Plants & Compost Study

During the last couple of weeks, we have started to learn about patterns. We can make patterns out of everything! We learned about AB, ABB, and AAB patterns. Some of us made other patterns like ABC patterns!

In September, we learned that apples come from seeds. A lot of other plants come from seeds too! We explored different kinds of seeds and tried to guess which plant it came from.

We learned that plants are very important. Some plants are good for eating like fruits and vegetables, but we found out that plants have other uses too! We got to explore different plants by smelling and feeling them. Some plants we learned about include:

• Cinnamon bark: smells like yummy desserts and is good for adding to our baking.
• Muna: a special plant from the mountains Peru that is used to make our tummies feel better and it helps with headaches and nausea.
• Basil: we use it for cooking foods like pasta!
• Tea leaves from China: used to make a hot drink that Chinese people love to drink with their meals.
• Sage: important for Indigenous cultures--it is used in smudging- a special ceremonial burning of sage that is believed to be cleansing of bad spirits. Aboriginal people smudge their faces, body, and even their homes!

The apple we dissected in the first week of September has started to change. We made predictions of what will happen to the apple after leaving it out for a few weeks. Then we saw the actual apple and confirmed if our predictions were correct! We noticed that the same thing was happening to our avocado!



We played "What's the Rule?" when sorting our garbage from snack time into two piles. There was one pile with garbage that comes from nature, and one pile that has plastics and other things that aren't from nature. We buried each pile into the dirt and made predictions of what will happen to the different kinds of garbage. A lot of us guessed that the organic pile will turn brown, yucky, and smelly. Some guessed that nothing will happen to the plastic garbage. We will keep checking on our science experiment to see if we're right!

Important Dates:

• October 8- Thanksgiving NO SCHOOL
• October 9- EyeCU coming to the daycare for eye exams (please return consent form if you would like your child to have a comprehensive eye exam covered by Alberta health care)
• October 24- Field Trip to Butterfield Acres (we are still looking for parent volunteers! Please return the parent volunteer form if you can participate)

Apples! & Important Reminder: School on Friday Sept 21

Last week we learned how to draw ourselves by singing the Mat Man song. We made sure to remember all of our body parts. We made a self-portrait inspired by Todd Parr, using bright bold colours for our faces. They turned out great!

We continued to work on sorting this week. We learned that we can sort by color, shape, and size. 

We started learning about apples this week. We talked about all the things we know about apples, like how they are red and grow from seeds. We dissected an apple together and looked inside. Some of us guessed that there would be seeds inside! After that we drew a diagram of our apple and labelled all the parts.

During centre time, we worked on our fine motor skills by sorting with tweezers and tongs, and cutting and pasting.

Apple pie sensory bin

We also started learning how to print the numbers 1-4 using Handwriting Without Tears. You can read more about the program here: https://www.lwtears.com/hwt

Important Reminders:

There is school on September 21. There is no PD day as it says on the school calendar and school will continue as normal.

Welcome to Kindergarten!

Welcome to kindergarten! Thank you for all the parents that came out to Meet the Teacher Night! It was a pleasure meeting you all. 

This week's theme was All About Me. We made a book about ourselves, and wrote our name, how old we are, our favourite colour, drew a self-portrait and a picture of our family.

We learned the Mat Man song to help us with our self portraits. Mat Man teaches us body awareness and reminds us to draw all of our body parts. Ask your child to sing the Man Man song to you!

In math, we are learning how to sort. On our first day, we sorted our class by eye colour. Then, we graphed it and counted how many of each colour we had. We counted each column and learned that brown had the "most", and green had the "least".

 We also sorted our shoes! First, we sorted them by colour, and then we sorted all the shoes that had shoelaces from the ones that had Velcro.

We can sort anything! Look at some of the manipulatives we sorted:

Matching the same dinosaurs

Sorting by colour

Soring blocks by colours

Sorting all the pink objects

Stay tuned for more fun things next week! Have a great weekend!

Ms. Chen

Delicious Apples

Theme: Apples

We did a taste test between Red Delicious (red) apples and Granny Smith (green) apples and then we voted to see which one was the favourite.

After this we created a poem using our five senses.

We continued to learn about the parts of an apple and completed a colouring activity to show the different parts.

I read the book "A Day at the Apple Orchard" by Megan Faulkner and we discussed the life cycle of an apple.

We made our own apple pies. I got the recipe from The Blond Cook. They were simple and delicious!

Math

We continued to practice counting this week. We played BINGO.

We also continued to build towers that matched the number

Social Studies:
We made thank you cards for the people who help us. 

Reading:

I am using Deanna Jump and Deedee Willis' resource called "Guiding Readers: Read AloudLessons and Activities" as part of my Language Arts program for the year. I am very excited about this resource because you read the same book all week but then look at it in different ways to learn reading concepts. This week I read the story "The Recess Queen" by Alexis O'Neill.

Throughout the week we looked at:

Predicting: what do you think will happen next?

Retelling: Telling what happened at the beginning, middle and end of the story. 

Opinions: What was your favourite part of the story?

Animated Literacy:
On Monday we learned about Dr. Ollie Ostrich who cures animals with his magic omelets.

On Wednesday we drew a pop, which is another term for father.

On Friday we learned about Mimi Mermaid who turn monsters into mice with her magic mop.

For more information on this program please visit http://www.animated-literacy.com/Animated_Literacy_Home.html

Finger Gym:
This week for our finger gym activity we moved leaves to a bowl by pinching with our thumb and pointer fingers.

Art:
In art this week we learned about my friend "Larry the Line" and completed line paintings using the many types of lines found in art: horizontal, vertical, diagonal, curvy and angled. I got the idea from Cassie Stephens. These art pieces look fantastic!

French:

This week the children learned "Comment ça va" (how are you?)"ça va très bien." (I am very good)"ça va bien." (I am good)"ça va mal." (I am not good) "Comme ci, comme ça." (So-so)

Don't Forget:

Send a healthy snack with your child. A list has been sent home or you can visit 100 Days of Real Food for some awesome ideas.

Each child needs to have indoor shoes, a backpack and appropriate clothing for the weather.

Feel free to contact me anytime with any questions or concerns. I can be reached at the school, by email or just drop in (I am usually around before school).