Ms. O's Kindergarten Blog

Happy Monday!  Some of the things we have been learning in Kindergarten over the past few days ... Today we talked about triangles and what their characteristics are.  We looked a different sizes and forms and discovered that all triangles have 2 things in common - they have 3 points (vertices) and 3 straight sides.  It was more difficult discovering things in our environment that can be triangular, but the students surprised me with their thinking!  Some of the things we thought of were slices of pizza, pyramids, tents, the roof of a house, a shark's fin (and teeth), a slide, the mountains and a birthday hat.  Ask your child what he/she can find at home that can be a triangular shape?  Can they draw a triangle?  I found that some children needed support in this area today.  You can help them by drawing three dots and having them connect them, one side at a time.  Thank you!!! The morning class learned about the Subnivean Zone last Thur...

Happy Wednesday!  We have had some great learning happening over the past few days.  Here is what we have learned... - not to put lego up your nose and what you can do if you do and it gets stuck - What animals do in the winter ...  ask your child if they can describe what hibernation, migration and adaptation all mean - the difference between deciduous and evergreen trees - what the characteristics are of a circle.  Can your child give you examples of things in real life that are circular?  We are talking about 2D shapes now and will progress to 3D shapes over the next couple of weeks.  We spend a lot of time discovering shapes in our environment.  Ask your child what shapes he/she sees when you are traveling in the car, sitting at the Dr's office, waiting in line at the grocery store... - We read the story "Ten Black Dots" and created our own "dot" pictures using between 1 and 10 dots and drawing pictures around our dots.   We told ou...

What a crazy, cold week it has been!  It has been/is very chilly in our classroom and school.  As well as ensuring that your child is dressed for being outside, please send him/her in a hoodie or sweater for the time inside the school.  Thank you!!!! Our class has been quite small this week as we have been missing between 5 and 10 students each day!  I don't blame you ... if I wasn't a teacher, I would be at home with my children as well!  Although the school is open, it is your decision whether you feel comfortable sending your child in such extreme cold.  Please let the office know (or send me a quick email) letting us know if your child will be absent.  A reminder that, on blue days, students come into the school as soon as they arrive.  Upon dismissal, please feel free to come to our back door and come in while we are getting ready.  A few extra hands at dismissal on days like these would be welcome! If your child has come home using ...

Happy New Year Kindergarten Parents and students! I hope everyone had a relaxing and enjoyable Christmas break!  I had a very relaxing and fun time in Maui with my extended family of 19!   It was both busy and relaxing at the same time. After 14 days together, it was nice to come back home and see my dogs (and my Kinders!). Before I go on, I want to thank everyone so much for their generosity this Christmas season.  I typically take the time to go through my gifts one at a time and write individual thank you notes but my teenage daughters had other plans this year!  They thought they would help me unpack my gifts while I was running around getting ready for our vacation, which was very thoughtful however, it left me with a pile of beautiful, thoughtful, yummy gifts and another pile of beautiful, thoughtful cards.  So ...  in an attempt to not miss thanking anyone, I thought I would thank you ALL!  Thank you for the chocolates, socks, mugs, candles,...

Happy Friday!!! It was a busy week in Kindergarten with lots of fun and learning about things we often find around the holiday season.  We did some guided drawings (of a reindeer, an elf and the grinch) and have our finished reindeer on display in the main hallway.  The grinch was a bit tricky but we learned how to draw him using numbers and letters on a website called "muffalo potato".  Check it out! We talked about the concept of "estimating" and spent some time estimating how many Hershey kisses were in 2 different sized mason jars.  Congratulations to Alejo and Rhett who estimated the closest for the large jar of 57 kisses.  Their estimation of 54 was only 3 off!  Charlotte guessed that there were 15 kisses in the smaller jar when there were in fact, 17.  Way to go Charlotte!  We will continue practicing our estimation skills next week with more treats in our jars! We were excited to decorate our gingerbread houses with our buddies on We...

Good morning Parents of my amazing Kindergarten students! I hope this blog finds everyone in your house HEALTHY!  So much has been going around our school and classroom.  We are really focusing on being healthy ... washing our hands, drinking water, exercising and eating healthy.  Hopefully that helps us stay as healthy as possible going into Christmas break. This week we continued our work on patterning, creating our own patterns using beautiful things (beads, snowflakes, pom noms, buttons etc).  We are practicing creating our own patterns as well as "reading them" using their attributes (blue, blue, red, blue, blue, red) as well as letters (AABAAB).  We did colored patterns on our elves legs and are trying to find ways of making our learning visible to you!  Its difficult when so much of our work is hands on and process, not product, orientated.  I get to see the students learning, but its important that YOU get to see it too!  We have some ...

I LOVE teaching Kindergarten in December.  With my own children being teenagers, the magic of Christmas has changed a bit.  The students have been so excited about some of the things we have been doing these past few days ...  they have been pretending to be elves in Santa's workshop (baking cookies, making coffees and doing some construction).  We discovered that we are being visited (and watched) by some of Santa's elves and were excited to name them yesterday.  Welcome to our classroom Rudolph and Elsa!  We also have been visited by the Kindness Elves who are giving us a daily challenge to add more kindness to the season.  Today they asked us to bring in food for the food bank!  Please bring in a non-perishable item or 2 (or 3 ...) for those in our city who are less fortunate than us.  Thank you!  I wonder what the kindness elves will have in store for us tomorrow! Today we did some patterning and Sophie demonstrated how to make bea...