We are SUPER excited for this... Ms. Gray felt a little bit like it might be too early for Christmas but the song is very catchy so we have been jamming to it on and off all day! Our friends were extremely worried about not knowing the words... Ms. Gray explained that once we hear it a few times we won't be able to forget it! (Ask her husband...... Ms. Gray heard him singing it while doing some renovations this weekend! >>insert laughing emoji<< )

During our math lesson today we made Ms. Gray feel like the 1,000,000 bucks!! We kept saying how much fun our math lesson was... and saying over and over again how we LOVE Ms. Gray! First we each had a letter (A or B), we moved around the room and put ourselves in a pattern of AB. Then ABB... When we were done with that game we went back to our seats. Ms. Gray had all of our playdough on the table... and lots of cookie-stencils & playdough stencils. Ms. Gray would put a pattern on the board and we would make the pattern with the playdough! We ABSOLUTELY loved this the most, more than anything we have ever done before!


After our super fun math lesson, we listened to our fun senses song and danced the actions then we started to frame our beautiful artwork that we created for Fall for the hallway! While we were doing that we brainstormed different words that begin with the letters F, A, L, L and completed an acrostic poem! Ms. Gray taught us how to choose words that describe the season! We started with Favorite and ended with Love.... safe to say that Ms. Gray's obsession with Fall has rubbed off on our friends. :)

We had such an amazing day!! :)

REMINDERS:

1. Casual Day tomorrow!
2. BAKE SALE TOMORROW DURING LUNCH!!
3. Character Dress Up/Harvest Day is Wednesday! -- Remember no weapons, no masks, and no scary face paint. Costumes should be school appropriate!

October 26

We had a BUSY (messy)  Friday!

First we had our show & share! We had friends bring in items that have the letter in them, or begin with that letter...... We had one friends bring in an excavator, someone showed one of Ms. Gray's socks, a friend brought in her stickers and another friend brought in a metal... Then we had our spelling test!! We did well on our spelling test!

After we had gym, recess, and lunch we had some fun!! We finally painted our pumpkins! We found out that when we "accidentally" mix the colors together we get a very interesting color of brown.......... Some of our friends were able to keep their colors from mixing and their pumpkins are very colorful... others have some very pretty, brown pumpkins. One friend referred to this as his "rotten pumpkin!!" We talked about how this is a fall activity and this makes us happy!

Then we had our math lesson about patterns. We practiced all different types of patterns and circled the core. Then we made pretty bracelets using a pattern! Some of our sweet friends made the bracelets for their mom! :) While some of our friends were making some bracelets our other friends were painting pretty patterns on some white paper!

Then, once everyone got a chance to do both centers, we got our outside clothes on and lined up. Ms. Gray gave us TWO stickers if we were silent in the hallway while the other classes were learning. We went outside and collected leaves for a new project! We earned 5 stickers for our behavior in the hallway!! So proud of them!

We then went to recess, snack, and French! Then... the "FUN" continued!... FALL FUN! Painting our leaves!!! We used our leaves to make a special art project that will go in the hallway! Our friends did such a fantastic job following directions. Their art projects look great! I had some friends that got paint on their noses... It was ADORABLE! We quickly washed it off and then got ready for music!


We had a fun day of singing silly songs, playing instruments, and dancing around to Mr. Flower playing and singing! :)

Reminders:

• October 30 is casual day. (Tuesday)
• October 31 is character dress up day (Wednesday) -- please remember no weapons or scary costumes. 
• I put their spelling test in their agenda. :)
• At some point this weekend -- If you could have your kiddo plug their nose while they eat something... (This is our experiment as I introduce the 5 senses! I want to see if anyone realizes what happens to your sense of taste!...)
• HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND!! :)