Be You!

Inspired by Peter Reynolds’ book, Be You!, we celebrated the importance of being unique and true to yourself. In our class discussion, there were some statements that stood out more than others. Many students liked, “Be your own thinker!” “Be okay reaching out for help,” is one that many of us adults have a hard time with. We also really liked, “Be connected,” and “Be kind,” and some students thought they were good statements in a pandemic.

We shared the connections we made to some of these statements.

“I felt brave when I jumped off a diving board into a pool.”

“I was being curious when I went for a nature walk.”

“My mom was patient when she was waiting a looooong time for me.”

hallway bulletin board
Our hallway bulletin board

Please login to your child’s blogfolio to view their response to this book. Students were asked to choose a statement that stood out for them.

School-wide Write: What is your Superpower?

For our school-wide write, we read a picture book called, What is your Superpower? by Aviaq Johnston.  In this story, a girl named Nalvana discovers that anyone can have superpowers. She has friends with super speed, friends with super strength, and friends who can do all sorts of amazing things. Nalvana discovers that she herself has a unique superpower that is even more powerful than strength and speed. Please ask your child to tell you more about this story.

The story is set in Nunavut and is written by a Canadian Inuk author. There is a glossary provided, as there are Inuktitut words that are included in the text of the story.

 

For the write, students were asked to respond to the question: “What is your superpower?”  They were asked to draw a picture, adding colors and including as many details as possible. Kindergarten students are not expected to write in complete sentences. They may write using “kid-writing” (e.g. invented spelling), writing any phonetic sounds or words related to their picture. Some may write random letters that represent sounds or words that are mispelled.

 

Your child’s writing sample has been uploaded to their blogfolio. Over the next week, I will also leave a comment on the post, highlighting what I have noticed about their writing and giving them a suggestion on how to improve their writing.

The Leaf Man Goes Where the Wind Blows   

 

 

The story Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert is about the Leaf Man drifting around and it visited many places and saw a lot of animals.  We don’t know where the Leaf Man is going because it goes where the wind blows.  After reading the story, we went on a nature walk and created our own leaf person or creature.  As the children were building their leaf person/creature, we heard some interesting stories of where their leaf creations have gone and what they have seen and done! A few leaf people went to the North Pole to look for Santa.  Another leaf person went to outer space.  And then a leaf butterfly was too sticky, so the wind couldn’t blow it away!  We also had a leaf family hanging out at the park! These leaf creations can be anywhere.  Look around next time when the wind is blowing.  You might see a leaf person drifting by.

 

A Halloween Mystery

On Halloween, a bumble bee came to our classroom. But where was Ms. Loungsay?

We also had other visitors… a pirate, a fireman, Elsa from Frozen, a unicorn, super heroes and more… But where were the kids from Division 10?

We created a class book all about our costumes!

 

While we were not able to welcome parents and pass around treats for one another like other Halloweens, our school still managed to celebrate with some fun festivities. We had an outdoor costume parade and went to view the amazing annual pumpkin carving contest. Our students did a wonderful job!

Apples Taste Delicious!

We have been learning about apples this term. Here are some photos from our apple tasting experiment in October. Students sampled three varieties of apples – red (Royal Gala), yellow (Golden Delicious) and green (Granny Smith). Students chose which color apple they liked best. We created this graph below. For some fun photos of your child eating the apples, please log into your child’s Blogfolio.

Fall Walk

 

On our first nature walk, we explored signs of fall.  We read a story called “Wonderfall”. The story follows a single tree through the changing seasons. While we were reading the story, we noticed the tree drops acorns, loses leaves and provides food and a home for a pair of squirrels.  Before heading out to explore fall, we brainstormed what we might find using one of our senses, sight.  We predicted that we might see leaves changing colours, leaves falling, acorns, apples, caterpillars, squirrels, people wearing jackets and scarves, wind, the sun, and clouds.  During our nature walk, the first thing we discovered were falling leaves.  We also found a caterpillar on an abandoned frisbee! We didn’t see any squirrels gathering acorns, but we did find some apples under an apple tree.

On our second nature walk, we gathered leaves and decided to sort them by colours to make it easier to see what we had found.  We identified the colours we needed and placed coloured construction paper mats in brown, red, green, orange and yellow on the floor.  Then we sorted! Stay tuned for our next post.  We will be creating our own fall colour!

We also made patterns on our nature walk too!

Hatching Chicks!

We have been learning about chicks and oviparous animals (e.g. animals that lay eggs) this term. With Ms. Gourlay’s class, we hatched some eggs!  We had three eggs in an incubator and we looked through a special scope that allows us to see inside the egg.  Students completed a Science journal, where they made predictions and recorded their observations.

eggs in the incubator
making a prediction
after the eggs hatched

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Photos of individual students will be uploaded to their blogfolios for Term 3.