The Winter Concert will be held on Thursday, December 4th. There are two performances at 1:00 pm and 6:30 pm. All students are invited to perform in the evening concert and should be in the classroom just after 6:00 pm to get ready. Students should wear their holiday best!
Please remember that there is NO KINDERGARTEN CLASSES IN THE MORNING ON DECEMBER 4th. All students are to come in the afternoon (12:35 - 3:30 pm). Students can be signed out from the classroom after the performance, or they are invited to stay until dismissal time.
Our school is also dedicated to completing 3 Christmas Hampers for Winnipeg Harvest. Please check out the decoration tags that will be posted outside our door for donations that we are looking for. If you are able to donate the item, please remove the decoration tag and return it along with the requested item. We thank you so much for your support!
Sunday, 30 November 2014
Sunday, 16 November 2014
Read To Self
Over the last couple weeks, we have been practicing what is known as "Read to Self". This is an independent time where we look at, and read, a variety of books and poems! "Read to Self" is part of a literacy program called "Daily 5". Almost all classrooms at our school incorporate "Read to Self" into their literacy blocks! By learning how to "Read to Self" in Kindergarten, we are preparing for older grades too!
When we first started, a lot of us exclaimed that we don't know how to read books! We didn't know how we would read books during "Read to Self" time. However, Ms. Petersen showed us that there are 3 ways to read a book. We can:
Before we start, we always go over the expectations. These are the expectations that we came up with together:
We also remind ourselves why we need to practice so much. It's so we can become better readers! We talk about how when we learn something new, it takes a lot of practice until we are great at it! It is just like when we are learning to play a sport, learning how to dance or play an instrument.
There are a variety of spots that we get to sit at while we are practicing "Read to Self". We have to come to the picture chart to see where we will be sitting for that day. Then Ms. Petersen changes our names to a new spot for the next day.
When we get to our spot we keep our book closed. When everyone is settled, Ms. Petersen says "3-2-1-go". We do our best to read for the whole time until Ms. Petersen says "Stop". We know that if we finish reading our book before the time is up, we must go back to the beginning and start again.
We have a chart that keeps track of our progress. When we first started, we could only read our books for 1 minute. Now, we are up to almost 5 minutes! We love watching our "tower" get bigger and bigger. Our final goal is 15 minutes! We also realize that we must work as a team to read for longer. If everyone is following the expectations, our "tower" will get taller!
After we fill in our chart, Ms. Petersen picks 2-3 people who were doing an excellent job during "Read to Self" time to add a pom-pom to the jar. This gives us motivation to keep doing a great job! We hope to reach our goal soon!
When we first started, a lot of us exclaimed that we don't know how to read books! We didn't know how we would read books during "Read to Self" time. However, Ms. Petersen showed us that there are 3 ways to read a book. We can:
- Read the pictures
- Read the words
- Retell the story in our own words
Before we start, we always go over the expectations. These are the expectations that we came up with together:
- Read with a quiet voice
- Stay in your spot
- Eyes on your own book
- Read for the whole time
- Be respectful to the books
We also remind ourselves why we need to practice so much. It's so we can become better readers! We talk about how when we learn something new, it takes a lot of practice until we are great at it! It is just like when we are learning to play a sport, learning how to dance or play an instrument.
There are a variety of spots that we get to sit at while we are practicing "Read to Self". We have to come to the picture chart to see where we will be sitting for that day. Then Ms. Petersen changes our names to a new spot for the next day.
When we get to our spot we keep our book closed. When everyone is settled, Ms. Petersen says "3-2-1-go". We do our best to read for the whole time until Ms. Petersen says "Stop". We know that if we finish reading our book before the time is up, we must go back to the beginning and start again.
We have a chart that keeps track of our progress. When we first started, we could only read our books for 1 minute. Now, we are up to almost 5 minutes! We love watching our "tower" get bigger and bigger. Our final goal is 15 minutes! We also realize that we must work as a team to read for longer. If everyone is following the expectations, our "tower" will get taller!
After we fill in our chart, Ms. Petersen picks 2-3 people who were doing an excellent job during "Read to Self" time to add a pom-pom to the jar. This gives us motivation to keep doing a great job! We hope to reach our goal soon!
Wednesday, 12 November 2014
Colour Days and Observations
We have been so excited to participate in the variety of colour days over the past two weeks! Each day we try to find matching clothing items for the colour of the day. Lots of staff and students in the school notice and ask us why we are all wearing the same colour! We simply say, "Because it's (purple) day!" We also read a book that goes along with our colour of the day and go on a scavenger hunt in our classroom! We try to find one thing that is the correct colour. We noticed some colours are trickier to find than others! We have also noticed a variety of different shades and are learning to identify light and dark colours.
