This month, we had lots of fun celebrating the winter holidays together. Every morning, 2 children were invited to dress up as "les lutins" and welcome everyone into the classroom with a special greeting. We also had a round of montre et raconte, sharing a special family tradition with the class. I enjoyed learning about your family traditions! We celebrated Grinch Day. Students drew examples of how to make the Grinch's heart grow, such as asking "Are you OK?", sharing, cleaning up, helping a friend... After reading the story book, we also made Grinch masks with our Big Buddies and together we watched the cartoon in French. All month long, students earned stickers to help make the Grinch's heart grow. Thank you to everyone who was able to help us decorate the classroom for the holidays. Students rotated through several craft stations: pattern chains, coffee filter snowflakes, decorating stockings, and making ornaments for the tree. It's always lovely to have the families in the classroom. We also transformed the classroom into Santa's workshop for the day. We made elf hats, and the elves busied themselves making presents for their families. I hope you enjoyed your special reindeer ornament. On Frozen day, many students dressed up. We rotated through various centers, such as puppets, small world play, building Elsa's castle, qtip painting, and Roll an Olaf. We also enjoyed the movie in French. Some of the other activities from this month include playing in our gingerbread house at centers, choosing a tree for JQ from the lot at Byng, dressing up in PJ's for our Winter Sing-a-long, and making snowmen and Santa Claus crafts. We also wrote letters to Santa Claus and he wrote us back! On our last afternoon together, we enjoyed some learning centers. Students went on a scavenger hunt around the classroom to find winter vocabulary words, we built snowmen and snowflakes out of pattern blocks, decorated winter playdough mats, explored on our light table and played a math roll and cover dice game. Thank you to all the parents who helped out and who sent in a special snack to share. Thank you parents for the thoughtful gifts. I enjoyed my shopping spree at Anthropologie. I hope you enjoyed your holidays and I look forward to a successful Term 2 together! :)
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This November, we were learning about the body. We explored some new learning toys during centers, such as a puzzle about the body, a tactile turn n match where students match different textures relying only on their sense of touch, and melodee bells where students ring bells of different notes to play familiar songs, such as Jingle Bells. We also themed our kitchen as a store. At bricolage students created grocery flyers through collage, and at le magasin, students engaged in financial role play by using the cash register to sell and buy goods. Here are some of the activities we completed in our journals about food: We learned a new song about our body parts. Check out the lyrics under the music tab. We read 2 emergent reader booklets this month, one about food and one about our body. These booklets build our confidence as “readers” through a repetitive sentence structure (e.g. “Je mange…”) and review the vocabulary words we are learning. We are working on tracking with our finger as we read. We also played many games to explore our 5 senses. Students became scientists and recorded their hypotheses and results in their science duotangs. Students were asked to observe 10 objects for 1 minute, and then draw as many as they could remember. We played a listening game where students tried to identify a mystery sound. We also played a game on the carpet where students closed their eyes and tried to hear from where in the classroom someone was ringing a bell. This is a great way to focus our attention. We explored our sense of touch by feeling a mystery object and we explored our sense of smell by passing around smelling bottles and trying to match them to their scent. We finished with a celebration with our Big Buddies where we described popcorn using our 5 senses – and finished with the sense of taste! We also played a round of food Bingo to reinforce our vocabulary words. One of the most popular words in class right now is banane - thank you Minions! Our big art project this month was painting lifesize self-portraits. Our Big Buddies helped trace our outline and then together, we painted our portraits. We are very happy with the results. See if you can pick out which one is your child! Students got into the spirit of Halloween by creating monsters out of basic shapes. Not only was this excellent cutting practice, it also allowed us to practice our shape vocabulary. We presented our monsters to the class, counting how many of various shapes we used in our artwork. We began Halloween week with a field trip to the pumpkin patch. Thank you to all the parent volunteers who helped make this event possible. One of the highlights for me was playing in the hay barn with the children. We have been learning all about patterns in math. Students were asked to demonstrate their understanding of patterns by creating "pattern bats." We had many questions about bats, so Madame read us a nonfiction book about bats during circle time. We learned several new songs for Halloween. We made a spider puppet and put on a little puppet show, singing “Araignée Gypsie.” I have video of this that I will share with you soon. Students were delighted to tell me that they knew this song in English already! Check out the songs under "les chansons" tab.
