What an exciting week we had! Our week was full of love and friendship, goodies, arts and crafts, fort building, reading and an extra special outing.

The kids made heart sticker patterns in their journals, finger-painted Love Trees, funny heart faces, and beautiful blow paintings. They worked on their number and letter identification, counting, number word matching and beginning letter sounds with a few different heart puzzles.

Our letters this week were G and S.

Our much anticipated PJ Book Party was a success! Together we built a fort where we read stories in our pjs, decorated paper Valentine bags and shared Valentine goodies. Everyone brought some of their favourite stories for all of us to enjoy. We also enjoyed a waffle, whipped cream and fruit lunch.

A couple of us had a special bowling outing. Thank you for letting me be a part of their first bowling experience!

Happy almost Valentine's Day!

The kids used cardboard heart tubes to stamp with, played with play dough and heart gems, and used eye droppers in a baking soda vinegar science. They also did some Valentine adding and numbers writing using foam and gem hearts, practiced sorting sizes and counting from 1-5 in French.

We journaled about what we love about ourselves. It's one thing to think of things you love about other people and a totally different thing to think about what you love about yourself. We talked about how it is just as important to love ourselves as it is to love another.

Our letters this week were O and Q. The kids drew pictures made out of circles and found capital and lowercase Q in their journal and "sticker attacked" it!

We had a lot of fun in the ravine this past week; seeing a weasel, building a snow/rock house, hearing our voices echo in the tunnel and playing where the creek usually runs.

We are looking forward to having our PJ Book Party next week! Remember to bring PJs and a favourite book!

The Groundhog did not see his shadow! We had been waiting all week to find out and were very excited to hear Balzac Billy's prediction.

We did a little Groundhog Day art using paint, nature/dirt and a paper groundhog. The kids sure enjoyed helping to scoop up some nature for this project!.

The kids practiced their fine motor skills, colour matching, and following instructions during our colour clip and match activity.

We worked on extending and creating patterns with our little spring time wooden pieces. I was quite impressed with some of the independently made patterns!

Our letters this week were U and C.

We also played with play dough, built paper boats and spent hours outside in the nice weather.

Happy Lunar New Year to all who celebrate!

To celebrate the new year, the kids made paper lanterns, red envelopes and cardboard tube/tissue dragons. We also had fun figuring out what animals our birth years were, doing a cross between the lion dance and the dragon dance underneath a sheet, and used chopsticks to pick up cotton balls.

The books we read this week were
My First Chinese New Year by Karen Katz
Bringing in the New Year by Hannah Eliot
How to Catch a Dragon by Adam Wallace
Ruby's Chinese New Year by VIckie Lee
Lunar New Year by Hannah Eliot

Our letters this week were T and I. There was a lot of singing, dancing, puzzling, matching, building and writing of these letters.

Some others things we did were journaling, built addition puzzles, and play dough .

Since we learned about penguins last week, it was only fitting to learn about animals at the opposite pole of the Earth. We sure learned a lot about Arctic animals this week! I love all of the questions they kept thinking up; they just wanted to know everything they could! There are so many animals, land and water to learn about that live in the Arctic, and we needed to know what they eat, how they stay warm, who their predators are, what type of home they live in, how they use their body characteristics to their advantage and many other things. It was really excited to see a few videos of the sounds beluga whales and walrus' make as well as the way Arctic foxes hunt for lemmings.

The kids worked on matching, sorting and making complex patterns on their own! They also drew narwhals with a patterned tusk in their journals.

We have been practicing storytelling using mini picture/word puzzles. And to see them bring out this box of puzzles during their free play and all take part in creating stories together was so wonderful! So many skills were being worked on; teamwork, taking turns, letter recognition, letter sounds, sequencing parts of a story, and creativity/imagination, to name a few.

Some weeks there is always something that the kids seem to gravitate towards during their free play. This week there was lots of puzzling, playing board games and reading together. Some of my favourite things to watch little ones do.

Our letters this week were E and H.

There was also some penguin sliding, brush exploring (and lots of burrs to pick off clothing) and play dough playing.

We learned about penguins this week! We learned where penguins live, what they eat, how they stay warm, who looks after the eggs and who hunts for the fish to eat.

We did a blubber experiment when talking about how penguins stay warm. The kids helped prepare the ice water by working together to pour the water and put in the ice. Then they wrapped one hand in a buttered glove before putting both hands in the ice bath. It was quite amazing to feel the difference between the two!

