The Great Kindness Challenge and Bucket Filling

    

From January 25- January 29, schools across the world participated in the Great Kindness Challenge.  This school week is devoted to doing as many acts of kindness as possible.

In Kindergarten, we began the week by reading the book Have You Filled a Bucket Today?  By using the idea that we all have an invisible bucket, it visually shows how our actions and words can help or hurt others. We decided as a class that we all wanted to be bucket fillers, not bucket dippers.

                     

On Monday we created our own buckets out of solo cups.  We decorated them with gems and stars and awaited them being filled by our friends.  A few students were away when we made the buckets, so the next day a few very kind friends spent some of their choice time helping their friend to make their own bucket.  We have such great bucket fillers in our room.

          

Throughout the week, we wrote notes to our friends on hearts and went and filled their buckets.

We also worked on a surprise for our friends.  First, we randomly picked a friends name and then used the app Doodle Buddy to draw a picture and then we wrote something nice about our friend.

    The Morning Class            

                     

                                  The Afternoon Class   
                      

Messy Art and Winter Collages

It is always fun making art especially if you get messy while doing so.  This week we experimented with four different art making techniques.

The first technique we tried was using a white pastel to draw wind and then we painted a watercolour wash on top to make it look like a windy winter day.

Next we stuck foam letters and puzzle pieces onto a white piece of paper.  Then we sponge painted with blue, pink, purple and turquoise over top of the little pieces.  Once the paint dried, we removed the little pieces to find interesting snowflakes.

We even used a pine tree branch to paint with.  We dipped the needles into white paint and printed it onto construction paper.  We were left with a interesting blizzard looking paper.

The last technique we tried was a class favourite!  We mixed paint, water and a little dish soap into a container.  Then we used a straw and blew lots of bubbles.  We pressed a paper onto the bubbles and ended up with circle bubble prints.  So fun!

The following day, we used our beautiful papers and made one final piece of art.  We cut, ripped, and glued the paper to make winter collages.  The finishing touch was to add a black and white photo of the artist playing in the snow. 

Winter Collages - By K am & pm

Picture slideshow personalized with Smilebox

Snowmen Writing

After reading many different books about snowmen, we created our own mini snowmen and displayed them in a diorama. First we drew a snowy background and shaped it into a triangle/corner diorama.  Then we added sticks, buttons, beads and yarn to our white plasticine snowman to make each one special and unique.




Since the beginning of the new year, we have been working extra hard on writing and recognizing letters and the sounds they make.  Every day we work together on different shared writing pieces such as our Star of the Week story, story responses and Instagram posts, etc.

As we write, we do lots of talking and learning about what A Good Writer does.  Here are some of the things we have learned:

• Good writers skip lines
• Good writers put spaces between words
• Good writers say words out loud so they can write down the sounds they hear
• Good writers add details to their writing to make it more exciting
• Good writers write the date and their name

We used our snowmen dioramas to inspire our good writing.

The Morning Class

                              

The Afternoon Class

                             

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.