I hope you had a safe and happy Halloween!
Division 16 has been learning all about families. I was very proud of les amis for presenting their first montre et raconte of a photograph of their family in front of the class. We practiced using our vocabulary: Voici Maman, Voici Papa. Students were encouraged to think about relative sizes in these drawings, and we reviewed our size vocabulary together: petit, moyen, grand. We learned 2 new songs: one about being thankful for our families & another about autumn. Check out the lyrics under "les chansons" tab. Here are some of the activities we completed in our journals about families: Stickers are a great fine motor activity to do at home - peeling stickers works to strengthen the pincer grasp, which is necessary for correct hand writing. Our emergent reader for Thanksgiving week was on being thankful. On the last page of their booklet, we wrote something we are thankful for. Here are the things Division 16 is thankful for: In the science corner, students have been weighing pumpkin seeds, looking at pinecones with magnifying glasses, and exploring nonfiction books about pumpkins, apples, and bats. I hope you enjoyed the Thanksgiving cards we made with the help of our Big Buddies. To celebrate the arrival of autumn, we held la chasse aux trésors de l'automne. Students explored outside with their Big Buddies and collected leaves of different colours, pinecones, etc. We returned in the class and made texture rubbings using oil pastel. Division 16 has been busy learning our colour words. We celebrated our learning by dressing up in each colour of the rainbow on a designated theme day – and we finished with a gigantic rainbow day celebration! Here are some of the activities we have been doing to practice our vocabulary. We practiced our emergent reading skills by tracking with our finger as Madame Lauren read us this booklet. We were able to “read” the colour words along with her using the pictures and beginning letter sounds as clues.
This month, we added a new page to our Kindergarten Portfolio. October’s page is about our favourite colour. Students used their cahier de vocabulaire like a dictionary to help them spell out their colour word. With our Big Buddies, we practiced our cutting skills by cutting out basic shapes to make ice cream cones in every colour of the rainbow. Our Big Buddies encouraged us to use our French colour words and helped us label our colours.
Congratulations mes petits amis on finishing your first 3 days of FULL DAY Kindergarten We began the week with an activity on our first day feelings. We continue to focus on learning one another’s names with our morning greeting circle time activity.We have learned to greet one another using a 2 handed wave, a thumb kiss, and a pinky hug. Morning circle time is a great time to check in, practice speaking/listening skills, and build our classroom community.We begin every day with singing “Bonjour mes amis” and already, the children are singing and clapping along.You can check out the lyrics under the music tab. We read Non David and brainstormed classroom rules together. Students created their own Non Division 16 book by drawing a “Non” rule-breaking example on the top of the page and a “Oui” rule-following example on the bottom. This book will live in our classroom library. We finished off the week by making our very own Non David masks. Thank you to Madame Angel and her Grade 4 class for looking out for us on the playground this week. They will be our Big Buddy class and we will typically get together every Friday throughout the year. This week, we drew self-portraits and exchanged them with our Big Buddies. This way, every child has a portrait of their Big Buddy to keep! We celebrated a birthday this week: Bonne Fete Emma! As part of our birthday traditions, Emma wore our birthday cape and blew out the candles on her giant cake. Merci to her family for sending in heart-shaped fruit skewers as a special birthday treat! I’m looking forward to celebrating colour week with the students this week!
Welcome back from Spring Break! Division 16 has been busy celebrating Spring. We made Easter Eggs out of coloured tissue paper (fantastic fine motor practice and hard work!) and we made cherry blossom trees out of oil pastel and popcorn. We also practiced using the sentence structure Je vois. Please come admire our bulletin board at drop-off/pick-up time! A GROS merci to Lisa, Wendy, Mayumi, Julie, and Amy, who volunteered at our Easter celebration. Students ran relays, such as balancing an egg on a spoon, bean bag toss, potato sack races, and a mini easter egg hunt. Joyeuse Paques! I will upload photos to Dropbox soon.
