Last week in BBFK

Wow! These past 4 weeks have gone by so fast. I am so inspired by the learning that takes place in such a short period of time.

Looking at all my kiddos now this week, we have learned to recognize all the letters in our names, many additional letters of the alphabet, and for some kiddos we have started to recognize some sight words. We are well on our way to reading, writing, and creating once the school year starts.

Another area where I have been totally inspired is in the art that my kiddos are producing. They love to work with paints and are beginning to use natural and still object for their art. I can foresee a lot of observational art and writing coming to fruition this coming school year. I can't wait to see where our wonders will lead us.

Please celebrate with me when you look at some of the pic-collages we have co-constructed in small groups to share with our community.



Provocation for some watercolour art

Drawing our plan



Beginning our watercolour background

Here are 2 wonderful examples of the process it to create such wonderful art masterpieces.









Another area of interest this last week has been building roads and castles. Many of the kiddos used several different manipulatives to build and then talk about their structures.

I make a bridge for car!

Here a couple of kiddos were making a picture of the tree they saw out the Wonder Window.

 

Lastly I would also like to include more of our water colour art the kiddos made after bringing in wild flowers from the Eco Garden near our playground.

Thanks for viewing and joining this blog to see how the kiddos are developing and growing as individuals in our community.

Beginning of Week 3 BBFK

Welcome to all the new parents joining our blog. This is a great place to see what your kiddos have been doing in the classroom. Please feel free to leave us a message, as we often look at the blog together during the week to reflect on our learning.

We have started the week putting together our own Brown Bear, Brown Bear big book so the kiddos can reread it often. At one of our centres they have the opportunity to retell the story using stick puppets.

Another centre we have set up for the kiddos to experiment with is hidden colour words and alphabet letters as a find and match activity. All the kiddos have loved running their hands through the confetti as it feels pretty cool.

Many other kiddos are enjoying the sand table where they can look for letters they are familiar with and tell me or a friend the name. We are still in the beginning stages of recognizing and naming letters. This is great reinforcement and something that can be done at home too in a bowl of salt or sugar.  Can your kiddo find the letters in their name and say the letters out loud?

Continuing on the colour inquiry this week, one of our kiddos made a "rainbow" meal for the house centre. Bringing in the theme from last week she called it our fruit salad bowl.

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What a gat start to this 3rd week. I can't wait to see what the rest of the week brings with these kiddos who have come so far already!

Week 2 in BBFK

We are well into our second week of BBFK and the kiddos are beginning to adjust to some of our routines. All the kiddos are able to find their name cards in order to complete the sign-in process and most are able to pick a book and continue sustained reading for about 5 minutes.

This week we have concentrated on the practice of printing our names using various methods. Rainbow name printing is one of the favourites.

During learning center time, the trains have been an on-going process. The tracks change daily, as do some of the groups building. We are learning to share the train cars with our friends, as well as build the track together.

Another small group of kiddos really enjoy watching and observing the bunny. Today we discussed what they think she likes to eat. The kiddos came up with a few good observations of lettuce, carrots, water, and PAPER! She really enjoys sitting in her bed bin and chewing on the paper in there.

Stay tuned for more learning next week, and we hope you enjoy this week's post.

BBFK has started!

Well today was our first half day in my new classroom, with all our BBFK kiddos. We have a new Sr. Counsellor for the summer: Ms. To. I am excited to work with her before she heads off to teacher's college in the fall.

Today was a fun day to watch the kiddos find activities to engage with. Several girls gravitated to the puppet theatre - we may be seeing some plays be created, while others immediately began building castles, trains, and bridges.

Find the characters today.

And then they added the audience chairs.

While not too many tears toady, tomorrow will be an even better day!

New class pet!

We have a bunny! Last week I went to Bond Lake PS to pick up our new class bunny - Hop! She just beautiful and the kids love her a ton.

We brought her into the classroom and soon enough she made herself more comfortable and came out to explore the classroom while the kids were around.

The kiddos are all curious about many things. We will begin documenting our year long journey with her on Cottontail Crescent to add to her journey through Rabbit Road this year.

We would like to thank Joanne Babalis and her kindergarten class for providing us with the beginning of our journey. We will be sure to post often on our class website as well as through Ms. Clark's Instagram account.

And our journey begins ....

Hop is very happy in her new environment.

And she ventured out while the kiddos waited and played around her.

Bringing Nature Indoors

We have been very busy in room 109. Lots of outdoor play with our new kite that the Grade 7/8 teacher (Mr. Mio) has lent us. Pictures to come - I-pad pictures outside are not the best :-(

Picking beautiful wild flowers takes up a lot of our outdoor play activity time. We are lucky to have several green spaces right outside our doors where flowers grow. Many of the kiddos make beautiful bouquets to bring in and observe at the nature table. Next week I will make a concerted effort to change this into a wonder table and sit with the kiddos to really explore their wonders about these beautiful flowers.

Many worms have also made their way into the classroom. Without being squeamish, we have begun wondering about them and what they eat. We had a little experiment to see if they eat paper, however I think they may have died and we will have to do some research to see if we can do a bit of a better job feeding some new one.

Beginning of our Worm Inquiry

We have also been fortunate enough to have a new Kindergarten friend of mine, Laurel Fynes, collect rocks from Lake Ontario for our class. Today I introduced these beautiful rocks with the provocation of showing the kiddos pictures from Peter Reidel's website. He creates beautiful balancing art with rocks. Many of our kiddos wanted to try and create their own balancing art. We actually have a long wait list for a turn.
Here's a sneek peek at some of today's creations. The kiddos are learning patience - this can't be accomplished quickly.



Balancing art

Leaning tower

Another area of the classroom that has been very busy these past couple of weeks is our Tim Horton's store. The kiddos spend quite a while making all the donuts and timbits. They created menus, and price boards.

We have lined up the customers, and created a drive thru road.

Making donuts

 

Setting up the store

Making the menu with prices

 

 

This has allowed our class to really focus on money and continue to use different coins in a variety of real-life scenerios.

Lots of learning has happened and I will post again soon with some of our paintings.



Loose Parts Art

With an inspiration from my Kinder PLN today; at recess many of the kiddos were enjoying all the natural environment around us. We decided to bring in some grasses, dandelions, and clover. With this we added our rock collection and wood pieces to see what kind of art we could create using loose Pieces.

Not surprisingly, the art is stunning. Please enjoy their beautiful art. I'm sure there's more to come :-)

A beautiful butterfly

A picture in a frame.

A plate of food.