We’re continuing to update our weekly Alphabet Crafts and this week’s cutie is “N is the Night Sky.”  We love it and the children love it as well.  Thanks again to Pinterest and Christy for modifying this project to make it perfect for those sweet Kindergarten hands.  Stayed tuned for our adorable letter “O” craft!

The children found “n” an easy letter to print, having just completed “m” last week.  We’re really nudging the children along to print their names starting with an uppercase letter followed by the lowercase letters we’ve taught so far (a-n).  It’s really exciting to watch them printing their names so carefully.  When you’re printing at home, please watch your child’s letter formation – we typically go from top to bottom, left to right, when printing our letters.  We’re trying to discourage them from printing from the bottom to the top – to gain speed while printing, and staying neat, is going to require some mindfulness to form letters correctly.

Our big excitement this week was the introduction of the Mystery Box Inquiry.  We’re teaching the children to ask questions.  What better way than by hiding an object connected to our theme or Big Idea in the Mystery Box, and having the children ask us questions so they can make a logical guess about what’s inside?  Although they do make many guesses, we’re re-framing those guesses into questions (eg., is it a blue jay? Reframed to “What kind of bird is inside?”) to teach them the 5W question words (Who, What, When, Where, Why, How).  For more on our teaching of Mystery Box Inquiry, click here.

All of this mystery leads to our Digital Literacy project this year, which is the creation of iMovies with our Grade 7 Buddies.  Led by District Innovation Teacher (Elementary), Cari Wilson, and our Buddy teacher, Mr. Patterson, we will be researching penguins to collect data and images.  Ms. Wilson will visit our classrooms in about a month’s time to build the movies with us.

We have our Art favourite projects we like to do every year and our “Snowmen at Night” is really fun.  This project takes us 4-5 art classes to finish; it’s rewarding to observe the children’s patience as they finish each step yet anticipate the next one…excellent self-regulation.

We start by reading the delightful Snowmen at Night by Caralyn and Mark Buehner as an inspiration before drawing our own snowmen with pastels on light blue construction paper.  We love to use pastels with the Kindergarten.  The children are easily able to get bright, vibrant colour from pastels without having to press as hard as with crayons.

Once the children finish the drawing, they use one of our favourite craft supplies, Sparkle Mod Podge, to complete their snowman.  The children find Sparkle Mod Podge intriguing as they are painting with a glue that dries clear leaving a beautiful, sparkling finish.

Next, they paint a snowy background on a dark blue background. While it dries, they cut out their snowmen and we support any child who has difficulty negotiating around the stick arms.  Finally, snowmen and snowy backgrounds are glued together — another wonderful example of an Art and Literature integration, perfect for Kindergarten.

Upcoming Events and Reminders

We hope the rainy season is done for now.  We’re wondering if the snow, sunshine and cold weather was a better option than the rain?  Regardless, we’ve gone from snow boots to rain boots, swapped ski jackets for rain coats and many children are continuing to wear gloves and mittens.  It’s still quite chilly when they are outside during the morning recess.  We mentioned last week in our Remind texts to please send along extra socks.  We’re not sure how they do it, but puddle water seems to just jump into those playful little boots and we all know how uncomfortable wet socks can be!

Please ensure the indoor shoes you’re sending to school are runners.  We need those for PE and children are not allowed to wear shoes that may mark our gym floor.

We’re back to our schedule and LIbrary will be on Tuesday this week so please remember to return your Library books on Monday or Tuesday.