Last week, we also did two experiments! We were quite excited to see what would happen. On Tuesday, we noticed three cups sitting on Ms. Petersen's desk. She asked us what we noticed about the set-up.
Some things we observed before the experiment:
Each child had to draw what they saw and make a prediction. We talked about how it is okay if our guesses are wrong because they are just that - guesses! We were so excited to see what was going to happen. We kept checking the cups during the day. When we returned to school the next day, we were shocked to see purple water in the middle cup! We also noticed that the paper towels had changed colours. The paper towel coming out of the red water was now red, and the paper towel coming out of the blue water was now blue. We noticed the water "crawled" up the paper towels and went into the middle cup and mixed together to make purple. Blue and red makes purple!
We were so excited when Ms. Petersen set out another experiment for us to watch on Thursday. This time we observed different things:
When we made our predictions this time, lots of us used our knowledge from the previous experiment. Some of us thought the cups would change colours - to blue and purple. Some of us thought the white baking soda would change to red and yellow. Some of us thought it would make orange, but we weren't sure where. Some of us thought it would explode! We really thought hard about our guesses!
Then we gathered around the cups again. When Ms. Petersen added the baking soda to the cup with red vinegar, it started fizzing and bubbling until it spilled out of the cup! The same thing happened when she added the baking soda to the yellow vinegar. It exploded! Then she took a spoon and stirred the liquid that was now in the pan. We noticed right away that it turned orange! Red and yellow make orange!
We can't wait to see what other fun colour activities we will do! We also want to thank our families for helping us remember what colour to wear!
Last week, we also did two experiments! We were quite excited to see what would happen. On Tuesday, we noticed three cups sitting on Ms. Petersen's desk. She asked us what we noticed about the set-up.
Some things we observed before the experiment:
- There are three cups
- One is filled with red water, one is filled with blue water, one is empty
Each child had to draw what they saw and make a prediction. We talked about how it is okay if our guesses are wrong because they are just that - guesses! We were so excited to see what was going to happen. We kept checking the cups during the day. When we returned to school the next day, we were shocked to see purple water in the middle cup! We also noticed that the paper towels had changed colours. The paper towel coming out of the red water was now red, and the paper towel coming out of the blue water was now blue. We noticed the water "crawled" up the paper towels and went into the middle cup and mixed together to make purple. Blue and red makes purple!
We were so excited when Ms. Petersen set out another experiment for us to watch on Thursday. This time we observed different things:
- There were 2 cups instead of 3
- The cups were empty
- The cups were sitting in a pan with handles
When we made our predictions this time, lots of us used our knowledge from the previous experiment. Some of us thought the cups would change colours - to blue and purple. Some of us thought the white baking soda would change to red and yellow. Some of us thought it would make orange, but we weren't sure where. Some of us thought it would explode! We really thought hard about our guesses!
Then we gathered around the cups again. When Ms. Petersen added the baking soda to the cup with red vinegar, it started fizzing and bubbling until it spilled out of the cup! The same thing happened when she added the baking soda to the yellow vinegar. It exploded! Then she took a spoon and stirred the liquid that was now in the pan. We noticed right away that it turned orange! Red and yellow make orange!
We can't wait to see what other fun colour activities we will do! We also want to thank our families for helping us remember what colour to wear!
Sunday, 2 November 2014
A Week of Halloween Activities
We had such a fun, engaging week leading up to Halloween! To get us excited about Halloween, Ms. Petersen had set up a variety of special Halloween stations for us to try out as a part of our entry routine! These stations help us work on a variety of skills such as literacy, numeracy and fine motor skills.
We were the most excited to try the Halloween goop! We got to squish the goop around in our hands and it felt very neat. There were even little spiders hiding inside! The majority of us liked squishing all of the goop in our hands, but some students preferred to touch just a tiny bit.
We also worked hard at creating Halloween patterns! At the start of the week, lots of us were creating two element patterns. As the week went on, Ms. Petersen challenged us to make trickier ones!
We also practiced our gluing skills by gluing marshmallows to create ghosts! We needed to use lots of hand muscles to squeeze the glue out. We are also trying to remember that "A little dot holds a lot!"
We all got to practice making spiderwebs as well! We had to concentrate so that we could stretch the small rubber bands over the popsicle sticks. It took some practice, but we made some pretty cool spiderwebs!
