January Newsletter

I'm feeling particularly on top of things right now, having just finished the January newsletter. Here it is for your reading pleasure:

January 2014 Newsletter for Room 202

Please let me know if there are any oversights or omissions. And, as always, if you have questions, please let me know and I'll do my best to answer them.

Thursday is Library this week,  as well as the Holiday Sing Along.  The assembly begins at 9:00 am. Kinders will perform at 9:50, but won't be there for the rest of the performances.

Happy Holidays!

We've been busy making and doing this past week, as we move towards the Winter Break. I think both the Morning and Afternoon concerts were a success, but unfortunately, I didn't manage to take any photos during either event myself. Happily, Abbey's mom sent along a panoramic that she took of the students at the concert, which I'm eager to share with you.

This week, we've finished off our star ornaments and sent them home. Though Mr. Zippy may never recover from all the glitter, I hope you enjoy them. We've also been making ornaments with oranges and cloves. They look neat piled all together. Each student has spelled out the first initial of their name and then they've been given creative license to add other decorative features. Many are finding the cloves a bit "picky" , but most seem to enjoy the scent. Those are being sent home as they finish. 

Then Wednesday is the big day, because we're decorating our gingerbread men.  The students are very excited. I've baked them and just hope none crack before their debut. Thanks very much to the parents who're coming in to help ice tomorrow: Nancy and Joe in the afternoon and Tara and Olivia in the morning. Your support really makes things like this possible in the classroom.

Thanks really to all the parents: you really make my job so much easier in so many ways, from just supporting your child's learning and independence to those who've taken on Scholastic or sent in Play Doh or other things that support our learning. You've all been incredibly supportive, and I really appreciate your efforts. 

Big Ideas

Today we read The Gingerbread Man. It's the poem for this week and we also read a version of the story in class.

It led to a discussion of rhyming. This is a new concept for many of students and they're still shaky on the concept. For instance, even though "AND" and "BAM" have similar sounds to "MAN", they're not quite rhymes. Of course, it helped our discussion that there are 3 students with the last name "TRAN".

Other words students made with the AN pattern were: FAN, RAN, GRAN and VAN.  We also talked about other rhyming words and patterns, like Mouse/House and Cat/Sat. This is a powerful concept to reinforce when reading and writing with your child, because it helps to build pattern recognition.

Another concept we're currently building is the idea of More and Less. Our question of the day has been related to this idea for some time. When asking "How many letters are in your name?" or "How many people are in your family?", I also place cards with the words "Less", a number between 1 and 10, and "More". It's surprising how tricky this is for many students. Even when they can count to ten, they're often unsure which numbers are more or less.

Today I also placed some shapes in our painting centre to see what would come of it. Here are some of the preliminary results:

Two trees and a constellation

What I like about this one is that she used the outine she'd painted and filled it in in a contrasting colour. 

This is a butterfly.

Error on PM Christmas Concert

Dear Parents,

First of all, my apologies. On the class newsletter, I wrote down the incorrect time for the Afternoon concert. It is actually at 1:30 pm  on December 13th. The Morning concert is still on Thursday, December 12th at 9:30 am.

I've been busy learning all about different family traditions through our show and share theme this month. So far we've talked about Eid, seen Dreidels and Menorahs, looked at Elf on the Shelf, eaten some pomegranates, admired some ornaments, and read The Grinch and The Polar Express. I look forward to hearing about many more celebrations in the next two weeks.

We've also been busy learning about Goliath, our pet Newt. Apparently, newts are like small salamanders and their skin must always be moist. The salt from our skin can hurt them, so we can't pick him up. We've noticed that he likes to hide on the log and also talked a lot about why salamanders must be sneaky: with poor eyesight, no claws and slow swimming, they need to protect themselves from predators. Although they are nocturnal, some of our students still think Goliath might be scared of the dark as well. Goliath's skin is slippery to help him slip out of predator's hands and he can regrow a body part (like a leg, tail or even an eye) if he does get caught.

Here's Goliath, looking out at the classroom. Here you can see his orange underbelly.

Students are using my modelled writing to begin their own letters.

It's always interesting to see how students integrate the things you bring to the class. Many have been playing being teacher, but this above is new. We are continuing in many of the same centres, but thanks as well to Heather, we have new outfits for George and the other babies. Students have been keeping busy in the house centre, trying on all the new clothes. 

Have a great weekend!

Lisa Goegan

Hot off the presses...

Dear Parents, 

Here it is, your December Newsletter for Room 202!

Our show and share focus is traditions. Ania and Kai get to do show and share on Monday. Ijaz and Ella get to share on Tuesday. The rest will have to click this link or wait until your copy comes home, hopefully tomorrow.

December is a short month due to the Winter Break so not everyone will get a chance this month. But we hope to double up in future months!

 I am away Friday, but will leave copies for the supply to hand out.

Have a great weekend!

Lisa Goegan

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

Little Monsters!

I thought this had posted last week, but apparently not. Library this week will be on Thursday. And, in breaking news, we're just finalizing the dates and times for the holiday concerts. They'll definitely be on the December newsletter, but I should be able to post them by the end of the week.

Next, I thought I'd show you some highlights from our most recent art made from Rorschach-blots. We folded the paper and smushed the paint around to create the base for these, then applied beads, feathers, string, marker, paper, and google-y eyes to add the finishing touches. Some of them have such personality!

This one took me a while to get because it's a side view. The monster is flying and there's a sad person running away in the bottom.

James' monster looks like an elephant to me.

This student was very carefully placing beads along the line of symmetry and was very excited about the different shapes of the beads: stars, hearts, circles.

Izaiah was excited about the symmetry involved. His painting is of a LADY monster and a SEAL monster. They are dating, apparently. 

Hunter's monster reminds me of a chicken

The application of beads creates a pattern along the bottom of the page