Patterns, Patterns, Patterns!

 Hi Kinder Families, 

Thank you for all of your support with our week of online learning. What a wonderful week we had, it was great to see all the kiddos face to face! This week we continued our work with patterns. We began with a group discussion exploring patterns and where we can find them in our world. Please ask your child: 

"What is a pattern?" 

"Where are patterns found?" 

We read the book "A-B-A-B-A A book of Pattern Play" and identified the pattern core. We used actions, words, songs, and unifix coloured cubes to identify and extend simple AB and ABC patterns. Here are some creative ways we made patterns! 

Enjoy the warm January weather and have a wonderful weekend! 

Reminders

PM Kindergarten Attends Friday January 22nd 

No Conferences this month Please see email from the school's office for more details (sent last Friday) 

Regular Classes Thursday January 28th 

No School Friday January 29th P.D. Day

January 28th and January 29th - Update

 Dear Kindergarten Families,

Please note changes in our January 2021 Calendar below:

 No Conferences this month, please see email from the school's office for more detail (sent last Friday)

There will be regular classes Thursday, January 28th

AM K 8-10:50am

PM K 11:40-2:30pm 

There will be NO classes Friday, January 29th 

Thank you! 

The Ken Taylor Kindergarten Team 

Alphabet Letter Hunt

This Week in Kindergarten we focused on taking care of ourselves, each other and our classroom. We continued our name work and recognizing/printing using appropriate uppercase and lowercase letters. Continuing our Alphabet Work we went on a Letter hunt. Using our "detective goggles" we went on a hunt around the room to find the Uppercase and lowercase letters of the alphabet. It was challenging but we persisted and worked together to find all 26 letters of the Alphabet! 

This week we read the book "The Invisible String" ,  "People who love each other are always connected by a special string, made of love. Even though you can't see it with your eyes, you can feel it deep in your heart, and know that you are always connected to the ones you love." When we are at school and we miss you , we tug on our invisible string so you can feel our love!

On Wednesday afternoon we had a Fire Drill. Our PM Class is working on being safe, silent and serious during a fire drill. We did a great job walking outside and calmly exiting the building! 

 

REMINDERS

Please practice logging into Google Classroom! We will be using your child's @educbe.ca for their learning January 4-8th. More detailed information coming soon. 

Thank you!

12 Day of Winter/Christmas at Ken Taylor School continues! See previous blog post or email sent by the office for more information. 

12 Spirit Days of Winter/Christmas Ken Taylor School

  Dear Families,

The school community will be participating in the below holiday activities. Please note that these are optional for your child to dress up/participate in.

Letters in Our Name

 Hi Room 108 families, We have had a busy week in Kindergarten. We now have an AM class (blue team) and a PM class (green team). This week we revisited our rules, routines and expectations. Continuing our alphabet work, we focused on our names. We printed our names using 1 uppercase letter and lowercase letters. We counted the letters in our name and used tally marks/hearts to graph the letters in each students name. 

The next day we worked with a friend and compared our names with each other. What is the same?What is different?How many letters are in your name? your partner's name?

What letters are the same? What letters are different? After, we cut out the letters in our name and sorted the letters using our giant alphabet chart! This was a big task for the kiddos but they had a blast doing it! 

We spent some time outside this week exploring and observing how fall has changed into winter! 

Hope you had a wonderful weekends enjoying the sunshine! 

REMINDERS

Following the christmas break classes will resume online for 1 week. We will be using Google Meet and Google Classroom January 4-8. It is important that each student has access to these platforms, so please practice logging in. 

 More information coming soon!

Friday, December 4 PD Day, NO School K-4

Friday, December 11 PM Attends 8am-12pm

Friday, December 18 AM Attends 8am-12pm 

A is for Apple

 Hi Parents & Guardians, 

Students attended a school wide virtual assembly for Remembrance Day. I must say I was very impressed, they were respectful and handled the moment of silence like pros. It was great to virtually see some of the other students and their artwork. We continued our work with peace and poppies exploring the five senses and created our own poppies to wear for the ceremony. 

We continued our work with numeracy and exploring the concepts "Same and Different" we looked at pictures and noticed what was the same and what was different in image. 

Please ask your child "What is the same?" and "What is different?" 

We are continuing our work with alphabet letters and sounds using our "A is for Apple" song and alphabet charts to help us. We are identifying the letters in our names and challenging ourselves to identify the beginning letter sounds in our classmates names. 

We are continuing our letter work during centre time, matching uppercase and lowercase letters, writing our classroom affirmations and spelling our names with lowercase letters. 

Reminders 

• Thursday, November 19 and Friday November 20 Virtual Conferences, No Classes for K students. I look forward to meeting with each of you online to discuss your child's progress and EYE-TA results. Please check your email for the link to book a time for conferences. 
• Friday November 27 AM Kindergarten Attends 
• Friday December 4 PD Day No School  

Peace Feels Like...

