What a week it has been! We had birthday celebrations and a Glow-In-The-Dark Halloween party! Exciting times! I think we are all celebrated out! 
 
We read so many wonderful Halloween stories and sang many Halloween songs! We really liked taking turns being the person who took the candy from the candy jar when we sang and did the actions to “Who Took The Candy”. We also really liked dancing to "The Skeleton Dance”.
 
It was definitely a very science-y week. The kids made witch potions that would turn anyone into bat wings or black cat furballs or bat dropping, etc. And those potions magically turned a colour! They sorted and counted Halloween items from a cauldron of goo. And of course, our week would not be complete without carving pumpkins! There are always some who REALLY like digging out the pumpkin and some who prefer to watch. Everyone usually ends up touching the pumpkin at least once! Everyone helped to brainstorm ideas of what the jack-o-lantern faces should look too.
 
We did a bunch of number work this week as well. The kids worked on Halloween number/representation puzzles (1-20) and playing a dice rolling game where they had to roll the dice and identify the number to bingo stamp on the Halloween card.
 
Some other Halloween activities the kids took part in were:
-Matching monster cards
-Making shape monsters out of foam shapes
-Went on a ghost scavenger hunt
-Drew their favourite Halloween creatures in their journals
-Played Halloween BINGO
 
Our letter this week was U. We had a lot of fun physically showing positional words that begin with U, ie: under, upside-down, up. We all got a good laugh! The kids traced a U and filled this “U bowl” with Halloween stickers. Some of the kids are just learning how to peel stickers from the stickers sheets and they have been doing a good job, getting excited when they are able to peel a sticker off all on their own! 
 
We also worked on reviewing the letters we have learned to date by playing Letter Go Fish, building these letters with our bodies and identifying them on the screen. We have also been talking about letter formation by using words like straight and curve, and practiced sorting letters in this way. On the day of our Halloween celebration, we matched Halloween images to the letters in the Haunted House. The kids did a great job!
 
For Word Work Wednesday, the big kids continued working on the “at” word family. They matched images to the words, traced the words and coloured the pictures. They sure are starting to remember how to spell them! I love their interest in learning words right now! I’m going to roll with it! I’m excited to see where they go by the end of the school year!
 
The Handbags With Heart, that we have been working on for the past few weeks, have been delivered to the Women In Need Society. We collected enough items to fill 6 bags! Thank you to all of the families for helping out. And thank you to all the kids who were so enthusiastic about helping those in need!

As Fall continues, we have finally been able to have enough crunchy leaves to jump in! I sure love watching the kids run and jump in the leaves. It’s pure joy.
 
We started our Halloween theme this week! The kids journaled about what they want to dress up as this year for Halloween. We had a hot dog, a mermaid, a witch and a butterfly.
 
Our main song was Down By The Spooky Bay by The Learning Station. What a fun way to explore rhyming and have a great time singing and celebrating the Halloween theme.
 
Within our stories this week we explored rhyming, counting and how being you is the best you you can be. The kids and I had our monthly virtual story time with Juliet at the Calgary Public Library. We are so lucky to have this opportunity!
 
The kids worked their fine motor muscles with a variety of Halloween themed activities including playdough spider number mats, threading Halloween pictures, sponge painting Halloween images using stencils, giving monsters the correct number of eyeballs based on the number shown and making tissue ghosts. They also played a rhyming memory matching game.
 
Word Work Wednesday, for the big kids, was surrounding the “at” word family that we have began last week. They are doing a great job rhyming, matching, identifying and writing “at” words.
 
Our letters this week were T and I. The kids built these letters using our magnetic lines, stickers and their bodies. They also made paper ice cream cones with a cherry on top to represent lowercase I. 
 
We continue to collect donations for the WINS Handbags With Heart. I had some helpers to sort and count the items we have so far. We are excited to see how many bags we can put together!

And just like that it is the middle of October! Soon we will be moving onto Halloween fun, which the kids have already started talking about. I have heard all about what they want to dress up as!
 
For now, we continued our Fall theme. The kids worked on their number recognition by working as a team to sequence leaf numbers and practiced writing their favourite number along with representing it using a bingo dabber.
 
We took notice of the ever-growing number of leaves on the ground, as well as the all the new purple leaves. We have looked at the colours, shapes and textures within the leaves, and talked about why leaves change colour in the Fall.
 
Our letters this week were E and H. The danced to letter songs and used their bodies to build these letters. The kids swirled shaving cream with food colouring so they could dip paper Es in it to get a marbled effect. We also have practiced identifying letter sounds in words through pictures we see.
 
Word Work Wednesdays have started for the "big" kids who are totally ready! They worked on rhyming and the “at” word family, making up funny sentences using “at” words and writing in capital and lowercase letters on the Handwriting Without Tears chalkboard.
 
Everyone has been working on their fine motor skills through play dough play and drawing of vertical line collages in their journals. 
 
The kids also worked on tiny wooden piece Fall patterns and shape/colour dominoes.

Happy Thanksgiving!
 
I hope everyone is having a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend!
 
