Week 13: Growing and Shrinking Snow!

Books We Read
The Great Paper Caper
The Chanukkah Guest
Press Here

Song of the Week
Douglas Mountain

Snows are a falling on Douglas Mountain,
Snows are a falling so deep!
Snows are a falling on Douglas Mountain
Putting all the bears to sleep!
Putting all the bears to sleep....

Trimming the wicks on Douglas Mountain
Shining up the chimney so bright!
Trimming the wicks on Douglas Mountain
So we can bring the night!
So we can bring the night...

Weekly Centres
November Portfolio
We added another page to our portfolio, and boy are our drawings getting more detailed!  Mr. McCullough is asking us to use at least two colours and the results are astounding!

Growing and Shrinking Cubes
Using snap cubes, we created crowing and shrinking cube patterns.  We tried to make them as big as we can, with some of us getting seven levels high!

Growing Buildings
In our building centre, we created pyramid-style buildings with a bunch of different blocks

Melting the Ice
We experimented with ice cubes and blocks of coloured ice, seeing what we could do to make them melt faster.  We figured out that leaving them in the water, holding them in our hands and rubbing them, or swirling them around in the water made them melt faster.

Other Things We Did

We discussed proper snow attire and learned THE ORDER to put on our snow gear!  The most important thing to learn was shoes off, snowpants first, mittens last!

Our clue finding skills were worked on in The Great Paper Caper and The Chanukkah Guest as we tried to figure out who was chopping down trees in the forest and why, and why an old grandmother thought that a bear was her Rabbi!

We learned that heat makes snow and ice melt, that you can't freeze ice cubes in an afternoon and that a container of snow takes longer than a whole afternoon to melt.  We're also experimenting with one of our class pumpkins to see if keeping it in the snow outside will make it last longer before it rots away...

...and it couldn't rot away because it was TAKEN!!!  What a mystery!!!  We're looking at a few different clues about where it went, including one student seeing "a man in a dark shirt and a grey beard" taking it away, and a letter that was left behind by "Officer Peter Pumpkineater", who we don't think is actually an officer!  I wonder if we can follow the clues to find out who took our pumpkin and why???

Our daily survey is in full swing, with questions this week asking us to match numbers to patterns, figure out which pattern was growing, an who was better dressed for winter.

A Latin band came into our school for our first assembly!  We listened to music from all over Latin America and one of our classmates was picked by the band to get up on stage and play the maracas!  We all got to dance along to the music at the end!

"B" and the "AI" combination became a part of our Jolly Jingles!

We read the fantastic "Press Here" with our Reading Buddies who, next week, will be helping us make our own "Press Here" books!

Week 12: Things YOU can only do IN THE fall!

Books We Read
Leaf Man
Fall, Leaves, Fall
Stick Man

Song of the Week - What Do The Leaves Say?

Weekly Centres
Printing H and K
We're working on two letters a week now, with one letter (H) being done during our regular centres, while the other letter (K) is done as a full class activity before free centre time.

Leaf People
After reading Leaf Man, we created our own leaf people using leaves that we picked up on a very blustery Monday!

Sight Word Magnets
Our three new sight words became the focus of our magnet board, as you, in and the were all spelled using magnetic letters.

Only In The Fall
As fall comes to an end, we drew pictures of things we could only do in the fall.  For instance, we can only go Trick or Treating in the fall, because that's when Halloween is, but we can dress up in costumes any time!

Other Things We Did
We got to know our new colour groups this week!  The new groups will be staying the same all the way until the end of December!

We also started using magnetic name tags to answer questions in class.  This will be a daily thing now, where we come into the room, sign our name, and then use our name tag to answer a question on our magnet board.

We talked about the word only and decided that it meant things that happen one time, something that is all by itself, or something where there is only one.

Letter "L" was added to our Jolly Jingle song list!

Week 11: Pigeons, Patterns and Pajamas

Books We Read
Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late!
The Pigeon Wants a Dog!
Imagine a Night

Weekly Centres
Printing M
We added "M" to our printing skills this week, which was really helpful for students in our room whose name starts with M!

Pattern Painting
Using three different colours, we created multi-coloured pattern strips, where we could create patterns with stripes, shapes, or any other things we could think of.

The Pigeon Can...
After reading so many books about what the Pigeon can't do, we decided to come up with an idea of what the Pigeon CAN do.  We had pigeons eating ice cream, pigeons getting married, pigeons driving cars and pigeons inviting people to their house!

Flower Shop
Every group had a chance to use our Drama Centre in their colour group, playing "Flower Shop" with all of the neat items inside.

Other Things We Did
"O" and "U" were added to our list of Jolly Jingles, and we noticed that some letter sounds can sound an awful lot alike!

Two new sight words made it in to the sight word board!  We also talked about how, while Sight Words are important, they aren't the most important thing in a story, so we need to calm down a bit when we find them.  =0)

Mr. McCullough showed us a paper man and explained how hurting somebody else's feelings is like making tiny rips.  We fixed the paper man with tape but, after a while, we noticed that we could still see the rips, kind of like how we remember when somebody has made us feel bad.  At the end of the talk, we decided it was better to not hurt feelings at all, and that sorry isn't going to fix everything.

We talked about the difference between using our imagination and describing things that actually happen.

November Calendar

Week 10: Peace

Books We Read
Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus
A Poppy is to Remember
The Peace Book
Playing War
Can You Say Peace

Song of the Week


See The Poppies (Sung to the tune & cadence of "Frere Jacques")
See the poppies
Oh so red!
Growing on the hillside
For the dead.

We remember
On this day
Soldiers on the hillside
Far away.

Centres This Week
Due to our seed count on Monday and a big art project on Friday, we adjusted centres slightly.  Here's what we did.

How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin!
After Mr. McCullough opened up the pumpkin for us, we started counting all the seeds, placing them on a hundreds grid to see if any of us predicted the right amount.  We didn't even come close, because our pumpkin had 503 seeds!

The Letter N
We kept adding to our printing skills this week, learning a new letter with the letter "N"

Pattern Lines
Once we had learned that patterns are something that repeats over and over and over and over and over and over and over, we tried creating our own patterns.  At one station, we used things we could lay flat on a table, side by side, like bears, buttons and various shapes.

Pattern Structures
For our other pattern station, we got a little fancy, using items we could build with to make "3D" patterns.  Some of us did quite well, creating different building and items that followed pattern rules.

What Peace Means to Us
After talking about Remembrance Day, peace, and what peace means to us, we created our own red and black tissue paper poppies with the help of some parents who came into the classroom!  After we crumpled up the tissue paper and stuck it on the poppy, we gave them to Mr. McCullough, who wrote down what peace means to each and every one of us!  Our poppy poster will be on display during the school Remembrance Day assembly!

Other Things We Did
We kept things light on Monday by reading "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!"  The discussion got so interesting that we might end up doing something with it during our centres next week!

We talked a lot about peace, why it is important to remember people on Remembrance day, why war is never a good idea, and what we can do to be better people and not get into fights that cause wars.

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.