This week we read the book "What does Peace feel like?" it is a book written by children and uses the 5 senses to explore peace. Next week we will be completing journal pages exploring what peace means to us and what it looks like, feels like and sounds like. 

We continued our work for remembrance day, and talked about peace in our classroom using gentle hands, kind words and helping others. We learned about poppies and how it is a symbol of peace. We created some beautiful poppy art (that I forgot to take pictures of!) I will post pictures of our art on Monday. 

We are continuing our work with sorting and exploring the different ways we can sort in our classroom and at our homes. We have some very creative students who wanted to sort their snacks by colour during snack time! Please ask your child "What is your sorting rule?" 

We are continuing our work with our 5 Little Pumpkins wall story. We used macaroni to create our numbers and spent time using our writing strategies to spell key words in our poem. Using isolation and letter sounds we learned how to spell "Oh My" "Run" and "Fun". It was hard work but we persisted! 

On Tuesday November 10th we are having a virtual assembly in honour of Remembrance Day. Poppy donations are gladly accepted at school if you would like to donate.

Reminders 

Thank you for working on independent dressing! I have noticed the growth in this big skill. 

Snacks: Thank you for sending healthy snack and water with your child. We understand treats and candy are popular this time of year. If you do send a treat with your child to school, please limit it to 1 small candy/chocolate. Thank you! 

• Monday November 9th Picture Retake Day
• Wednesday, November 11 Remembrance Day No Class for K-4
• Friday, November 13 PM Attends 8am-12pm (No Class for AM) 
• Thursday, November 19 and Friday November 20 Virtual Conferences, No Classes for K students. I look forward to meeting with each of you online to discuss your child's progress and EYE-TA results.  Please watch your email for further information soon. 

I Can Sort!

 

Happy Halloween Kindergarten! I hope you had a wonderful Halloween weekend with your family.  We had another busy week, we are continuing our work with 5 Little Pumpkins and created reading goals. Every morning we review our goals and affirm we are readers! 

On Monday we revisited our seed exploration and used ten frames to count our seeds and ensure numbers 1 - 10 are "stuck in our brains". We learned when the top row is full we have 5 objects, and if the top and bottom row is full we have 10! 

Working on our Friend of the Day, we used oral language and memorization to create sentences to share the knowledge we learned about our friends. 

For example, "Kamran's favourite colour is blue", "Ians favourite activity is drawing" and "Evelyn is 5 years old". 

 Please ask your child to share their friend of the day sentences.  

I Can Sort! We are exploring sorting in our Kindergarten classroom, and challenging ourselves to sort in different ways. In our animal groups we worked together to sort our mystery objects. by size, colour or shape. We took part in a gallery walk to view each others sorting group and went around the room sharing "The sorting rule is _____" 

Please review these pictures with your child and prompt "What is the sorting rule?"

Reminders

• Picture Day Orders due by November 5th

• AM Kindergarten Attends Friday November 6th 

• Picture Retake Day November 9th 

• Remembrance Day November 11th (No School) 

5 Little Pumpkins

 

This week we introduced a story called 5 Little Pumpkins. Everyday we read the story and recited the chant to ensure it is "stuck in our brains". As we read the story we are developing fluency, reciting, print awareness, and reading a story from left to right. We created actions to go along with the words we are reciting. We will continue our work with this story the next few weeks through a wall story, the passage will be printed on the wall to facilitate reading practice. Stay tuned! 

As Halloween is approaching, we continued our pumpkin inquiry in other areas of learning. Through a sharing circle we described what the pumpkin looks like, what it feels like, and what it smells like. Yesterday, we were scientists, and predicted how many seeds are inside our pumpkin. We sorted the pumpkin guts from the seeds. We are continuing our seed exploration next week! 

We learned how to draw the inside and outside of a pumpkin. Using our kid writing and magic line we challenged ourselves to print pumpkin. Please ask your child "What is the beginning sound of the word pumpkin?" or share "I can spell pumpkin using word bubblegum!"

We also learned a new Roll & Cover pumpkin game, we play this game during centre time. It has been a big hit!  

Independence

Please continue working on independently dressing. As the cold weather is here please practice putting on our snow pants and zipping zippers. We use this visual in our classroom, feel free to use it at home when practicing independently dressing. This visual is a great way to increase our confidence and independence as young learners. We read pictures from left to right :) 

Halloween 

On Thursday October 29th, please send your child to school wearing their halloween costume and mask. Please make sure your child's costume does not interfere with their COVID mask, and keep any accessories that go with your child's costume at home. Please DO NOT send any candies, treats, or non-edible gifts (e.g. pencils, stickers etc.) Due to COVID we are unable to hand out anything to students. Thank you!  We will continue our regular learning on this day with some halloween activities!  

