Building, Comparing, Measuring.

Dear Parents,

I'm working feverishly to finish the final touches on the December newsletter, but we have confirmed dates for the Christmas concert: December 12th for the AM classes and December 13th for the PM classes. The morning concert should begin at 9:30 am and the afternoon concert will start around 2:30 pm.

I also feel like there's been so much going on in the past couple of weeks. I know I've spoken to many of you during parent teacher interviews, but as I look back on our structures theme, I'm amazed at some of the castles and other structures that have been built. It's easy to lose track of the broader picture in the day to day.

So here are some images. First, many of you have asked about our pumpkin. It's quite disgusting: all moldy and falling in on itself. The decorative gourds, on the other hand, have dried out and rattle when shaken. They're also much lighter than they were. This has led to much weighing and questioning about why certain things rot and other things dry.

 Because we were starting a structures unit, I was very excited when I saw that a tree around the corner was being trimmed. I enlisted the help of several students and made several trips to bring some of the wood over to the kindergarten yard for us to build with. However, mostly, the long thin strips got used as "marshmallow sticks" and the more irregular pieces were co-opted for small imaginary campfires. Eventually, we moved the wood out of the yard because we were worried that eventually someone might make a not so imaginary fire after dark. But we did have some good exploratory play. In the photo below, you can see the boundaries we've marked with the woodpile and some triangular forms in the back, using the fence as a wall.

 We've also been looking at the way movement works using this ramp. It's a complicated process, because there's several stages. The object has to be small enough to fit in the ramp, but big enough to ring the bells at the bottom. It has to move fast enough to keep going, but not so fast it flies out of the ramp itself. Below are several steps of this investigation:

First, we tried rolling objects from the house centre. 

Next we tried using different balls or beads.

Finally, we decided to make our own balls out of play doh and see what happened.

We've been measuring in other ways too. We have a growth chart: 

Tallest to smallest

Baby George is very short

And we've been putting the balance scale to work as well:

The balance scale works like a teeter totter. Two students practice with washers and scales.

Students investigate how to balance the scale.

Finally, we've used fliers to consolidate our understanding of how a balance scale works.

Next steps will be looking more at length and different units of measure. 

In literacy, we've been focusing on Robert Munsch stories. Many of my students really enjoy his books because they are often funny. We've also been learning about the kinds of characters and situations his books are likely to involve--often children are the main characters and they make a mess of things that needs to be fixed. Favourites here include: Purple, Green and Yellow; Mud Puddle; Thomas's Snowsuit and David's Father. Opinions on A Promise Is A Promise are more mixed: Lily likes it because it's scary, but other students prefer his more humorous books. 

  

Sorry for the extra long post!

Our calendar should be home before weeks' end. Tomorrow is library. Happy first snow!

Love, 

Ms. Goegan