Writing In Kindergarten

 

During many of our November conferences, we discussed the importance of our students practicing both their reading and writing.  We wanted to further expand on some ideas discussed during the conferences about writing.

 

Many children have really been interested in writing stories.  We meet in Guided Writing groups with 1/2 the class, every other day.  We recently read the book, "Buster Bunny Writes a Story."  This story is about a bunny whose looking for ideas to write a story in his notebook.  As he meets his friends along the way, they help him create a story by contributing ideas for Buster.

 

We have been talking with the children about what a good writer does when they write a story.

 

First, a good writer thinks about what they want to write about, then they draw pictures, then add words and finally can go back and add details to their writing.

 

We have challenged the children to write stories that make sense and have a story line.  We are encouraging sentence writing, writing words and writing any sounds they may know.  For children who cannot yet write full words and sentences, we are encouraging them to write their name, draw an illustration to get their idea on paper, and to add letters on the line to tell their story. 



 

Sensory Bottles

 

We have introduced our students to the new sensory bottles.  We have created the bottles using a wide variety of materials.  The students are invited to record their observations on the "I see" recording pages.  It's been a very popular centre!



 

We wanted to share our Fall Colours bulletin board with our families.  The students created play dough trees with a partner, fitted into our picture frame using fall leaf cookie cutters.  We also created a colloborative mural on Take Me Outside Day using real leaves pressed into paint, and then pressed onto the mural paper.  The painted art was inspired by fall colours and fall gourds/pumpkins.  It makes a beautiful display!

Remembrance Day 2014

 

 

 

We created a Peace Tree for Remembrance Day.  Each student was asked to write on a poppy to complete the sentence, "Peace is..."  We added our poppies to our new fabric tree banner.  Watch for this tree to be used throughout the year for a variety of activties.

 

We also created a Recipe for Peace together as a class.



 

Our New Attendance Stones

 

We have switched our red paper attendance cards in favour of a more natural choice.  When the students are invited into our classroom following O Canada and the morning announcements, they pick up the stone with their name.  Their stone is placed in the basket so that the teachers know they are at school for the day.

 

 

The Kindness Club

 

Recently, we had a visit from April, a standard poodle.  April and her owner visited with our students as part of a program to teach students about kindness.  The Kindness Club prepares presentations for elementary students to help them reflect on the need to show kindness to animals and people.  Our students really enjoyed having such a sweet dog visiting with us.

 

We had a number of small pumpkins in our classroom in the days leading up to Halloween.  We placed some of the pumpkins with a selection of gourds at our art centre.  Students were invited to select a gourd/pumpkin to sketch and paint.  The art was displayed on our new artist bulletin board in our classroom, and on our hallway bulletin board.  At our science table, we placed the pumpkins with a variety of tools for our students to explore.  On this day, we put out a balance scale, mirrors and magnifying glasses.  Our students were invited to find an answer to the question, "Which pumpkin weighs the most?"

 

Take Me Outside Day!

 

Our students have been enjoying fall walks in recent days.   The David Suzuki Foundation invited teachers and students to participate in Take Me Outside Day on October 29th.  We decided to create fall art using leaves collected during our fall walks and paint. We painted the leaves and pressed them on the mural paint during this collaborative art project.  If you happen to be in the school, please come and take a look at the finished product!

Pumpkin Inquiry

 

 Our students learned about estimation on Halloween.  We asked them to estimate how many seeds were inside our pumpkin.  We discussed that an estimate was really a guess because we couldn't see through the rind into the pumpkin.  We recorded our guesses on the chart.

 

 Later in the day, we asked our students to think about another pumpkin question.  We asked them to decide which pumpkin they thought would have more seeds - a small pumpkin or a big pumpkin.  We recorded their guesses on another chart. 

 During the afternoon learning centres, we invited interested students to come and remove the seeds from both the small and big pumpkins.  We then washed the seeds, and laid them out to dry.  We will count the seeds on Monday, and find out which pumpkin had the most seeds.

 



Pumpkin Inquiry

 

After our students had an opportunity to study the outside of our pumpkins, we decided we wanted to learn more about what was inside our pumpkin.  We cut open one of our pumpkins, read a book that described the inside, and discussed some new pumpkin vocabulary.  Students were then invited to the science centre to record their observations of the inside of the pumpkin.



Pumpkin Inquiry

Our students have been participating in a pumpkin inquiry.  We would like to thank the families who contributed to our discovery/fall science centre.  We began our inquiry by reading books about pumpkins, and examining the outside of our pumpkins.  The students recorded on their science page what they saw on the outside of our pumkins.