Division 25 - Kindergarten

Hello Families,

Welcome to Division 25!  We are so excited to get to know your children and look forward to working with you as partners this year.  We noticed that many of your common hopes and dreams for your children this year are to make new friends, have fun and enjoy their first year in Kindergarten!  Kindergarten is such an important year and builds the foundation for your child’s school experience.  We would like to use this blog to keep you up to date on some of the things we do in our Kindergarten classroom.   Division 25 is settling into the routines of Kindergarten and are enjoying getting to know more about each other every day.  They have begun to make many new friendships and are having fun exploring outdoors and getting to know our class and school.  We can’t wait to share more of your children’s learning as we continue this journey together!

Anella Di Spirito & Josie Mauro

On Friday in our Science Lab we decided to guess what colour would be inside our white pumpkin.  There were many guesses but in the end we found out that it was actually white inside.  Most children agreed that the orange pumpkin would be orange inside.  We had so much fun opening up the pumpkins and seeing what was inside!  Although Halloween day started off rainy we were so lucky that by lunchtime the rain held off and we were able to have our Halloween parade and dance off outside on the field.  We started the day with some Halloween inspired activities, went on a “Pumpkin Crawl” inside the main building and ended the afternoon with a costume parade and dance on the field.  Have a look through all the photos of the festivities.

Do pumpkins sink or float?  During our Science Lab on Wednesday we decided to tackle this question and make predictions about what we thought.  Before we made our guesses we talked a little about what we thought a scientist’s job was.  Theo said “They figure stuff out and they know stuff we don’t know.”  Jason  said “Scientists create stuff”.  Vivaan added that “Scientists work very hard!”  And Ana said “Scientists can make stuff we don’t know how to make.”  We decided that scientists know a lot but we also discussed how they make guesses or “predictions” to prove their hypothesis.  Division 24 went to work making their guesses about whether or not our pumpkins would sink or float in the water table.  As we chatted, we soon discovered that we really had two predictions:

1. The big pumpkin will sink

2. The little pumpkin will float.

We used the water table to test our predictions.  Most of the class thought that the bigger pumpkin would sink and the small one would float.  Many children said that small things float so the smaller pumpkin should float too.  Pablo said “The big pumpkin will sink because it is heavy and bigger” and most of the class seemed to agree with this idea. There was a lot of excitement and surprise when we put the pumpkins in the water table! What do you think happened?  Scroll through the pictures to see what the children discovered!

Division 24 had a successful first field trip to the Laity Pumpkin Patch today!  We had so much fun exploring the pumpkin patch.  We were able to pet animals in the petting zoo and “milk” some cows, go through two corn mazes and a fun tractor ride.  We visited a magical forest that had garden gnomes, Goldie Locks and the 3 Bears, fairies  and even some dinosaurs, among other things.  The class had some exciting fun bouncing in the play area, playing tug of war and fishing!  We ended our day by picking pumpkins in the fields.  When we came back to class, Division 24 shared some of their favourite moments of the day.  Some highlights of the day were: going on the school bus, bouncing in the play area, petting the animals and of course picking pumpkins!  Ask your child to tell you about their favourite part of the field trip.

During Math Workshop we have been exploring and learning about patterns.  The children have learned that a pattern is something that repeats.  We have been using manipulatives in the classroom to create patterns but on Wednesday we decided to go outside and see if we could find any patterns.  The class noticed patterns all around us.  We saw patterns on the fencing, patterns on the music room ramp and even patterns on the playground.  Division 24 practiced being Mathematicians and recorded what they saw.  We made our way over to the “Magic Forest” and made patterns using the natural elements in the forest.  Can you see the patterns uncovered in the forest?

Yesterday Division 22 joined Ms. Allanson’s class to start work on creating a city within our classrooms.  The students were so excited to start this project together with Division 23.  We started off by brainstorming what we thought we would need to make a city.  The classes came up with so many great ideas ranging from, a school, towers, houses, sushi restaurant,  bank, car store, highways, skytrain, roads, shopping mall, veterinarian, hair salon, McDonalds, Costco and Starbucks.  We came up with so many great ideas and we then went out for a neighbourhood walk to see what we have in our own Brentwood area.  As we walked the students thought of more places to add to our city such as bus stops, stop signs, and a library.  By the time we got back to class they were ready to start on our project. Below are some of the initial plans and construction of our city!  Stay tuned for more updates on our city project to come.

Over the past week we have been looking at the word “Peace” and learning about what it means to us.  This month we have dedicated our November calendar to a month of peacefulness.  We cracked open the word peace after we listened to the Todd Parr story “The Peace Book.”  Division 22 came up with some really insightful ideas on what peace means to them.  Helia said “Peace is being free” and Marino thought “Peace is hugging and cuddling.” While Theodor said that peace reminds him of “Walking in the snow.”  Have a look through the photos showing all our ideas on peace!

This month we have been looking closely at pumpkins.  The children were interested in a white and orange pumpkin that we had in our classroom.  They looked closely at them and made some observations about what they saw.  A question that came up was “Does the inside of the white pumpkin look the same as the orange.”  We made some predictions and discovered that the pumpkins didn’t look exactly the same inside.  We thought the white pumpkin might be white inside but discovered it actually looks more yellow than white!