Thursday 30 January 2014

Week 19: These Are The Shapes We Know!

Books We Read
Lin Yi's Lantern
Get Out Of Bed!

Song of the Week
These are the Shapes I Know
Sung to the tune of "These are the Daves I know"

These are the shapes I know, I know. These are the shapes I know.
Count the sides! Only one! It’s a circle, round and fun!
These are the shapes I know, I know. These are the shapes I know.
Count the sides! Only three! A triangle, so pointy!
These are the shapes I know, I know. These are the shapes I know.
Count the sides! Four the same! Square, square, that’s it’s name!
Count the sides! 2 short, two long! It’s a rectangle to end the song
These are the shapes I know, I know. These are the shapes I know.

Weekly Centres
Letter O
After working on Letter C on Monday, we tried our hand at the Letter O, remembering to complete the circle we started when we were making Cs.

Sandbox Shape Sort
The sandbox was filled with triangles, rectangles, squares and circles, and it was our job to figure out where they were and which containers to put them in to.

Snowflake Making
We continued using how to learn scissor, as Mr. McCullough gave us folded pieces of papers.  We cut traingles, rectangles, squares and circles into the, added some glitter, and then hung the snowflakes from our winter branch!

Sight Word Beyblade Battle
 A list of sight words was printed up and put into a container, and Mr. McCullough "let it rip" with one of the Beyblades in the class!  When the Beyblade landed on a word, we had to find it on our paper, making a simple graph.  We tracked each game to see which Beyblade one and, at the end, some of us tried doing it on our own!

Sounds of the Week
We worked on the difference between the "oo" in "book" and the "oo" in "too", and we also worked on our "V" sound in words like "vroom!"

Other Things We Did
We turned some of the letters in our message into shapes, changing an H into two squares and a rectangle, an L in to a triangle, and a C into a circle!

We talked more about the Lunar New Year and spent a little time discussing the difference between what we are like, and what we like.  This will be important when we do our Zodiac activity next week!

Monday 20 January 2014

Week 18: For He Was Working Hard!

Books We Read
The Boy Who Ate The World
What Animals Really Like
The Great Race: The Story of the Chinese Zodiac

Weekly Centres
Letter Y
One of our two printing letters this week, Y was the first one where we had to start in the top corner but go diagonally.  We had to practice hard to not draw a "V with a tail", but eventually, we got it!

Tissue Paper Pictures
We used squares of tissue paper to create houses, horses, princesses, mermaids, and whatever else we could think of.  We then counted which squares we used the most, and which squares we used the least.

Medical Centre
Our drama centre was set up as a hospital this week, with people coming in with all kinds of "ailments", like flus and broken arms, in order to get fixed up.

Sight Word Magnets
FOR, WAS and HE were our sight words this week.  We lined up our magnets underneath and tried to sound out as many sight words as we could.  Some of us even practiced finding older sight words!

Other Things We Did
We talked some more about most, least and equal, using it to talk about our brand new sight words and many other things in the class.

Letter X was our full-class letter on Monday, and we got a chance to share our printing skills with our Reading Buddies.

We learned that, in China and other parts of the world, people follow a different calendar and celebrate the Lunar New Year.  We also learned about the legend of the Chinese Zodiac, why the cat and rat are still enemies, and we guessed what animals we might be!


Thursday 16 January 2014

Week 17: Welcome Back Kindies!

Books We Read
A is for Musk Ox
I Want My Hat Back
The After Christmas Tree

Song of the Week
Round the Village

Go round and round the village (repeat x3), as we have done before.
Go in and out the window (repeat x3), as we have done before.
Now come and face your partner (repeat x3), as we have done before.
Now follow me to London (repeat x3), as we have done before.
*Ask your child if they remember the dance

Weekly Centres
The Letter X
We started off the year with the letter "X", combining two big lines with one big letter.

Holiday Highlight
Everybody drew a picture of their Holiday Highlight, sharing one important, fun or interesting thing that happened over the holidays.  We heard about birthdays, presents, playing in the park and people without power!

Winter Tree
With a different colour palate, we "repeated" our autumn tree activity, this time making winter trees, looking through our nearby windows to see what differences we could see.

Most, Least & Equal Cubes
Mr. McCullough gave everybody a bag of cubes.  We had to figure out which colour we had the most of, which we had the least of, and which two colours we had equal amounts of.  Then, we coloured some squares that matched the words on a piece of paper so we could show what we know.

Other Things We Did
We had a big talk about all the fun things we did over our break!

We talked about how equal doesn't mean same.  Our daily math question helped with this, as Mr. McCullough would put up groups of shapes, asking us which groups were equal.  We learned that equal refers to the number that are the same, not if something is the same colour, or same shape, or same size... although sometimes it can!

Our Drama Centre has been redone as a Hospital, and we had lots of people acting out slip-and-fall injuries!