December Newsletter: Hot off the Press

Dear Parents,

Your December Newsletter is ready. Our monthly theme for show and share is Celebrations and I'm looking forward to celebrating with you at our Winter Concert on December 16.

Please let me know if there's any accidental oversights or typos, particularly with students' special days.

 Last week's early snow fall jump started our winter inquiries and we've been inspired:

Students connect animals to their tracks

Using different tools, including their fingers, students recreate different animal prints

Animals have been leaving prints in the sandbox too

Here's the step by step to make a snow star.

 

Our fall bulletin board has been replaced by snowpeople.

We also focused in on some geometry and patterning:

 The best way to build fine motor skills is to practice them. Operation has been very popular in our classroom this past week and I've noticed that many students who were initially frustrated have improved their skills.

 

Here, students use tweezers to count and separate the pom-pom pills from the doctor's prescriptions.

Placeholder Post

So, library is tomorrow, but Wednesday nights are busy for me and the fluctuation of days 1-5 takes pity on no one.

Expect a longer post with pictures to appear in this space much later on this evening and your December calendar should be along shortly as well.

Yours in learning,

Lisa

Interview Reflections

There were a couple of threads that ran through the interviews last week, both positive and negative.

First, I heard a lot of anxiety about reversals in writing (totally normal at this stage) and some frustration about tantrums happening in the evenings (adjusting to a full day at school can be hard). As parents, I think it's good to know that everyone else is going through the same things you are, even if it's just to be able to commiserate. 

On the other hand, I heard from a lot of parents that they're definitely seeing learning at home: students are playing with letters, trying to read, and talking about some of our discussions. I was able to clarify that the requests for diapers from your children were about a science experiment we hope to do and, yes, we really did talk about why farts make that noise in class on Friday. 

I also heard many positive comments about this blog and I'm happy to hear that you're enjoying sharing in our classroom's learning. Here are some snapshots from the past week:

They're weighing her foot.

Practicing adding to tens with ten frames

How many buttons?

Students practice sequencing in puzzles

Crossing streams

Even rice can be sorted, grain by grain.

Dissecting a snowball

This parent is helping students build structures with straws.

It seemed too cold for water this week, so there's rice.

Cottonball snowpeople

Because of the long weekend, Library will be on Thursday this week.

Cheers,

Ms. Goegan

Behind the Curtain: Behaviour Management in Kindergarten

Behaviour Management is one of those things that, as a teacher, you often do automatically, but today we had a teachable moment. Half of behaviour management is solving the problem before it happens. Because of Remembrance Day, students missed their Gym period this morning. They did an excellent job at listening respectfully during the assembly, but by the afternoon, you could see the energy coming off them in waves.

So we thought that this was a perfect excuse to walk over to Baird Park for some extended outdoor play. The only problem was, they couldn't focus on our safety discussion. Everyone needs lots of chances to make good choices, but as I explained to them, if they couldn't listen in the classroom, it was probably not safe to take the group out into the neighbourhood. Even this appeal to reason didn't work, so I had to tell them that we weren't going after all.

They were quite upset, especially those that had been paying attention, but we have to deal with students as a group (although Ms. Moniz and I do divide and conquer on occasion over shorter distances). Next we talked them out of finding someone to blame fairly quickly because it was clear that it wasn't anyone's fault (it was the group dynamic that needed to shift) and redirected them to centres.

After about 20 minutes of classroom play, I recalled them onto the carpet and made the offer again: Could they listen? Yes. Were they focused? Absolutely.

So off we went to capitalize on the last of the fall sunshine. As a teacher, you want to give kids those happy endings, but my first priority is always their safety.

In the story above, I was worried that if they weren't able to focus, they might not listen when it counted. Getting off the play structure on someone else's timeline isn't highly motivating, after all.

I also want to ensure that students feel safe in that they can trust me to follow through on what I say. I try to be as consistent as possible in my expectations and I feel like those choices pay off in the long term.

Yesterday, for instance, we checked in on our science experiment from Friday. The water absorbing crystals (follow the link for background) had turned to jelly, which was super exciting. Everyone wanted to experience them for themselves. We had to figure out something that was fair and some students needed help understanding what that could look like. Building trust through consistency and logical consequences makes this easier.

All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten isn't so far from the truth sometimes:

But you aren't really here for the words, I know. Here are some pictures from the past week:

Painting egg carton poppies

 Students wrote Remembrance Day words from our weekly poem on strips and glued poppies next to them. Some were made into a wreath.  

Others were strewn at the bottom of our school display.

We learned how thermometers worked by placing them in hot and cold water. This is an organic extension of the learning in the Doctor's Office:

 Work also continues apace in the Doctor's Office itself:

Writing an eye chart

Looking at X-rays.

Administering to baby

 Water Absorbing Crystals Experiment:

Together we added food colouring and crystals to warm water

Jellies in the water table!

Yours in learning,

Ms. Goegan

P.S. Library is suspended in honour of the Bookfair, but will resume as normal next week, although on a new day due to the long weekend.

P.P.S. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone on Thursday and Friday. There are a lot of you, so we'll do our best to stick to agreed upon times. Please knock if you are waiting past your time and the door is closed!

Spiders, Pumpkins, Doctors, and Water Together In A Single Post

Dear Parents,

I feel like there's so much going on it's hard to distill into a single theme each week and last week was especially busy with Halloween and the Costume Parade. I've left off photos of costumes, although they were very cute, in the interest of focusing on the learning happening around all that.

First we have the spider craft. We did some counting and some writing of numbers around the edges. Students placed glitter and eyes artistically, then laced their spider webs. Getting the string through the holes was challenging for many and I helped with knotting.

Next was the pumpkin. We voted on what shape the eyes, nose, and mouth should be, tallied the results, and made some graphs together. 

Here's me demonstrating what a graph of Eyes would look like

Here students graph the number of votes for each nose.

Then, Ms. Moniz and students carved the pumpkin together. 

Next, the drama centre has been transformed into a Doctor's office. It began when students traced the skeleton puzzle in our science centre and asked for clipboards. The Terry Fox Run clearly had a lasting impact because they were pretending to look at the cancer in Terry Fox's bones. 

More generalized play is also happening:

Checking the ears

Reception books appointments

These are some of the Doctors in our clinic

One student records the symptoms

The water table also continues to be an area of great focus: Students are using tubes to play with air and water pressure.

We are looking for a couple of things moving forward that we'd love to have come in:

--Hospital or emergency helper themed costume items
--Syringe plungers
--Other medical themed items

(One of the things we keep talking about is what should go on the walls of our doctor's office. If you happen to visit the doctor, please draw your child's attention to elements that they might be able to use their writing and drawing skills to reproduce.)

--Flexible plastic tubing (The ones we currently have are on loan)

--Also, we're hoping to get a number of smallish clear plastic bottles in for a future craft/science experiment, preferably 750ml or smaller. (Soap bottles, water bottles, condiment bottles, etc.)

As always, library is tomorrow, Day 1.

Sincerely,

Ms. Goegan