This week, we will be celebrating Earth Day by planting beans (real beans of the non-magical variety) and documenting their growth in our science journals.
I hope you enjoyed the sunshine this weekend! See you tomorrow! I enjoyed seeing everyone at Student-Led conferences. The children were really excited to share their learning with you! It really builds their confidence when they are able to play the teacher. February was a month full of celebrations. We celebrated Carnival with a visit from the Maple Man! He played wooden spoons for us and made wooden puppets dance. The highlight, of course, was the maple taffy tasting! Students also made their own Bonhomme Carnival out of modelling clay. The visit from Maple Man was a great way to finish off January’s work on winter clothing, winter sports, and polar animals. February was also La St-Valentin. Students loved exchanging Valentines. What a lucky teacher I am to have received so many beautiful cards. Merci les amis! In the week leading up to La St-Valentin, we had the opportunity to label Valentine’s Day pictures in our journals. We are learning to record at least 2 prominent sounds in a word. We also added a mailbox to the Bricolage centre and students played facteur (mailman) addressing heart-shaped cards to their classmates. Thank you to all the parents who were able to attend our class party. The students looked adorable singing their Valentine’s Day songs for you in their cute hats. I hope you enjoyed the musical performance. All song lyrics are now posted under the music tab so they can recreate the performance for you at home! We rotated through different centres: bracelet beading, a craft, a math game, and some carpet games. Students loved playing Cupid’s Arrow: they blew qtips through straws and tried to hit heart targets on the carpet. We also had the opportunity to enjoy some delicious treats. Thank you to everyone who brought in something yummy to share! Students also made lantern crafts and practiced writing their numbers in both French and Chinese! We finished the day with a Bingo game based on all the animals in the Chinese Zodiac. Students made their own Bingo cards for the game. What a fun way to practice our animal words! I was so happy to see so many children wear pink for Pink Day. We spent the week learning all about friendship. During circle time, Madame read many books about friendship. We coloured our own booklet on friendship and practiced reading it aloud, tracking with our finger. Students wrote this month’s collaborative journal page on what it means to be a good friend. We learned a new song for Pink Day (lyrics on song page) all about how we are unique. We read a poem about crayons, and in response, students drew their own self-portrait on a crayon. They are hanging on our bulletin board. Bravo les amis! In anticipation of our 100th day of Kindergarten, the class worked together to build 100 piece puzzles. It was a great example of teamwork! We also imagined ourselves as 100 years old(!) adding details like canes, wrinkles, glasses, and grey hair. You can check out on the often hilarious results on our bulletin board outside the class. On our 100th day of Kindergarten, students brought in a collection of 100 of the same object from home: pom poms, cherry blossoms, Legos, pennies... We spent the morning sorting our collections, measuring them, weighing them and comparing their lengths/weight. With our Big Buddies, we worked to turn the number 100 into something else using our imaginations. Look at how many different things we were able to imagine! In the afternoon, we worked on the concept that 100 is 10 groups of 10. Students rotated through different centers: 100 day hats (10 Bingo dabs on 10 different coloured strips to make our crown), 100 gumball machine (using qtips to paint 10 gumballs in 10 different colours), 100 trail mix (adding 10 each of 10 ingredients for a special treat) and 100 fruit loop necklaces (threading 10 of each colour at a time). Thank you to all the parents who volunteered or sent in a special ingredient for our trail mix. I hope you enjoyed a restful Spring Break! Looking forward to an exciting Term 3.... :)
During December, Division 16 got into the Holiday Spirit by celebrating Grinch Day. We read Comment le Grinch a volé Noel, and did an art extension activity where students brainstormed how to make the Grinch's heart grow. I introduced a life-size Grinch poster into the classroom and together through acts of kindness, we made his heart grow 3 sizes. Bravo les amis! Merci to everyone who came into the classroom to help us decorate for the Holidays. Students rotated through different centers: coffee filter snowflakes, pattern chains, making ornaments for our class sapin de Noel, and colouring our maison de pain d'épice. The maison de pain d'épice became a favourite at centre time - children enjoyed colouring red on the roof and pretending it was on fire! We also had fun choosing a real sapin de Noel from Byng with our Big Buddies! Journée Pyjama was adorable. Students "taught" their stuffies the rules of Kindergarten during circle time. Quiet Time that day was also a class favourite, as students curled up with their stuffies and a book on their mats. We also celebrated with our Cozy Winter Singalong. It was lovely to see so many families able to attend!
