Cranston Kindergarten : March 2017

Saturday, 18 March 2017

Monday March 13 - Friday March 17

Dear Mom and Dad,

This week at school we continued to learn about penguins and the blue/yellow team went to the zoo for the penguin program. We had some visits from some sneaky leprechauns in our classrooms this week, just in time for St. Patrick’s Day. Get us to tell you about the fun things we did.

Team Wonder:

We had a fun-filled week continuing our work with patterns, penguins, and snow. We started our week with a winter walk being detectives, looking for patterns and animal tracks in the environment. We saw a lot of patterns and followed deer tracks on our walk; we even found deer hair. We brought some artifacts back to our classroom so we can continue to take a closer look with our magnifying glasses at our wonder wall. Get me to tell you about some of the things we saw on our walk.

We have been learning a lot about penguins in our classroom and we learned even more when we went to the zoo for the penguin program. We learned about the four different penguins that are at the Calgary Zoo; they are the Gentoo penguins, King penguins, Humboldt penguins, and the Rockhopper penguins. We learned about what penguins eat, what some of their predators are and some of the adaptations they have for life in the cold. We also were lucky enough to see the King penguins walk we really enjoyed seeing them waddle past us. Some of us also had a chance to see Grace feeding baby Edward, she regurgitated the fish she had just eaten for him, it was pretty cool.

We had a surprise delivery this week in our classroom, it came all the way from Antarctica. We were accepted into the "Antarctica Penguin Patrol" program and received our very own King penguin to take care of in our classroom. We are busy giving him everything he needs to be happy and healthy everyday. Ask me what our penguin needs in order to survive. Also, we still need a name for our penguin, see if you can come up with a name fit for a King :)

Yellow and Blue Team

We started off the week by learning the letter “Mm”. We sang the “M” song, walked around like monkeys, sounded out the letter, and even made the letter M with partners. Check out the pictures below. Guess if we made capital M’s or lower case. We have continued to work closely with patterns in math.

Throughout the week we read many St. Patrick’s day books and learned about leprechauns. Ms. Cvach has been followed by a leprechaun for many years. He follows her to every school she teaches at. We began to worry that the leprechaun may visit our classroom this week. So as a class we decided to catch that sneaky leprechaun. We designed two traps to catch the leprechaun in hopes that he will lead us to his pot of gold. On Friday morning much to are surprise the leprechaun had been in our classroom. And he made a HUGE mess, knocking over chairs, hiding shoes, and leaving footprints everywhere. He set off our traps, but was no where to be found. Looks like the leprechaun was way to cleaver for our traps.

We all dressed in green and brought a really cool green snacks. We were really excited that the leprechaun left some gold chocolate coins to enjoy. Check out our traps below.

On Thursday we had a beautiful sunny day at the Zoo full of excitement and incredible animal sightings. We focused on the animal’s enclosures and needs. It was really interesting to learning about what each animal needs to stay alive and happy.

Love,

Kindergarten

Housekeeping:

Don't forget to sign up for student led conferences.

Next week is a short week. Please look to the left hand column of the blog for important dates.

Sunday, 12 March 2017

Monday March 6 - Friday March 10

Student Led Conferences:

On Wednesday March 22 and Thursday March 23, we will be having Student Led Conferences. Please note that this will look very different than our first meeting.

Student Led Conferences will be led by your child so please bring them with you. There will be different stations that you and your child will visit and their job is to share their learning with you. These stations will give you an idea of the expectations of the curriculum in kindergarten and where your child is at.

Signing up for a time:

The time that you sign up for by clicking HERE will be the time that you and your child will meet with your teachers. This means that you can come 15 minutes before or stay 15 minutes after your conference booked time for your child to share their learning.

**During your booked time with your child's teachers, there will be other students sharing their work with their families. If you would like a more private setting to discuss your child's learning, please contact your child's teacher directly and we can make arrangements.

We look forward to seeing you at conferences!