Reminders 

• Thursday October 29th Halloween 
• Friday October 30th P.D. Day (No School K-4) 

Fall Changes

 

What a busy week we had in Kinder! We are continuing our work with shapes and are beginning to explore sorting. We wondered "What is sorting?" using our knowledge and experiences we shared how we sort items in our everyday lives (toys, food, fruit, coloured items). We read the book Sort it Out by Barbra Mariconda and used our detective glasses to find Packy's sorting rule. During centre time each student had the opportunity to sort shapes using the teacher tool (smartboard). 

We continue our work with Friend of the Day. We are asking questions to get to know our friends and are exploring different ways to represent our age (dots, tally marks, and our fingers). We are continuing to use Kid Writing with our word bubblegum and the magic line. Please ask your child "What is word bubblegum?"

We went on a fall walk, observed the fall changes and searched fall items found around our school. We even made fall angels! 

We sat in a sharing circle, using our senses (sight, touch, smell, and hearing) we shared our thoughts/ideas of leaves and how leaves change during the fall. We also learned how to draw a picture of a leaf and label each part of the leaf. We had so much fun being scientists and observing the changes of leaves. We use the outdoors often in our learning, With the colder weather approaching, a reminder to send your child to school with weather appropriate clothing each day.

Way to go Kenneth Taylor School!!!

With the generous help of our families and our community, we have raised a record amount of $1735.00 for the Terry Fox Foundation!

Reminders

• Zippers! Please practice those zippers at home until they can do it independently! 
• Please continue to send at least 2 clean masks daily 
• Thank you for continuing to complete the daily health check before sending your child to school

I Am Thankful For...

We focused on three letters this week /f/ /v/ and /k/. We have the letter sounds "stuck in our brains" and challenged ourselves to identify words that begin with each letter sound. Please ask your child "Do you know a word that begins with the letter _?" 

We are continuing our work with Friend of the Day. Experimenting with kid spelling, and sounding out our words using our word bubblegum. 

We are continuing our work with shapes and lines. We had a blast during our shape hunt and created a shape wall. 

With Thanksgiving this weekend, the Thankful book by Todd Parr was the perfect opportunity to explore thankfulness, what it looks like, and how it makes us feel. Each student explained what they were thankful for, drew a picture, folded our notes, placed into envelopes, and (their favourite part) surprising our grown ups with our Thankful Mail! 

I am thankful for them, their energy and willingness to share what they are thankful for! 

Reminders 

• Please continue to send at least 2 masks daily
• Thank you for continuing to complete your daily health screen for your child before you send them to school 
• No school Friday or Monday

Happy long weekend! I hope you enjoy the fresh air, sunshine and time together. See you all on Tuesday :) 

Scholastic Reading Club Program

 Dear Parents/Guardians,

 This year our class will be participating in the Scholastic Reading Club Program. Reading every day is the best way for children to become independent readers. 

NEW this year: your order will now ship to your home and you can order online whenever you want using the link scholastic.ca/clubshop. When you checkout, please enter my Class Code RC318570 

When you use the Class Code our class earns 20% of the value of the order in rewards and you get Free Shipping on your order of $35 or more*. The rewards earned can be put towards books, digital teacher resources, and more! *Orders below $35 will be charged $3.50 

Here’s to a great year of reading! 

Ms. Fieldstone 

Orange Shirt Day & Terry Fox Run

 We had another busy week in Kindergarten!! Wednesday September 30th was Orange Shirt Day. Please ask your child what they learned about Orange Shirt Day. 

We continued our work exploring letters and letter sounds. We touched upon the letters /t/ and /d/. We practiced the letter sound, letter identification, and challenged ourselves to find words that begin with each letter. We continued our work with Friend of the Day, using our word bubblegum we S-T-R-E-T-C-H-E-D out the word by saying each sound slowly and identifying the letter using our phonemic awareness. We put the sounds back together and repeated the word! 

With your child, discuss word bubblegum and ask them how we use it in the classroom. 

We explored shapes and art this week! We used creative license to make our own pictures using rectangles. 

Please ask your child "What did you create using rectangles?"

During centre time we had the opportunity to explore with shapes. Some of our friends made people and animals using shapes. 

On Thursday we learned about a Canadian Hero named Terry Fox. He showed us persistence and how we need to try and try again to reach a goal. We ran in support of Terry Fox! We explored the H.E.A.R.T. values and created goals for ourselves that we will accomplish this year. 

Reminders 

Friday, October 9 PD Day NO School for K-4 

Monday, October 12 Thanksgiving Monday NO School for K-4

Wednesday, October 14 Picture Day 

Friday, October 16 AM Attends 

Friday, October 23 NO School for AM Students

Friday, October 30 PD Day NO School for K-4