We honoured Orange Shirt Day this week by all wearing orange on Friday and learning a little bit about Indigenous cultures in Canada. We learned how to Metis Jig; the kids made beaded anklets to dress their fancy feet. What a fun time! A little one mentioned how beautiful the clothing was. We watched and listened to a pair of Inuit sisters throat sing, and learned how connected one feels to their singing partner and the earth while throat singing. We also learned a bit about the teepee, how they are made, what they are used for and how belongings were set up inside. We had a lot of fun trying to make our own version of a teepee. It ended up looking more like a wigwam, but that's good too! The kids built a pretend fire inside, set up bedding and even played some drums (inspired by an episode of Molly of Denali). We did enjoy watching a few episodes of Molly of Denali. What a great program for learning a little bit about what indigenous culture is like in Alaska.

Orange Shirt Day was paired with learning a little bit about each other, our families and how each one of us is different and special. Most importantly we talked about how everyone deserves to be treated with kindness and respect.

The kids enjoyed sharing their Me Bags and we all enjoyed seeing and hearing about things and people that are special to them.

Our letters this week were E and H. The kids practiced building these letters and drawing horizontal and vertical lines in their journals. We also started working with Handwriting Without Tears' Mat Man. The kids helped in singing the song and piecing Mat Man together. Mat Man is great for introducing the terminology used for the pieces that we use to build/write letters with.

A couple other activities we did this week include a shape search/find and match, and an oil and crayon self portrait.

We all have feelings, big and small, and sometimes many at once! This week was all about how to identify emotions in self and others, how to cope with big feelings and understanding what others may need when they are feeling big emotions.

We practiced the use of Buzzy Bee Breaths for when anger takes over.

We played games about identifying emotions, made play dough feeling faces, built feeling faces with painted rocks, crayon scriblbled our own "Worry", matching emotion face cards, painted a patterned bee to show any feeling. We also learned how colours can denote different emotions. We used this information to draw and paint faces with colours associated to each feeling and moved coloured buttons onto correct feeling faces in a baggie.

Some of the books we read surrounding emotions were;
The Color Monster by Anna Llenas
The Crayons' Book of Feelings by Drew Daywalt and Oliver Jeffers
Glad Monster Sad Monster by Ed Emberely
Ruby Finds a Worry by Tom Percival
Pete the Cat and the New Kid by Kimberely and James Dean

We started our letter learning this week. When learning letters we address a variety of literacy concepts such as letter identification in uppercase and lowercase, letter sounds, words that start with a particular letter and writing for those who are ready. We do all of this through song, dance, gross and fine motor work, and imaginative play.

We started our letter learning with the letters L and F. We are focusing on the capital letters that start with vertical and horizontal lines, excluding any curved letters. The kids sang and danced to letter songs, made these letters with their bodies, practiced using a ruler to make a ladder to write L in, built the letters using wood pieces, glued paper squares on a letter F and identified these letters in their journals by peeling and sticking stickers to the correct letter and made some Fabulous Food (pretend play) for Bella dog to try.

We welcomed some new little faces this week. We are very happy that you have joined our group and look forward to all our adventures together during this new school year.

As we welcomed new children this week, we continued getting to know one another, practicing patience, kindness and understanding. We learned about what it means to work as a team; cooperate, compromise, listen, communicate, problem solve.

We have put lots of work into the workings of our routine and helping everyone to follow our schedule; knowing what comes next and what to expect. They have done a wonderful job following the children who already know the routine.

We focused a lot on our own names this week; identifying the letters, spelling them out, counting and comparing the amount of letters in them, clapping out the syllables, and for some of the kids they showed how they could write their names. We did a bit of general alphabet identification practice and review before we start our individual letter learning next week. The kids did some letter matching, letter identification and ABC song singing and dancing.

Our arts/science and sensory activities comprised of shaving cream/food colouring mixing to make a marbled painted paper, sowing grass seeds in little cups (hoping the weather will be on our side!), using feet to play in homemade paints on a large paper outside, and making/playing with play dough.

We can't wait to see what next week holds!

I can't believe it's the beginning of another school year! My little ones are excited to be the big kids this year...they've been counting down the days.

Our week was full of outside time, counting, colour learning (paint mixing, rainbows, colour names, colour sorting), fine motor practice (stretching elastics, tweezers, cutting, stickers), and name letter identification.