Weekly Message: April 2

 Hello Kindergarten Families, 

It was great to have everyone back and to hear about how kids spent their spring breaks.  The children had an opportunity to share orally in a sharing circle, then to express their ideas through pictures and words in their journals.  It is amazing to see their growth adding details to their pictures and sounding out full sentences. 

This week we worked on the letter Gg.  We noticed that lowercase is formed using a "magic c", just like letters: a, d, o and c), and that it is an "underground" letter.  Please practice reading Gus the Dog.  Most children need to finish and label their pictures. 

We had fun in the gym this week, exploring ways we could use our bodies to share our learning about ocean environments, as Kindergarten is hosting the April Celebration of Learning. It will be at about 9:15am on April 30. I am excited to see what we come up with! 

We continued to explore the different parts of an ocean environment.  This week, we focused on the ocean floor in the "sunlit zone". We learned how some organisms move to meet their need and how some creatures stay stationary.  For example, coral, sponges and sea anemones attach to a fixed spot like seaweed, but crabs, octopus and sea snails move.  Some creatures move so slowly it doesn't look like they move like the starfish.  We enjoyed watching some videos during snack time on a website  called "Scuba Sam" by Nat Geo Kids:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rf8v1LVediI  We also enjoyed reading Eric Carle's A House For Hermit Crab.

Playing the fishing game.

Many students in our class celebrate Easter.  To help us get excited we did a guided draw of the Easter Bunny with pretty pastel backgrounds.  We learned we can turn colours into pastels by adding white to them. They look great.  Many kids also traced eggs and decorated them with markers.  

Today we had my daughter Lucy come volunteer in the classroom to show the kids her African Aquatic Dwarf Frogs. She talked about what they were like to have as a pet and answered the students' questions.  At the end of the day, the children made accurate pictures in their journals to show what an aquarium habitat for frogs needs.  

Lucy showing how to feed her frogs.  They eat dried blood worms.  Most of us decided they smell stinky! 

Using plastercine, styrofoam, packing chips and toothpicks to collaboratively construct a coral reef for our 3-D plastercine fish.

We started learning about floor hockey today.  We learned about the parts of the equipment, safe handling of equipment and how to hold the stick. We also practiced pushing our pucks in different ways Next week, the students will participate in the Sound Creations Residency during our gym time, but we will continue with hockey the week after that.  

One last note.  In your folders, two fundraisers were sent home.  If you do not want to participate in the coupon selling fundraiser, please return the package. 

Have a wonderful long weekend and Happy Easter if you celebrate it. 


Mrs. Wacker and Mrs. Kinnear

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