Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

One of the most important skills we practise in kindergarten is learning to work together with our peers. Working together is sometimes tricky because we can't always have or get everything that we want.  We have to take turns and listen to our friends thoughts and feelings.  To help us practise working together, we read two stories:

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom is silly story about lower case letters trying to climb a coconut tree.  When they all reach the top, the tumble out of the tree.  The uppercase letters help the little letters and work together to make it to the top of the coconut tree.

Scribble is a simple story about three shapes and scribble.  The scribble wants to be friends with the shapes, but the shapes don't want to. After a little while, the shapes realize that they can create beautiful pictures when they work together.

With this in mind, we were challenged to work together to create our own version of a coconut tree. With a partner, we had to figure out what different materials in our classroom we could use to make a coconut tree.

After we created our tree, we had to share our thinking with our friends.  

We are very creative kids!

Another way we worked together is when we made a class Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Tree.  First, we made textured hexagons by glueing yarn, fabric and crepe paper to each cut out shape.

We glued all the hexagons together and then added a scribble to the top to make a crown of leaves.

We painted each others hands and then glued on letters that we made earlier in the week.

Look at what we can do when we work together!

To finish off another great week, we made and ate our very own Chicka Chicka Snack.  YUM!!

Our journey begins...

This week, we have been busy learning and practising the different routines of kindergarten.  We are learning to work as a team, ask questions, line up, wait our turn, clean up and have lots of fun!

One of the things we work on all year in kindergarten is drawing and writing.  To help make our journey as illustrators and writers a little easier we learned a few "tricks." We learned about curves and lines. If you can make a line and a curve, you can draw anything you wish and learn to print every letter!

After learning what a curve and a line looked like, we went on a little hunt around the school and looked for these two shapes.  We found lines and curves everywhere!

After becoming line and curve experts, we used wooden lines and curves to build "Mat Man" while listening to his special song. 

The next day, we listened to the Mat Man song again. Instead of building him, we drew him on a white board!  Everyone did a great job!

After we practised drawing on a whiteboard, we used our special dot paper as a background.  We are getting very good at drawing!!

   

   

Some of us noticed that there are lines and curves in the letters in our names!  We did lots of talking about this and then turned our first initial into a letter person!  We used fancy jewels to decorate our first initial and then added arms, hands, legs, feet and a head.

Click here to listen and draw along to the Mat Man Song.

Dot Day

This week we participated in International Dot Day.     Dot Day is a day to celebrate being brave and taking a chance even though you think you can't do something.  We had so much fun trying out new things and meeting our new buddies!

We started our day by drawing our very own dots, just like the little girl in the story.

During Group Time, we sorted ourselves by kids wearing dots and kids not wearing dots. We noticed that the dots we were wearing came in all shapes and sizes!

Following Group Time, we all created 3 different kids of dots.  The first kind of dots we made were out of loose parts.  We used glass beads, gems, bracelets, elastics, lids, corks, rocks, etc and made a design on a big silver tray.

The second kind of dots we made were with pastels and paint. We worked together in small groups to make some very big dots and designs.

   

Then we used bingo dabbers to make lots of little dots.  We are going to use these rainbow dot pictures as a background for another art project. 

Another great thing about Dot Day this year is that we got to meet our Buddies.  Our buddies helped us cut out dots and decorate them using watercolours, markers, and crayons.  Once we finished making our dots, we glued them all together on long pieces of yarn to create a beautiful collaborative piece of art!  

    

The First Day of Kindergarten!

We had an AMAZING first day of kindergarten!  Take a look to see what we did!

The Morning Class

       

This photo slideshow personalized with Smilebox

The Afternoon Class

Free slideshow design customized with Smilebox

Getting ready for another year of learners!

It is always hard to say good bye to the lazy days of summer, but September brings eager new faces to the kindergarten room, ready to explore, learn and have fun. With this in mind, I have been busy organizing, cleaning and setting up our learning environment.

Cozy Corner is ready for listening to stories, dancing with Go Noodle, learning and exploring on the smart board and getting to know our new classmates.

The Light Table is awaiting discoveries made by new friends. And our Family Tree is in need of new kindergarten families to display on it's branches.

The Block Area has gotten a little make-over with new toys and signs to help when tidying up. I can't wait to see it filled with students playing and learning!

                                   

The House Corner is all ready to go and is just missing the imaginations of all my new little friends!

                                      

The Art Area is stocked full of new markers, crayons and pencils and lots of fun materials for creating.  The Sensory Tables are ready and waiting for new little fingers to play in the sand and water. 

                                 

I can tell already that this is going to be a fantastic year!