April 28th, 2017

Roar! Go the Dinosaurs! 

It was all about the dinosaurs this week! We learned and tried to pronounce the names of many dinosaurs, danced the actions to a Dinosaur Stomp song, baked dinosaur cookies to start our week.

What is a carnivore? Herbivore? Omnivore? Dinosaurs did not all eat the same way. The kids had to become scientists! They dug through dinosaur poop to figure out what that dinosaur ate. The looks on their faces when I told them it was poop was too funny! We talked about characteristics of dinosaurs that give us hints as to what they eat, i.e. sharp, pointy teeth means they are probably a carnivore. We took this information to make our own carnivore dinosaur puppets. The dino puppets sharp teeth revealed a colour pattern as well. Our dino puppets were then used to make puppet shows. It was a fun way to practice some storytelling.

How come there are no dinosaurs anymore? Where did they go and what does it mean to be extinct? We researched other animals that are also extinct and found out that some of them are from a familiar movie; i.e. mammoth, sober toothed tiger, and ground sloth. Once again we became scientists, figuring out how to remove mini dinosaurs from ice. Some tried using salt, some banged them to see if the ice would break and some used their hands to melt the ice. Brrr cold! We then decided to use a blow dryer to melt them a bit faster, then had some fun playing with the mini dinosaurs and ice cubes. After this dinosaur/ice play someone asked to freeze a big dinosaur toy in ice, so we tried that and were surprised to see how long it took for the big dinosaurs ice to melt…more than one day!

During pretend play time we learned how dinosaurs protected themselves and used these ideas while playing. i.e.: sharp teeth, long/strong tails, strong legs with claws, etc.

We started our new round of Special Leaders this week and everyone is so excited to be the teacher at circle time. They had a great time asking their peers questions about the weather and the calendar.

Some other activities we did this week include journals, dominoes, dino floor puzzles, and learned about the letters O and Q.

April 21st, 2017

Earth Day!

How we can help the Earth to be healthy? What might happen to our planet if we keep putting more and more garbage into it? Garbage eruption! Spooning and pouring vinegar into a baking soda/torn paper “landfill”, the kids saw all the “garbage” erupting out of the landfill. I love that baking soda and vinegar experiments are so versatile!

We talked about how much garbage ends up in the ocean, the impact it has (particularly on the animals) and how we can prevent more from heading there (i.e.: recycling and reusing). After this discussion we clothespins to pick up garbage (bottle caps and bread clips) out of our water play bin, and sorting/counted them. We then used these same bread clips as markers to play number BINGO. This was a great way to practice identifying numbers, and for some, writing them on the write board when they got to be the person to call out the numbers.

We also made Little Earth’s using a cardboard Earth and crumpled tissue paper for the water/land.

We had a fun time exploring Nosehill Park twice this week, and we made it all the way to the top! Walking through the trees and brush was a path of choice. We even found a few bones! What a great chance to talk about what types of animals live there and what they eat. There is also a new favourite spot that we keep visiting there towards the top of the hill, where they are a few large rocks, many crocus flowers, and a lot of dirt to play in, not to mention the wonderful view!

As a group, we crumpled pieces of paper that had letters on them, littered them on the floor, and played a letter/letter sound identification game where the “police” chased you down and gave you the paper you littered for you to read. Who knew running around with pieces of crumpled letter paper could be so fun!  It was wonderful to then see them reuse the leftover crumpled letters to make their own crafts about the litter in the world.

Letters U and C are what we explored this week. Magic C Bunny came out for a visit, because his favourite letter is C. Magic C Bunny is a puppet that is a part of the Handwriting Without Tears program, that aids in teaching the formation of letters that begin with a curve. i.e.: C, O, Q, G, etc. The kids had a lot of fun telling Magic C Bunny what words they knew began with the letter C, and singing letter songs with him.

When thinking of letter C words, CAT was the first word and that sparked the kids listing all the “at” words they knew! After listing them verbally they all wanted to write an “at” word! It is always fun to let them take the lead in their own learning. 

Some other activities we did include: journals, play dough, letter construction, painted squeeze duckies, ABC puzzles and cleaned garbage from the park.

April 13th, 2017

Happy Easter!

We explored what an egg does when you put it into fresh vs salt water. Some ideas: it will melt, it will sink and the shell will come off. We also wondered what would happen if you gave the egg a lifejacket or a boat. Does the same thing happen to the yolk?

This week we practiced working with the letters T and I. The kids love to build letters with their bodies! It was quite funny watching them lay across each other to make a lowercase t. We practiced identifying and matching lowercase and uppercase letters by using pretend carrots and dirt. The carrots were the uppercase letters which you then had to put in the dirt that had the corresponding lowercase letter.

It is rare that everyone decides to come together on their own to work on a alphabet puzzle as a team. They sang the alphabet as they tried to figure out which letter came next and took turns attaching the pieces. It was great to see!

Some of us are ready to start learning about word families! They are catching on so quickly! We used 4 piece plastic Easter eggs to make words from the "at" family. A couple of us are able to sound out 4 letter "at" words, as they are starting to remember some blended letter sounds i.e.: "ch”. We also played an “at” word/picture matching game.

