The Mitten

For the first week back to school, we focused on the story The Mitten, by Jan Brett.  In the story, a little boy name Nicki drops his new white mitten in the snow.  While he is off exploring, eight different animals come across the mitten and squeeze themselves in to keep warm. After a sneeze and a big commotion with the animals, Nicki finally gets his mitten back.

At Discovery, we matched mittens together and hung them on a line and designed a mitten using pattern blocks.

To mix things up, we worked in center groups.  The first centre was story telling stones.  After hearing the story read a few times, we practised telling the story to a partner by reading the pictures.  One student read the pictures and their partner would act out the story by putting the correct animal stone into their mitten.

 

For the second center, we counted groups of animals in mittens and practised writing the number sentence.

At the third center, Mr. V taught us how to play the math game  "One More."   To play this game all you need is a partner, a dice and two different coloured counters or small objects to cover up a square.

We acted out the story and became the animals in the story.

A week in Kindergarten wouldn't be complete without an art project.  First, we looked at different mittens on the Smartboard for inspiration.  Then everyone drew a big mitten on construction paper and used pattern blocks and white paint to create a design.   

Just for fun, we painted WITH a mitten on our hand.  We thought it was silly, but super fun too!  Next week, we are going to add designs to the mittens we printed.  

Check back next week to see how our collaborate mitten art turned out!

Where is Gingy?

Each day when the students walk into the classroom they can't wait to look around and find Gingy.    At group time we play "Where is Gingy?" At first, the students would just point and say "over there."  We  have been practising using positional language and try and describe where he is in two or three different ways.

Gingy is  beside the windows.  Gingy is above the pot. Gingy is below the hook.

Gingy is between the monsters.  Gingy is behind the orange monster.

Gingy is inside the house.   Gingy is under the roof.  

To show what we know, we made a class big book using some of the things we had already done.

The Morning Class

The Afternoon Class 

The Gingerbread Man - Escape Prevention Advice

Every year, when the kindergarten students bake gingerbread men, the cookies always seem to find a way out of the oven and run away. It has become very clear that something needs to be done about this.  As a class, we brainstormed some ideas of how we can stop the Gingerbread Men from running away.  Then we drew a picture of our plans and recorded our advice in front of the green screen.


The Escape Prevention Workers have provided some great advice for next years kinders as well as anyone who may be thinking of baking Gingerbread Cookies.

The Morning Class

The Afternoon Class

Baking Gingerbread Men

With the help of two wonderful parent volunteers, we each got chance to roll out some dough, cut out the shape of a gingerbread man and decorate our very own cookie.   

However, when we went to the kitchen to get the cookies from the oven, they were gone!  Everyone was shocked and a little worried.  Where could our cookies be?
 

Not a cookie in sight! 

In the kitchen, we found a note with a clue written on it.  It seemed the Gingerbread Cookies were on the run and it was our job to find them. 

The first clue brought us to the library,  but the door was locked.    No Cookies there!  The next clue said to find a lot of space for a running race.  We ran down to the gym as fast as we could.  Mrs. Rogala said we just missed them.  She tried to catch them for us, but the cookies were too fast. 

The clue we found in the gym said they went to sing a song.  We figured that meant they were on their way to the music room.  But when we got there, we didn't find the cookies. We did find another clue that said they went to see the Principal.  So we ran as fast as we could up the stairs and into Mrs. McDonald's office.  No luck there either!  Mrs. McDonald said she could smell them, but she didn't see our cookies.  

The last clue we found said "We have been running and running and need a rest.  We think this place is the best."  The GINGERBREAD HOUSE!!!    We ran back to our classroom and were relieved to finally find and eat our cookies.

Playing and Learning with Gingerbread

Since we started to read different Gingerbread stories, we have been doing everything the Gingerbread way. To set the stage, we created two life-size gingerbread houses in the classroom.

We practised our counting by measuring paper gingerbread men with different objects such as rocks, blocks and buttons.  Then we turned each other into life-size gingerbread cookies.  We decorated our friends and then measured them from head to toe.  After we measured each other, we compared the numbers and put the numbers in order from smallest to biggest.


   





We put our building skills to the test and each built a gingerbread house out of blocks.  Before we started to build, we drew up a plan on paper.  Then we used different building materials to make our designs come to life. Everyone took a picture of their finished house and shared them on the Smartboard.

      



As we looked at each of the houses, we talked about what we really liked and made suggestions of possible ways to make the houses even better.  Everyone was eager to try again with fresh new ideas from their classmates.

A few "Master Builders" helped their classmates make improvements to their houses.

Another digital slideshow by Smilebox

These friends worked together and created a gingerbread house complete with a garden and extra bedrooms for sleepovers.

Hunting for letters with Pic Collage

To help get everyone excited about Gingerbread, we went on a hunt for our names.  Gingerbread letters were posted up around the kindergarten classroom.  Then we each took pictures of each of the letters in our names with an app called Pic Collage.  We tried to remember that each name has a capital and then all lower case letters.