We have so much to be thankful for.
 
We started our week by learning what it means to be thankful, listened to songs about being thankful and brainstorming, throughout the week, what we were thankful for. We thought about some truly important things that we have to be thankful for such as love, family and friends, our homes and the food we eat. The kids did a great job coming up with many more ideas as well.
 
The kids worked on their number recognition and counting through our thanksgiving number puzzles and our Fall counting representation cards.
 
We started our work on patterns this week, using our little wooden Fall pieces. The newbies did an awesome job learning from the big kids and the big kids did a great job telling and showing me the different types of patterns, they could think of. 
 
The kids did a little bit of pumpkin/cornstarch/water science this week too. The started by mixing water into pumpkin puree and then adding corn starch. This allowed us to talk about thin/thinner vs thick/thicker. It also ended up providing them with a taste test (definitely their idea, okayed by me) and the discovery of suction (while playing in their science-y mess they had a hard time picking up their upside-down cups). This fun lasted for more than an hour and resulted in many prune-y fingers!
 
We started our focused letter learning this week, starting with the letters L and F. The kids collected leaves to build L and they traced leaf shapes and write the letter L within them. For letter F, the kids used leaf confetti to build it and used a bingo dabber to dab the circles on top of F. And of course, letter learning would not be letter learning without some letter songs to go along with them. We had a lot of fun using the letter L sound to sing scales, up and down. The amount of laughter that came from that was awesome!
 
We also had a bit of Fall fun eating homemade crab-apple jelly on pancakes and going on a Fall scavenger hunt.
 
The kids also worked on their fine motor skills by threading yearn through holes in laminated leaves, and painted Thanksgiving turkeys.

This week we honoured the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. We learned about various Indigenous cultures, what Orange Shirt Day means at an age-appropriate level and what it means to accept and celebrate others for who they are. I was very proud of the children on Orange Shirt Day when they were able to tell passers-by why they were all wearing orange shirts. 
 
There are many wonderful resources out there that give us information that is suited to early learning ages. We really enjoyed CBC Kids two-minute-long videos about various aspects of Indigenous cultures. These videos helped put images and action to what we were learning about each day. Learning about Pow Wows, Indigenous regalia, Inuit Throat singing, and how drums are made and played was very interesting to us. We also had a lot of fun learning the Metis Jig, the Seal Dance and Fancy Shawl dancing. 
 
Learning about teepees was exciting too. We know what the shape of the teepee represents and how the “grandma’s arms” allow for fire smoke to escape out the top. We know that it is made from animal hides, that it has 13 poles, and the fire is placed in the middle of the teepee while the bedding was placed around the circle. We really liked that stories were told around these fires too. 
 
Now we didn’t have any poles, but we really tried to figure out how we could build a play teepee with what we had. There was a lot of trial and error, but together we figured out how to make the top pointy, while allowing the sides to drape. The kids then coloured and cut out paper fire so they could have a fire in their teepee. Once the paper fire was done, we all sat around it and took turns telling stories. This afternoon long activity allowed us to learn something about Indigenous culture, helped exercise those fine motor skills, taking turns and listening respectfully to others’ stories, and literacy skills such as how to tell a story with a beginning, middle and end. Learning through play is so much fun!
 
Count Me In by Sesame Street was a wonderful song/video that we listened to, watched and sang along to each morning this week. 
 
Our books of significance this week include
- The Big Umbrella by Amy June Bates
- It Takes a Village by Hillary Rodham Clinton
- Phyllis's Orange Shirt by Phyllis Webstad
- Strictly No Elephants by Lisa Mantchev
-You Are Enough by Margaret O’Hair and inspired by Sofia Sanchez
 
In their journals, the kids made a drawing inspired by The Big Umbrella. The umbrella represents them and their hearts. This umbrella can stretch to include and show kindness toward all sorts of beings.
 
We built a block clubhouse that was inspired by the story Strictly No Elephants. The important thing about this clubhouse is that anyone was allowed to play in it at any time, whether that be toys animals, toy cars, various toy people, etc. This book taught us that everything is better when we are in a community that includes everyone no matter their differences. The kids' clubhouse had some neat features including a treehouse, a pool, a climbing wall, and a train that would take you to and from the clubhouse.
 
At rest time we enjoyed watching Molly of Denali (based in Alaska). This kids’ show gently touches on parts of Indigenous cultures that were taken away and partly forgotten and how research/learning heled these kids embrace that part of their culture. This show it much more that what I have written, and I encourage you to check it out! 
 
We also embraced Fall this week, by exploring different gourds. So many neat colours and textures! We also worked with the concept of big, medium and small, and sequencing sizes in different ways.
 
We spent a few of our days this week out on Nose Hill. We went on a hike and were lucky enough to see deer! We also went “rock climbing” twice!
 
The big kids practiced writing their names in uppercase and lowercase letters and taught the new ones how to match uppercase and lowercase letters. One partner would choose a letter and the other would find the matching letter and tell them what it was called. This activity helped to teach newbies, reinforce this skill in other children and practice leadership skills. I loved the little celebration when they finished their task