Holiday Party!

Today we had our class Holiday Party and it was so much fun. Take a look at all the fun we had today.

We started the day with a holiday favourite.  We played pass the present. It was funny to see the kids pass the presents super slow so they would get to unwrap the present themselves.  Even Mr. Friesen got in on the action.  At the end everyone got to have a chocolate kiss.

Then we went to the hall and played fill the stocking.  It took a little of organization, but we got there in the end.  Everyone liked the fact that we could run in the hall for this game.

Our last group game was a crowd pleaser for sure.  We had to turn our fantastic volunteers into reindeers by stuffing balloons into pantyhose. (Thanks for being such good sports)

After our group games we had three holiday centres to have fun with.  The first centre was throwing snowballs at a snowman.

Then we played stick the nose on Rudolf.

And then we got to make a tree decoration.  Everyone's turned out great!

After all the excitement we read a story and enjoyed a tasty snack.  Thank you to everyone who brought a snack. There were lots of smiles and icing all over faces!

Then we had our class book exchange.  Everyone was very polite and it was great to see everyone get a new book to enjoy over the holidays.

The finish off a great day we watched some super funny Jib Jab videos staring US!

This free photo slideshow created with Smilebox

Create a photo slideshow

Gingerbread, Gingerbread, Gingerbread!

Over the past few weeks, we have been very busy reading, playing, creating, baking and acting everything gingerbread.  To start our learning we read many versions of the classic story The Gingerbread Man. We noticed many similarities and differences. Everyone thought it was funny how the characters in the story kept yelling to stop running because they wanted to eat the gingerbread man.  If we were that cookie, we would not stop running if someone was going to eat us.  As a class we came up with different things we could say to persuade the gingerbread man to come to our house instead.

Adding lights to our classroom gingerbread house.

We measured gingerbread men with different materials.

We brainstormed and wrote about who we thought the gingerbread man would run away from.  We are getting very good at writing down some of the sounds we hear in words.

 We made our very own gingerbread houses.  We had to follow criteria we created as a class.

We all loved acting out the story.  (The gingerbread man is just about to get eaten by that devious fox!)

We even got to bake our very own gingerbread cookies to eat. 

After to cookies were finished baking, we went to check the oven. To our surprise the cookies were missing.  We had to go on a big hunt around the school and read clues to try to find where our cookies had gone.  In the end, we did find our cookies and they were delicious.

As we were eating our gingerbread cookies there was a lot of talk about what "really" happened.  Here is what some of us had to say:

Brody  -  "Mrs. Vincent or Landen must have peeked in the oven,"

Avery  -  "It might have been Mrs. L."

Marlow - "They pushed their way out of the oven."

Mathew - "Mrs. Rogala peeked."

Tristan R.- "The two girls in the office did it."

Hudosn - "I know they ran away because the oven was too hot."

Landen - "We are just like the fox."

Jayden - "They laid down and then they just started running like we did yesterday."

Loralai - "Mrs. Rosin peeked and then they just popped out."

Discovery Tables

The beginning of the day is always a busy time in the kindergarten room.  Students enter the classroom with having lots to say and are filled with energy.  To put this eagerness to good use, we now have what we call “Discovery Tables.”  Now, the students are quick to undress and can’t wait to begin exploring and learning at the tables.

Each week there are three different table activities for the students to choose from. The same activities are used all week.  On the first day, students are sometimes hesitant or unsure of what to do with the different materials. As the week goes on, their ideas begin to develop and change. The students watch what their classmates are doing and begin to share their learning.  It is truly amazing to see how creative the students are.

A lot of time and thought goes into planning the activities for our “Discovery tables.” It is very important that the materials and activities are open ended, engaging and can be completed independently.  The materials are always displayed in an appealing way and usually have natural materials available such as shells, stones, wooden objects and glass beads.  Also a variety of subject areas are covered in a fun and interesting way (literacy, numeracy, science, fine motor skills, art) 

As the students are hard at work, I always have my iPhone ready and waiting to take a quick picture of the learning that is going on..  The students are very excited to share what they have created or learned.  Lately we have been showing the pictures immediately on our SmartBoard using the "Air Play" feature on my iPhone.  We also "tweet" the pictures so everyone can enjoy. (You can scroll through the tweets on the side bar off our blog to see all the different things we are doing and learning.)

Here are a few examples of some of the Discovery Tables we have enjoyed so far: