We have all been enjoying some beautiful weather lately. This is some of the fun we have been having both inside and outside celebrating spring.

We have been planting different types of seeds and can't wait to see what happens.

One of our bulbs has been growing really well and our avocado seed is starting to grow a root! It is very exciting to see how fast things are changing.

Tomorrow (Friday May 15) is our Jump Rope for Heart event. Students are reminded to dress appropriately for both the weather and the activity. If it is not raining we will be outside participating. If your family still has any pledge forms at home please send them to school tomorrow if possible. Thanks

Mrs. Preston and Mrs. Owrak

This group was measuring their block tower using spools. 

We are continuing to look at plants. Students used the materials on the table to write and draw about what they see on the tray, what they think they are, and what they were wondering about. 

A student found a picture of bulbs in a book from our classroom and a few students determined that these must be bulbs like in the book. We have since planted the bulbs to see if anything happens. 

This Thursday April 30 the Kindergarten classes will not be participating in Gum Day with the rest of the school. We will instead be having a Teddy Bear day and students are invited to bring their favourite stuffy to school for the day. Thank you.

Our predictions are coming true. We know that one of our plants is a lettuce. Some students identified the celery. It is amazing how much they have changed each day!

Our new addition is an avodado pit. We are hoping that a root will start to grow but this may take a little longer than the changes we have seen so far. 

When students bring home their Shared Reading book today please look through and see if any activities have been missed and finish any that are still unfinished. Re-read some or our old favourites! 

Another reminder that students need their reading log at school each day. Students do not take their new book home unless they have it. Thank you and enjoy the long weekend with your families. 

Reminders:

• Tomorrow is Graduation Photos for the SK students only
• Friday is Crazy Hair or Crazy Hat day at school!

Welcome back! We hope everyone had a great holiday.  We are excited that it is spring and we are looking forward to it feeling more like spring outside. We still need all of our cold weather things at school for recess time.

Today some of our students noticed something new in our science area.

Some students started to record their observations and questions about this new addition using an organizer.

We will be watching and observing to see if anything happens. If your child did not have a chance to get to this area today we will be observing for a while to see if anything happens. You may also want to show them the picture and ask them "What do you see?", "What do you think?", "What do you wonder?"

We understand that the library days were missed on the March calendar. Our apologies.
Instead of printing a new set of calendars, please know that our library days are day 5.

Thank you and we will make sure that library days are back on the calendar for April!

Math@Muir Night

This Thursday (March 5th) is Math @ Muir from 6-7:30pm. There will be activities and games for families to participate in with their children. There are also prizes up for grabs so don't miss out on the fun. 

The Scholastic Book Fair will also be open in the evening so come on over and look for a good book. 

Please let the office know if you are planning to come. You can call the office or fill out the google form by following this link:

http://bit.ly/MuirMathRSVP

The march calendar is coming home today please check the green folder. Also included is a note about reading at home. We thought this would a good opportunity to share what writing looks like in out room as well.

Writing happens when we are building and creating independently. We are working at making plans like "blueprints" at building. Writing happens with groups that work with an adult or in larger groups as well.

Here are some examples:

Independent Writing during exploration time.

Guided Writing with a small group and an educator.

Shared Writing with a larger group.

The students wanted to create a dinosaur but we wanted it to be BIG! We went out into the hall and lined up in the hallway to see just how much room we had. We stood shoulder to shoulder against the wall to measure where we wanted out dinosaur to fit.

We did a survey about what dinosaur we wanted to make. The Brachiosaurus was our most popular.

We worked as a group to create and paint our Brachiosaurus.

We showed how we can use non-standard measuring devices by using our feet to measure how long our dinosaur was.

A second group of students measured the dinosaur with our hands

We counted the hands and feet to see just how big our dinosaur is.

Our dinosaur is 13  feet long.

Our dinosaur is 11 hands tall.

Exploring math with hands on activities is a lot of fun and leads to interesting creations that can be taken to dramatic play and other areas of our class.

Using an overhead projector we sorted
buttons by shapes.

Putting patterns together gave us a beautiful
 effect and design.

Sorting buttons by colour reminded us of candy
and we made a candy shop

Tomorrow is Sweater Day at school! The heat will be turned down a little to show how much energy can be saved. Wear something nice and warm.

We have also noticed that with the amount of snow this week that sometimes snow gets in our boots and our socks get wet. Please send extra socks (sometimes more than one pair). An extra pair of waterproof  mittens would also be helpful.

Time flies when learning is fun!

This week we have seen a lot of interest in Dinosaurs and in Ice and Snow.

The dinosaur research team has been investigating what the world may have been like for dinosaurs and creating a "Dinosaur World" in our sensory bin.

We looked at books about dinosaurs that we found in the school library or that friends brought from home.

We made a list of all of the things we thought our dinosaur world should have.

We started to use materials from the art studio to create the trees and plants that the plant eating dinosaurs would need. We looked at at cone and used it to help us make a volcano. We saw the circle shape on the base and cut a circle from paper which we wrapped around itself to make our cone shaped volcano. We use lots of glue and tissue paper to make the outside of our volcano rough like rocks on the surface of a mountain.

After the glue dried we started to paint it to look like rocks and dirt. We mixed colours and some of us noticed we "invented" a new colour that we had never seen. It was a mix of brown, grey and black and we tried to create a name for our new colour. "Brack"

We have experimented with snow and ice and wondered about how long it would take to melt. We collected snow from outside last week and left it to melt over night. We saw a lot of dirt left behind in the bucket of water. It was a great reminder not to eat the snow that was on the ground! Yuck!

We melted ice cubes and used salt to make ice cubes stick together. We had fun watching the ice slip around like "skaters"

Winter Day and Hockey Jersey Day

Thursday January 15th (tomorrow) will be Hockey Jersey or Winter Day.  Students are invited to support a favourite hockey team, their own hockey team or to dress in cool /cold winter colours.

We talked about what colours make us feel cold or cool and looked at some winter pictures. We saw blue, grey, purple, silver, and white in the pictures and thought those colours would be good choices to wear.

We are looking forward to a fun day celebrating school spirit!

Welcome!

  Hello families,

Happy New Year and welcome back to school. We hope you enjoy this addition to our kindergarten program and it allows you to take a look through our window into the learning happening in our classroom. We will also post classroom and school reminders here as well. A note asking your preferences for checking/receiving notifications about new blog posts will come home Monday. If you choose to subscribe to our blog you will receive email notifications when new posts have been added. 

We are excited to start this new portion of our journey and hope that it can be the beginning of conversations at home about learning taking place at school.

Sorting our garbage.

Reading with friends

Sorting and counting buttons