The kids had a lot of fun doing the Daddy Penguin Waddle by trying to walk while carrying a large pillow and holding an "egg" between their feet. So cute and funny to watch!

The kids practice matching various items like their uppercase and lowercase letters, shapes, and colours. They  matched penguin letters to igloo letters, and clipped the correct lowercase letter to match the uppercase letter. They also matched coloured toques with the corresponding coloured penguins. Some practiced spelling the colour words too.

The kids exploring the technique of splatter paintings too. I enjoy watching them explore techniques they haven't used often. I'm not sure if more painted ended up on the painting or on their hands!

We had a lot of fun exploring the outdoors, building teepees and playing tug o' war.

We also made a new batch of play dough.

We started up our letter learning for the year. Our first letters were L and F.

And we're back! Everyone was so excited to see each other and share what they did over the holidays!

We spent our week celebrating the new year and exploring the outdoors. We celebrated the new year by practicing a countdown from 10 and from 20, and once we got the hang of this we made Pom Pom Poppers to add to the end of the countdown! So much fun! The kids practiced writing the new year number and decorated all around it, in their journals. They also practiced their cutting by snipping rectangles on a cardboard tube and bending them back to make a firework shape, to then do some firework paint stamping.

Since we love singing our months of the year song so much, we started a new months of the year song where we have to help keep the beat.

We sure enjoyed our outdoor time! My little explorers were quite adventurous in where and how they chose to play and climb in the ravine. There was definitely a lot of problem solving and team work involved when dealing with the uneven landscape, snow and ice. As a teacher, this is so great to watch.

We learned a little bit about the holidays of Hanukkah and Kwanzaa. We noticed that these two holidays, along with Christmas, centre around being with the ones we love while enjoying music, yummy food, gift giving, and general quality time together. We sure had a fun time dancing along with Elmo to a dance for Kwanzaa and playing the Dreidal game with our friends. We also made a Kinara and sorted/patterned coloured candles.

Our letters this week were W and X.

The countdown to Christmas is on! We have been keeping track of the days we have left; building the number with our number blocks and writing the number on Bob the chalkboard elf.

The Kindness Elves, Ted and Fred have returned. We were so excited to see them! Each evening they have been leaving a new kindness idea in our advent calendar and finding new places to hide for us to find them. This week we made doggy treats for the pups in our lives, wrote letters to nurses for all their hard work, practiced allowing others to go out the door before ourselves and helped set up the Christmas tree. I cannot mention the 5th one, as it has turned into a very special gift.

We cannot wait for our first PJ day on Friday!

Animals of the night were our focus this week. We learned why some animals are awake at night, what characteristics they have to make night a better time for them to be awake and what these animals eat. We were surprised to learn that there are nocturnal snakes!

Since the September, we have been working on number counting, identifying and sequencing.  This group as a whole seem to be particularly interested in numbers so we have been having a little fun practicing skip counting by various numbers to see if we can make it to the current date on the calendar. This has been useful because this includes extra counting, identifying, figuring out odd/even, sequencing and fun. It has turned into quite the fun activity at morning meeting; there are always some squeals if we can arrive at the day's date when counting by whatever number they have chosen to try!

The kids made potato bats by poking toothpicks into a potato, and gluing paper wings they cut out to the toothpicks. They also made snowy owls by stamping forks into paint and onto their owl. Some then chose to cut their owl out while others left them as is. Great fine motor practice with the toothpicks, cutting and stamping!

This week the kids have been working on a game called I Have Who Has, where each child has a set of random numbers and when their number comes up in the sequence they say" I Have (ie: 7) Who Has (ie: 8)". We are practicing this game up to the number 20. The kids also worked on an owl number, number representation and number word game. Some of the kids were able to recognize what letter a number word started with and others used the Number Wall to match up the word to see which one was correct. When offered support, where they can still do it on their own, they are often more excited and feel independent.

Our letters this week were N and V. It worked out that the letter N fell on a week where we were learning about nocturnal animals. So when we tried sounding out the word Nocturnal there were definitely some AHA! moments. The kids also used their play dough to make a volcano for letter V. It was great fine motor practice squishing out a volcano shape and using a syringe to add vinegar to their baking soda. Baking soda and vinegar never gets old!

Some other things we did this week were Legos, colouring and playing the backyard. The cold weather didn't get us down, even though we could only spend 20-30 minutes out there at a time. A little one told me "at least we are very lucky to go in the backyard". Love it!  <3