The past two weeks were exactly what we needed…lots of time in our classroom to play with our friends, have fun making crafts, sunshine and cold weather and slowing down the pace after a busy week of February Celebrations.

We’ve made our “s is a snake” and “t is a tree” alphabet crafts.

There was much discussion around whether or not snakes had stripes, polka dots or both but in the end everybody chose to draw what made them happy. Sometimes that is best.

The following week we had a talk about apples in the tree and what colour choices we might make to represent them in sequins. This is definitely one of the best things about Kindergarten…you never quite know what we’re going to be talking about.

We’ve been practising making sets of numbers and counting them. We’re learning that numbers can have a variety of combinations but the number itself is always constant. We’re using two sided bean counters to prove this.

We’ve had fun with lots of counting from 1-20 using 1-1 correspondence. For some of the children, their finger doesn’t move as fast as they are counting aloud. Suddenly, they’ve counted to 25 but we only had 20 objects! We’ve found a counting wand or pencil really helps them to slow down the pace so pointing and counting are the same.

In all the flurry of February we forgot to make our February banners for our scrapbooks. We love these colour choices of red and purple! Then the next day, time for March banners!

We’re just wrapping up a few more activities for Chinese New Year. We made our beautiful dragons on Monday, complete with rainbow beards. During Centre Time the children have been playing with tangrams and making animals and objects.

We were fascinated with Grandfather Tang’s Story by Ann Tompert and Robert Andrew Parker, and the adventure of fox friends, Chou and Wu Ling. We had fun using the tangrams and patterns to create pictures.

We read our favourite all time story for Chinese New Year, Lon Po Po by Ed Young. It’s the story of “Little Red Riding Hood,” but it takes place in China. We enjoy the discussion of similarities and differences between different versions of familiar stories and this one is a great place to start. For our Art project, the children drew with pastel and then gave their drawings a wash with paint using the tempera paint pucks. The children loved this technique and were fascinated with how the oil based pastel resisted the paint. Some of them realised they could have printed their name in a more contrasting colour to their paint choice, but is this not what learning is all about?

We been really enjoying the children’s family sharing. It is so wonderful to see your family photos and to hear your child talk about their favourite activities as a family. It’s especially heart-warming to hear the children make connections between how families can enjoy the same kinds of outings and activities, and then learn about new things they didn’t know about.

Upcoming Events and Reminders

Please let us and the school office know if you are going to be leaving early for the Spring Holiday which begins on March 16 at 12 pm. School will be dismissed early so please advise Camp Ridgeview if your child needs to be picked up by our after school care.

We’re still wearing our boots for rainy days, so please ensure you have them at school. The children have developed a good habit of wearing gloves now, even if it’s not snowy, just so they can stay a little warmer.

Library Book Exchange will be on Wednesday.