Everyone practiced tearing Scotch tape from the dispenser, and placed it wherever they liked on their paper egg. Colour choice and sponge painting the egg came next. When it was dry we took the tape off the see that no paint had gone under the it, os we could still see the paper where the tape was.

We had a bunch of fun making egg shakers. What happens to the sound of the shaker when you put more or less beans into it? Why? We then practiced following the beat of songs we sang with our egg shakers. I was impressed with how well everyone sounded together!

When ended our Easter week a PJ Day celebration. We decorated Easter baskets for a special PJ day Easter Egg hunt, watched a movie and had a dance party.

It was like winter again this week! Perfect weather for snowball making….these snowballs ended up being as big as the kids after we pushed them down the hill!

Some other things we did this past week include journals, making play dough, Easter egg colour sort/match and Easter Egg hunt/letter writing race.

April 7th, 2017
Easter is on it’s way! We can’t wait for more celebrations this coming week!

This week we worked on the letter E (also thought of words that have the E sound in the middle and/or the end) and H. They are really enjoying being challenged to write the uppercase and lowercase letters. To encourage this greater interest in writing, we played an alphabet Easter Egg hunt. They hunted for Easter Eggs, raced to the whiteboard, opened them up to find a letter, then wrote it on the board.

Over the past couple weeks we have begun working with some the the most frequently used words in the English language. They worked together scooping and picking up eggs out of water, finding letters inside and placing them on top of the matching letter of a word we have been practicing. We have also been spending some time learning about number words and now some have taken an interest in writing them. Great to see!

Easter Egg Race! Everyone had to run to the Easter Basket, put an egg in their spoon and carry it all the way back to their teams basket without dropping it. When all the eggs were collected, each team had to count their eggs and write their number on the chalkboard. They had to figure out what would be the best way to go about counting the eggs, as there were quite a few. They came to the conclusion that lining them up was the easiest way not to miss counting some. Also, trying figure out how to work as a team to count the eggs was a challenge. One group decided that each person would take turns counting and the other team would count at the same time.

We had a bunch of fun mixing colours together to see what colour resulted. Then using this paint we painted paper Easter eggs. There were a few different egg patterns to paint within. It was great for eye coordination and following instructions. We also painted using a pompom attached to a clothespin, pretending we were painting with our bunny tails.

Jelly Bean Science! They sorted jelly beans into the correct colour groups, with out eating them! I was quite surprised no one tried to eat them. We hypothesized what would happen when water was poured in with the jelly beans Some ideas: The jellybean will melt. The colours will turn the water. And nothing will happen. In 5 minute intervals we observed what was happening. It turns out all the colour has come off of the jelly beans and the outer sugar layer was floating on the top.

We also enjoyed a few easter bunny themed songs. One of our favourites was a song that followed the B-I-N-G-O song. They are doing so well following the beat of the song; clapping at the exact time the song does. 

Some other things we did this week include; baking cookies with Easter sugar (purple and yellow sprinkles), building puzzles and read numbers on paper eggs which we hole punching the correct number of holes in. We also used number wood pieces and wooden sticks to practice number recognition, addition skills and how to read a math sentence (i.e.: 2+1=3)

March 31st, 2017

Owls Owls Owls

There is so much to learn about owls. Owls have large eyes to see at night time, they are nocturnal, they can turn their heads around without moving their bodies, and we learned the process of how they catch their prey and eat/digest it (owls pellets). Watching the little ones practice following instructions to owl action songs and watching them pretend to be an owl hunting its’ prey was pretty entertaining, especially because they like the part where they pretended to vomit out an owl pellet. 

Three owl crafts were created this week. Our first was good practice in tearing craft paper to make the owl’s feathers, and then gluing together paper pupils into  cupcake liners for eyes. Our second craft was created by cutting out foam, from which the owl bodies were made. Attaching the pieces and a popsicle stick made an owl puppet. Our third owl craft was made using felt, foam and wood chips (the body).

We adventured out to the community centre and the St.Bede school playground. everyone had a blast playing on such a large playground. We packed a picnic and did some outdoor reading as well.

Now that we have made it through the alphabet and through the numbers 1-10 we are now we are reviewing the letters we began the school year with, at an accelerated pace. As they are more practiced with letters, we are working with two letters per week. The letters this week were L and F. I  had some helpers want to write the words for me which was amazing. Their confidence in wanting to try sounding out and write write together is wonderful to see. We practiced writing letters in salt trays and building letters with our letter construction kit.

Often we practice blended letter sounds, mostly as they come about through stories, words of interest (like when figuring out words that start with the letter we are learning, or words they want to write in their journals) and our calendar. Blended letter sounds that we have come across and are starting to remember include; “oo” “th” “ch” and “sh”.

We had a blast exploring weight and balance (also talking about more/less)  at the playground on the teeter totter. It is really fun when you use a teeter totter and your friends to figure out how to balance each side and to see what happened when you add or take away people.

We continue to create and practice writing/sounding out words in journals. What a wonderful mess!

Some other activities we did this week include; cookie cutter spring time paint stamping, a baking soda and vinegar science experiment.