Week 9: Halloweek!

Books We Read
How Many Seeds Are In A Pumpkin?
Trick or Treat, Smell My Feet!
It Didn't Frighten Me!

Weekly Centres
October Portfolio
After two months of practicing our "Frog Jump" letters and working on our drawing skills, we got to add another page to our Kindergarten Portfolio.  It was amazing to see the difference in detail in our pictures and how much neater our names looked!

Fall Trees
We went outside and took "mental pictures" of trees in our schoolyard.  Then, we got to paint what those trees looked like, using some lines that Mr. McCullough set up as branches, as well as brown, green, grey, red, yellow and orange paint!

Witching Water Table
With the help of the Jackman Daycare, our water table has been turned into a spooky sight, with various tools, plastic lab equipment, and even eyeballs!  It was fun making things like witches soup, or experimenting with small water pumps.

Boneyard Dig
Our sand table was full of bones and old animals, so we got to dig it up and see what we could find!

Other Things We Did
We completed some of our pumpkin experiments!  Here's what we learned;

• You can tell how old a pumpkin is by how many lines it has on the outside.  We had three pumpkins in the class - large, medium and small - and figured out that they were all the same age because they all had the same number of lines!  We also guess that, since they all came to the class together, they all came from the same store, so they probably also all came from the same pumpkin patch.
• Our prediction about pumpkins floating was RIGHT!  All three of our pumpkins floated!

The letter "D" was added to our Jolly Jingle list, and we used it to figure out clues about where to stand in the room ("Line up at the place that starts with the "D" sound!")

Mr. Plytas created a Pumpkin Patch obstacle course in the GPR, and we all got to move around it using Scooter Boards!  It was lots of fun, with most people's favourite part being wheeling under the mats!

We had our Halloween Parade on Thursday afternoon, walking through the schoolyard to Chester Avenue, then onto the Danforth, then back up Jackman Avenue before stopping for photos in the schoolyard!  It was a lot of fun and, boy, did we look amazing!

Our Halloween craft was making "Baby Boo" Pumkins!  We used paints, glue, googly eyes, pipe cleaners, leaves, rhinestones, pom-poms - whatever we could find to make the most amazing little pumpkin we could!  Once they dry, they'll be coming home for everybody to see!

Herman the Worm came back, this time causing all sorts of Halloween mischief!

We had our first surprise fire drill, and everybody was super brave and quiet!  Good work!

Week 8: Pumpkin Time!

Books We Read
Pumpkin Cat
Who Said Boo?:  A Book of Halloween Poems
The Bumpy Little Pumpkin

Song of the Week
The Three Ghosts
Oooooooooooooooo! 1, 2, 3!
Oooooooooooooooo! Ghosts are we!
Oooooooooooooooo!  When you sleep...
Oooooooooooooooo!  Then we creep!
Oooooooooooooooo!  You won't hear...
Oooooooooooooooo!  When we're near!
Oooooooooooooooo!  What we do....
Oooooooooooooooo!  We scare you!
BOO!!!

Weekly Centres
The Letter R
We added the letter "R" to our printing base, with it being the last of the "Frog Jump Letters".  Just in time to try writing some letters all by ourselves in next week's portfolio!

My Halloween Costume
Everybody got a piece of paper with a blank person, and we had to draw a picture of what we thought we would be for Halloween this year.

Ghosts
We covered egg cartons with white paint and then added chopped up white tissue all around.  Then we added googly eyes and Mr. McCullough finished the ghosts off with a pipe cleaner.  Now, they're hanging scarily at the front of the class!

Sight Word Magnets
After adding "it" and "of" to our sight words, we repeated our sight word challenge, trying to make those words while still working on "on" and "and".

Other Things We Did
We started learning about pumpkins.  The first thing we did was talk to a friend and tell them what we knew about pumpkins.  Then, we listened to what our friends knew about pumpkins.  Finally, we shared what we knew about pumpkins with the class.

Mr. McCullough took us to see the leftover pumpkins from the Harvest Festival.  We gave our ideas about which pumpkins were older (we thought it would be the biggest ones), which ones had the most seeds (again, we thought it would be the biggest ones) and which ones were heavier and how we could find out for sure (we could pick them up).

We all made a prediction about whether a pumpkin would float or sink.  Surprisingly, EVERYBODY  in the class thought that, in spite of its size, the pumpkin would float, saying things like "vegetables usually float" and "it has nothing inside, so it will float".  We'll find out next week!

We added M and R to our Jolly Jingle songs!

After learning The Three Ghosts, we surprised our Reading Buddies by hiding in the room, singing them the song while we were hidden and then jumping out to surprise them!

We talked about the difference between stories and poems, learning that poems were like short little stories.  They have less words, can sometimes rhyme, and can be quick, interesting and funny.

Week 7: G-Leaf-ully back!

Books We Read
The Grumpy Bird
All By Myself

Song of the Week
Scarecrow Dan
I am funny old scarecrow Dan!
I flip and I flop like a scarecrow can.
I move my arms.
I move my wrists.
I move my legs.
And a shake my fists!
I bend way down.
And I bend way back.
I jump up and down like a jumping jack!
I stand real still and I don't make a sound.
Then I sit back down upon the ground.