On Wednesday, we got to participate in Halloween gym! Mrs. Kjernisted set up the gym with lots of spooky stations. The lights were dimmed and Halloween music was playing, too! We liked swinging on the ropes across the snake infested swamp. We also liked guessing what was in the different boxes when we closed our eyes and felt around!
Finally, after many sleeps, it was Halloween! We were sooooo excited to show off our costumes to our friends! We started our day off by using a sharing circle to explain our costumes. We also read a really funny story called "Boo!" by Robert Munsch. It is about a boy who paints his face very scary to get lots and lots and LOTS of candy! We talked about only eating just a bit of candy at a time so that we do not get sore tummies. We would like to thank our friend Adam for sharing this Halloween book with us!
Afterwards, we got to make a pumpkin or a ghost puppet to take home! We worked very hard at cutting out our puppets and gluing on their faces. We also added some silly hands to them!
We also got to play some special Halloween games. We liked the pumpkin face bowling the best! We had to stand back and aim our ball at the tower of cups and see how many we could knock down! We also practiced our aim by trying to throw paper balls onto our pumpkin plates. The more we practiced, the better we got!
We also had some time to eat the delicious snacks that many families offered to bring! Our tummies were happy that there was as mixture of healthy snacks and special treats. Thank you so much to the families who took the time to prepare the wonderful snacks and goody bags! We also appreciate all of the generous offers from families to supply treats for the future as well!
Our favourite part of the day was when we got to go on our Halloween costume parade! It was so much fun showing off our costumes and seeing other costumes, too. In the morning we went on our parade with Mrs. Bangart's class and in the afternoon we got to be a part of the school-wide parade! It was so neat going through the whole school showing off our costumes. We had a blast!
We would also like to give a special thanks to our wonderful volunteers who helped make our Fall Celebration extra fun. Thanks very much to Mrs. Gray, Mrs. Jaworenko, Mrs. Morrison, Mrs. Fazenda, Mrs. Montanez, Mrs. Geladov and Bianca (Mrs. V's daughter) for volunteering your time to help us out!
We were the most excited to try the Halloween goop! We got to squish the goop around in our hands and it felt very neat. There were even little spiders hiding inside! The majority of us liked squishing all of the goop in our hands, but some students preferred to touch just a tiny bit.
We also worked hard at creating Halloween patterns! At the start of the week, lots of us were creating two element patterns. As the week went on, Ms. Petersen challenged us to make trickier ones!
We also practiced our gluing skills by gluing marshmallows to create ghosts! We needed to use lots of hand muscles to squeeze the glue out. We are also trying to remember that "A little dot holds a lot!"
We all got to practice making spiderwebs as well! We had to concentrate so that we could stretch the small rubber bands over the popsicle sticks. It took some practice, but we made some pretty cool spiderwebs!
On Wednesday, we got to participate in Halloween gym! Mrs. Kjernisted set up the gym with lots of spooky stations. The lights were dimmed and Halloween music was playing, too! We liked swinging on the ropes across the snake infested swamp. We also liked guessing what was in the different boxes when we closed our eyes and felt around!
Finally, after many sleeps, it was Halloween! We were sooooo excited to show off our costumes to our friends! We started our day off by using a sharing circle to explain our costumes. We also read a really funny story called "Boo!" by Robert Munsch. It is about a boy who paints his face very scary to get lots and lots and LOTS of candy! We talked about only eating just a bit of candy at a time so that we do not get sore tummies. We would like to thank our friend Adam for sharing this Halloween book with us!
Afterwards, we got to make a pumpkin or a ghost puppet to take home! We worked very hard at cutting out our puppets and gluing on their faces. We also added some silly hands to them!
We also had some time to eat the delicious snacks that many families offered to bring! Our tummies were happy that there was as mixture of healthy snacks and special treats. Thank you so much to the families who took the time to prepare the wonderful snacks and goody bags! We also appreciate all of the generous offers from families to supply treats for the future as well!
Our favourite part of the day was when we got to go on our Halloween costume parade! It was so much fun showing off our costumes and seeing other costumes, too. In the morning we went on our parade with Mrs. Bangart's class and in the afternoon we got to be a part of the school-wide parade! It was so neat going through the whole school showing off our costumes. We had a blast!
We would also like to give a special thanks to our wonderful volunteers who helped make our Fall Celebration extra fun. Thanks very much to Mrs. Gray, Mrs. Jaworenko, Mrs. Morrison, Mrs. Fazenda, Mrs. Montanez, Mrs. Geladov and Bianca (Mrs. V's daughter) for volunteering your time to help us out!
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