This week, and all weeks, we stand together for love, kindness and acceptance for all. We honored Pink Shirt Day for the entire week by wearing pink, celebrating differences (those within our own group and those we see in books), and learning how we have room enough in our hearts for everyone no matter their size, shape, colour, etc. 
 
So many wonderful books were read this week; some we have read before and love to read and some are new. Books are such wonderful conversation starters; we listen to other points of view, we ask questions and we learn. The books we read this week brought about conversations on skin colour, family make-up, how you are worthy of love and kindess just the way you are, using our voice to stand up for others and/or gain clarity and understanding, how stereotypical gender roles and identifiers do not fairly represent all people, how we feel when we are kind to ourselves and others, and how we are all here on this Earth together.
 
Just Ask by Sonia Sotomayor
Stick and Stone by Beth Ferry and Tom Lichtenheld
The Big Umbrella by Amy June Bates   (We drew/wrote and attached hanging examples of kindness to an umbrella, as an activity inspired by this book.)
Say Something by Peter H. Reynolds
Pink is for Boys by Robb Pearlman  
You Matter by Christian Robinson
You are Enough by Sofia Sanchez
A Family is a Family is a Family by Sara O’Leary
When We Are Kind by Monique Gray Smith
Here We Are by Oliver Jeffers
Our Skin by Megan Maddison, Jessica Ralli and Isabel Roxas
 
Our library continues to expand! I think I have the kids enjoying that new book sound, which I love so much, of the spine cracking when you open a book for the first time. Anytime a new book comes in the mail the kids ask me to open the book so they can listen. It’s exciting stuff!
 
We worked on the letter U this week. The little ones are doing such a good job at remembering their letters and letter sounds! They coloured the unicorn’s horn in rainbow colours in their journals for the letter U. 
 
The kids worked on their listening, following instructions and teamwork skills a lot this week, through floor puzzle making, threading different coloured/shaped beads and through play scenarios.
 
We all had a lot of fun creating our own Golden Tickets (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory)! Our most recent chapter inspired us to not only make these Golden Tickets, but also take turns being Mr. Willy Wonka to lead the group through the maze-like halls that is the Chocolate Factory (Left! Right! Right! Left!) 

I can’t believe we are pairing koalas with the snow, but then again, we do live in Calgary! 
 
We had so much fun in the freshly fallen snow. And it looks like we will get to do the same next week! I love all the little squeals of excitement!   :)
 
Koalas are so darn cute! We learned many facts about them, such as the purpose of their adapted feet/hands and claws, where they live, what they eat, that they are marsupials and therefore have a pouch just like a kangaroo, the purpose of their large noses, and how they are close to being on the endangered list and what that means. 
 
The kids made some koalas hand puppets and little trees for their pretend koalas to play with during play dough play.

We experimented and played around with varying combinations and quantities of water, baking soda, vinegar and lime juice. We learned a bit about what an acid and a base are. This activity was also great practice in pouring and stirring without spilling!
 
Our letters this week were T and I. 
 
The big kids worked on their “all” words this week by matching up the image and beginning sound of the word with the “all” part of the word.
 
And of course, we celebrated Valentine’s Day with a special heart pancake lunch and the handing out of Valentines.

 Happy almost Valentine’s Day! The kids and I are excited to celebrate this day of kindness and love together! We spent all week counting down the days until Valentine’s Day and had so much fun doing Valentine themed activities. The nice weather also brought about many outdoor adventures!
 
We made pink play dough with sequins, journaled about what we love, made heart shaped bead wands, used heart-shaped cardboard tubes to do a little heart paint stamping, made varying difficulties of heart patterns, and matched uppercase and lowercase letters to make two halves of a heart come together.
 
The kids did some chocolate addition. Some used blocks, some used a mixture of blocks and writing numbers, and some decided to only use writing. They also put together math hearts. There were four quadrants in each heart that each represented the number four. There was the number 4, four dots, a tally, and/or a simple addition equation. They had to put together the four quadrants to make the full heart. 
 
The big kids continued their work with the “all” word family by identifying and colouring only the images that represented an “all” word. And of course, we had a bit of fun making little stories using as many “all” words as we possibly could. We couldn’t resist the silliness in that! 
 
As a whole group, we have a lot of fun learning through rhyme by either making up silly stories or altering songs like we did this week…I’m sure many of you know what song “ice, ice baby” comes from. Well that line turned into singing anything we could think of that rhymed with ice. There were some pretty funny word combinations!
 
Our letters this week were E and H. The kids built letter E with paper lines, wrote E and found E among other letters. They also practiced writing H and tracing a heart with Valentine stickers. I had the greatest time watching the kids giggle, squeal, and run all around acting out types of lines, as I shouted out “horizontal line in the craft room!” or “vertical line in the kitchen!”. So funny!
 
Over the past couple weeks, we have started reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Ronald Dahl. This book does a great job, from chapter to chapter, keeping their attention. Sometimes they don’t want me to even read a picture book before the chapter book like we usually do at rest time. We are only seven chapters into a thirty-chapter book, but we have decided that we are going to have a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory party when we finish it. The kids have all sorts of ideas of what we can do for this party!

Happy Lunar New Year!
 
We love all that the New Year celebrations bring! The fireworks, the food, the dancing, the music, family, etc.
 
We had a lot of fun learning about the Zodiac and took a keen interest in the animals of the years we all were born in. We even had to figure out what year the pets were born in!
 
The Lion Dance and the Dragon Dance were very exciting for the kids. There were multiple times where the kids went under a sheet to pretend they were taking part in these dances in their own New Year celebrations. Some of the kids made large paper lanterns while others chose to use their crafting skills to make a lion’s head for the Lion Dance. They even tried using chopsticks on multiple occasions. They were very determined to make it work and they did pretty well!
 
We started round two of our letter learning with the letters L and F. The kids built ladders for L and did them as fast as they could for letter F. They also made little red envelopes with a gem letter L.
 
I'm not one much for worksheets, but I have some girls who seem to like them! They have been doing a great job working on the ‘all’ word family. 
 
Also, Happy Groundhog Day! We did enjoy watching Balzac Billy come out of his burrow to look for his shadow…unfortunately he saw it so we have 6 more weeks of winter. We do live in Canada after all.