I am so proud of my little reindeer for singing in their first assemblée! They looked fantastique in their little costumes à nez rouge! If you missed it, I'm sure your child would be more than happy to put on a solo performance in your living room! Père Noel dit Ho, Ho, Ho... Our class collaborative journal page this month was about playing in the snow. Students practiced writing their name and the name of their friend. We are all being encouraged to write our name in lower case letters. We had fun celebrating the last day of school before Winter break with a little party in the afternoon. Students rotated through centres: les sapins de Noel, les bas de Noel, beading candy canes, and stamping. Thank you to everyone who came to celebrate with us and for those who sent a snack! A special merci to everyone for the wonderful presents and cards. We have a very special group of children this year, and I'm really enjoying being their Kindergarten teacher. I'm feeling rested and relaxed after my little spa adventure... :) I hope you enjoyed a restful Winter Break!
From my family to yours, Happy Holidays!! Our major theme this month was the body. We learned a new song (check it out under 'les chansons') to help us remember our French vocabulary for our body parts. During Alphabet Centers, some students chose to 'write' their vocabulary words using stickers, stamps, or collage magazine letters. Our major art project this month, which I could not have accomplished without the fabulous Kimberley (Emily's maman), was tracing an outline of our bodies and painting it with the help of our Big Buddies. They look fantastique!! My apologies to those who aren't yet pictured...I still have some to put up on our bulletin board! During Circle time, we explored les 5 sens with lots of hands-on activities. I passed around smelling jars and students identified what was inside using their sense of smell. Always interesting was passing around the jar of coffee beans - half of us loved it and half of us hated the smell! We explored sound by holding seashells up to our ears,and texture by feeling hospital gloves filled with beans, flour, sand, rice, and popcorn kernels and describing what we felt. I added these materials and more to our discovery table for students to explore independently: mirrors, jingle bells, magnifying glasses, colour mixing glasses, sorting cards... We did a sorting activity on the 5 senses. This led to some interesting conversations when I asked students to explain their thinking. Where to put an ice cube? "I thought it was butter so I coloured it yellow" or "I thought it was a toaster so I coloured it brown. You can look at a toaster." Where to put a coin? "Some coins have chocolate in them." All great reasons! With our Big Buddies, students completed 5 different learning centers. They played a memory game where they observed 10 objects for 1 minute, then drew as many as they could remember once their Big Buddies took away the objects. They played a mystery sound game where their Big Buddies shook a mystery object in a container behind their backs for them to identify. They reached into a feely bag and described what they felt. They matched the smelling bottles to their pictures. And the class favourite, we explored popcorn using all our 5 senses, culminating in taste! That led us nicely into our 2 week study on food. Last week, we practiced our emergent reading skills with an easy reader book on lunch. Students underlined every time they saw the words 'Je mange'. We also did a cut/paste activity in our journals using the sentence structure 'Je mange...'. We talked about a sentence beginning with a 'lettre majuscule' (which we say in a really BIG DEEP voice - compared to 'minuscule' which we say in a small, squeaky mouse voice) and finishing with a 'point'.
We will round out this week with a writing activity for our end-of-year-portfolio, as well as a Bingo game on food. Then we will get on to the important business of celebrating the holidays. Santa is already making a regular appearance in pictures the students are drawing at bricolage! I have planned many exciting activities for the month of December. Stay tuned for our class newsletter, as well as exciting opportunities to volunteer in-class! |
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January 2016
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Photo used under Creative Commons from *Sally M*