Weekly Centres

GLeaves!
We put some of our leaf collection to good use this week, creating happy little leaves after Mr. McCullough taught us that the word "glee" is another word for happy!  We painted our leaves using autumn colours, then bent a red pipe cleaner into a smile, added some googly eyes and then "mounted" them on a paper plate.  The result was pretty funny!

Sight Word Magnet Mania
Using last week's sight words of and and to, as well as our brand new sight words, on and is, we used magnet letters to make each sight word as many different times as possible.

My Own Five Line
After a quick reminder on number order, we made our own number lines from 1 to 5, using poster board, paper numbers and glue sticks!  We'll be using these number lines next week once we learn a bit more about five frames!

The Letter B
We're working on the letter "B" this week.  Like all of our letters, we're starting at the TOP, moving down, frog jumping back to the TOP and then making two "bumps" to get down to the bottom, all words that we figured out started with B!

Other Things We Did
Mr. McCullough introduced us to the five frame!  Some of us thought it was a hopscotch course at first, but after we figured out it wasn't, we learned the first way we could use a five frame, which was ordering numbers.  We'll be learning different ways over the next few weeks!  We also matched items to numbers in the five frame when it was all mixed up!

On Tuesday, everybody got to plant a daffodil bulb in our kinder garden!  Once spring happens, we'll get to see the beautiful yellow daffodils in bloom!

We put our Jolly Jingle letters (S A T I P and N) into a six-letter word that we were using this week - PAINTS!!!  More words to come!

We figured out the word sounds that start "egg" and "hop" and added them to our song repertoire!

Week 6: What Does "Thankful" Mean?

Due to Mr. McCullough's illness at the start of the week and photo day on Wednesday, plans had to be slightly adjusted to accommodate for supply teachers, hence the shortened blog entry this week.

Books We Read
All of Me: A Book of Thanks

Song of the Week
The Turkey Dance
(Sung to "Turkey in the Straw)
Well you turkey to the left, then you turkey to the right.
And you take your turkey foot and you scratch with all your might.
Next you take your turkey head and you move it wobble wobble
And you spin around in place and you say "Gobble Gobble".

Other Thing We Did
We learned that the letter C sometimes sounds just like the letter K, like at the start of cat, cake and cartoon.

We added the letter P to our printing list, and it was the first letter that we've both used in printing and in our Jolly Jingles!

Sight words were introduced this week, as Mr. McCullough started playing "Sight Word Snap-Up" on our message!  While Mr. McCullough read the message a second time, we had to play close attention and say "ZIP!" whenever he said a sight word.  Somebody then got a turn to circle that sight word!

Picture Day on Wednesday!  We all looked pretty fabulous!

The class talked about what we were thankful for, and how being thankful is different than just liking something.  We also acted out the story of "The Old Lady and the Vinegar Bottle", about an old lady who never said thank you and took all the gifts given to her by a magical fish for granted!

October Calendar & Colour Groups

Below are the class colour groups for the next six or so weeks.  After that time, the groups will switch.  The groups are used at the start of some activity periods, the beginning of centre times, and for activities such as show and share.  

Eliot Ezra Aidan Ella Christina	Matija Samson Roslyn Natalie
Unaswi Matthew Ana Sofia Talia	Vasili Nolan Isaac Shaugnessy Ayana

Week 5: Mixing and Fixing

Books We Read
If You Give A Moose A Muffin
I Love My New Toy
Children Make Terrible Pets

Weekly Centres
Fix The Mix
In our new groups, we had to figure out how Mr. McCullough had sorted some mixed up buckets, and then work together to put the right item in the right bucket.

What Fall Will Look Like
We took old, crumbling leaves we gathered and created fall scenes, using fall crayon and marker colours, glue sticks, and crumbled leaves.

Drama Centre - The School House
Everybody was given a chance to explore our new drama centre, which has been set up like a classroom for older students.

Sand Centre 
This was a free centre this week, where we got to explore and experiment with the different sand toys.

Other Things We Did
We went on a Leaf Hunt on Tuesday, sorting the leaves we found by good leaves (which we will use for an art activity next week) and "crumby leaves".  Those leaves will be used for an activity this week.

The rain on Monday rearranged our plans a bit, so we did our printing as a full class, with everybody working on the letter "D!"

We used our Feel Good Friends to explain what a line looks like, how we're supposed to go to the back and, if somebody accidentally goes in front of us, we politely tell them "the back is over there!"

In If You Give A Moose A Muffin, we looked for clues that told us it was fall (cold air, falling leaves, sweaters) and then acted out the story, trying our best to remember what happens after something else happens first.

To get ready for it in our Centres, we played "Fix the Mix!"  Mr. McCullough accidentally dropped a bunch of our sorting items on the floor and we had to figure out which ones go in which bucket by using the clues we found in each bucket.

Our drama centre is being turned from school to house!  With help from the Jackman Daycare, our centre will change every once in a while so we can have all sorts of different dramatic experiences.