Dear Mom and Dad:

In math we have been learning about patterns. We learned how to create, continue, and label a “AB” pattern. We have also challenged ourselves to create an “ABC” and an “ABB” pattern. I can make a pattern with colors, blocks, objects, actions, and sounds. Ask me how to make an AB pattern.

Team Yellow and Blue:

Our classes are creating life size paper mache penguins. We have decided to make two different types of penguins. We are making one Emperor and one Gentoo penguin. The Emperor penguin is the tallest and heaviest of the species reaching 122cm in height and weighing 22kg- 45kg. The Gentoo is a smaller penguin species that is known for its long tail. Our first step was to sculpt the frame of the penguin with wire. We practiced as a class to create individual pipe cleaner penguins. Then during centers, we created a life size structures. Check out our wire structures in the pictures below. Stay tuned! They are a work in progress.

This week we also talked about animals and their needs. We had Shelly visit our classroom during centers. We created enclosures for Shelly and talked about her needs. Ask me, “Who is Shelly?”

Housekeeping:

Blue and Yellow PM: Zoo field trip is rescheduled for Thursday March 16^th

Blue and Yellow AM: NO SCHOOL Thursday March 16^th

Team Wonder:

We continue to talk about how we can fill each other's buckets. I am working hard in the day to make sure that I am not dipping but filling someone's bucket, including my own. Ask me to tell you about our new zoo center! It is so much fun as we thought about what we will need to run a zoo. At our maker space, we have students making signs and enclosures for our animals. We even have veterinarians on site to help with the animals. We looked at animal footprints. At our wonder station, we can explore and imprint different animal prints. It is so cool!

We have been working on our literacy skills through alphabet bingo. I should be able to tell you the letters in my name and be able to find these letters in the environment. I should also be able to tell you the different sounds that the letters make. If I am having difficulty with this, please help me practice this at home. You can ask me to find a certain letter in a word. Some of us are even putting letters together to make words.

In Roots of Empathy this week, we learned about safety. It is important for me to know how to read the pictures on specific products. I know that different symbols on cleaning products mean different things. I also learned that babies cannot read these labels yet and it is best to keep these items away from them.

Housekeeping:

On Monday March 13, Team Wonder will be going on a winter walk. Please dress your child appropriately for the weather.

Love,

Kindergarten

Saturday, 4 March 2017

Monday February 27 - Friday March 3

Dear Mom and Dad:

On Monday February 27 we celebrated our 100^th day at school. We did a lot of fun activities; ask me to tell you about some of them. For our 100^th day of school we had a lot of fun dressing up as if we were 100 years old, our teachers even dressed up. We counted our one hundred things from home using our ten frames. Ask me how to count by tens. We had a challenge to build a structure using 100 cups, see the pictures below for some of our creations. We used our 100 things from home to help us count to 100 using 10 ten frames and then counted by tens to 100. We used a program to age a picture of ourselves and had a lot of fun seeing what everyone might look like when they are 100 years old. We also tried to think about where we might be when we’re 100 or what we might be doing. Get me to tell you what I came up with.

AM students went to the zoo! Not all classes have gone to the zoo yet so we don’t want to give anything away. Ask me to tell you 2 new facts I learned about penguins and ask me to tell you what my favourite animal is.

Team Wonder:

We started our 100^th day by talking about items we would want 100 of and things we would not like to have 100 of, ask me to share some of our ideas.

We have continued to learn about penguin adaptations for life in the cold and this week we did a penguin experiment to see how the special oil on penguins’ feathers helps to keep them dry. We colored our penguins with wax crayon, to mimic the characteristics of the oil, and then had a chance to spray our penguins with water to see what happened. Get me to tell you how our penguin “rain jackets” worked.

Blue/Yellow Team:

This week we continued to practice our number sense by counting to 5 using shake and spill. We spilled 5 double-sided counters out of a cup and had to make a number sentence using our five frames. Ask me how many different ways I can make 5.