Our Spring Walk

 

On Earth Day, we took our students for a school yard clean up and spring walk.  We were looking for litter that we could pick up.  We have many budding environmentalists in our class, and we were eager to help the Earth by cleaning it up!  During our clean up, we also keep our eyes open for signs of spring.  The following few photos are the signs of spring we found around our school. 

 

 A lone daffodil

 New grass

 Tree buds

 Tulips

 Purple Spring Flower

 The grass turns green

 Iris sprouts

Beautiful Daffodils



We have been challenging our students to focus on their learning needs during Literacy Centre time.  If they need to work on letters, we encourage them to select an activity from the ABC Centre.  If they need to work on sounds, we encourage them to select an activity from our Language Tubs.  If they need to work on making words, we encourage them to select a Word Building Puzzle.  If they need to work on their storywriting, we encourage them to select the Writing Centre.  We were very pleased to see two of our students use our letter tiles to create popcorn words using the mini pocket charts.

 



 

Bean Plant - from the classroom windowsill

Bean Plant - from Mrs. Greco's closet

 

We have been learning about the needs of living things - plants, animals and people.  As part of our exploration, we planted two pots with bean seeds.  We placed one pot in the classroom window, with regular drinks of water and lots of sun.  The other pot was placed inside Mrs. Greco's closet, with regular drinks of water but no sunlight.  The children were very excited to see the plant begin to grow in the window!  It confirms what we had read about the needs of plants.

Data Management

 

 

We have recently completed our unit of study on data management.  The students have learned how graphs help us to organize data.  As a whole class, we created four types of graphs.  We created a tally chart, bar graph, pictograph and a pie chart about our favourite kinds of fruit.  We learned that you can display the same information/data in many different ways.  The students also rotated through 6 math centres for opportunities to explore and create their own graphs.  The tally chart centre was definitely the most popular.  The students enjoyed asking their friends to vote on their tally question, and then recording their data on their very own tally chart!

 

 

 

Our Bar Graph

Our Tally Chart

 



 

Our Pictograph



 

Thank you to all our families who attended media night on Thursday, April 3rd.  We enjoyed sharing our tech projects with you.  Our class published a class book on Storybird.  We had our book displayed on our data projector, and we also published a "real" copy of our book.  We will begin sharing the book with our families in the weeks ahead!  

It's Spring!!!

 



We are excited to welcome a new season!  Our class will be participating in a number of activities as we explore the new season.  Today, we planted seeds.  One container will be placed in the window - exposed to the sun, fresh air and regular watering.  The other container will be placed in a dark cupboard.  We will be observing our two plants for signs of change.  The students will also be going on spring walks around the school property to look for signs of spring, and completing their spring trees in art to document the four seasons.  We have been focusing on living things in science, as well as animal habitats.

A Blast from Winter

 

I neglected in my recent posts to include these photos from a very popular centre in our classroom.  During our Olympic unit in February, we created frozen hockey rinks and hockey players.  The hockey rinks were created on cookie sheets, and the players were Lego people frozen in ice cube trays.  We had so much fun playing like the Olympic atheletes!

 



Sparkle Words

 

 

We continue to focus on our popcorn words at school, but we have added sparkle words to our daily review.  We can find sparkle words in our morning message each day, in our storybooks, in our literacy centre materials, and around our classroom.  We shine as readers when we can read the sparkle words.  We created a sparkle word bulletin board to highlight the sparkle words we know how to read.  During our daily literacy centre time, students at read and write the room are recording popcorn and sparkle words to read to a teacher and a friend.  Way to go Kindergarten readers!!!

 

Patterns Patterns Everywhere

 

The wonderful mathematicians from room 132 have been exploring and learning about many math concepts this term.  We learned to see patterns all around us - in our classroom, in our school, on our clothes and everywhere in the world around us.  We created this bulletin board display by making patterns from link cubes, and also using bingo dabbers. 

Magnetic Letters and Cookie Sheets

 

 A wonderful way to practice making popcorn words!

 

Our Kindergarten students have enjoyed playing with the "Pop for Sight Words" game!  We are excited to be learing more and more popcorn words to help us improve our reading and writing.  The children have also enjoyed using our game show buzzers!  So much noise - so much fun!