Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day is a fun-filled day in kindergarten.  I remember having so much fun passing out my cards and then opening all the ones I received.  It hasn't changed much since I was a child.

First we deliver our cards into each others envelopes.

Then we read all our cards.

 

Then we have a snack.  Although I don't remember having this much to choose from.

The kids loved the healthier treats except for the cauliflower - only one child had some.

We had so many treats that even after all the kids had three and the grown-ups had a few we had enough left over for another day or two.

 

Thank you to everyone for making it a great day for the class.

 

 

100 Day

 

The 100th day of school was February 13th.  We had a grand time doing 100 day activities for a few days and sharing our posters.

 

 

 

We made our crazy hair hats by putting ten bingo dabs onto ten strips of hair.

 

We went outside and collected 100 rocks.  We then spent two days washing them so we know they are very clean.

 

 

We put 100 Froot Loops on a Hundred Chart.....then we got to eat them. Yummy

 

Construction Center

I was doing some reading about how to encourage mature play and one of the recommendations was to organize play items so that they are easy to find and use.  So instead of housing the blocks in wooden boxes, I emptied the shelves at the front of the class and we moved the blocks.

 

Several children spent their Choice Time one day organizing the blocks.  We added the cardboard blocks, soft blocks and coloured blocks to the wooden blocks.  Luckily, I just receive another box of wooden architecture blocks at my last ProD event to add to the collection.

 

The cardboard box holds some Styrofoam pieces, foam pieces and tubular containers that are interesting for building.

This picture was taken several days later.  For about a week the construction center was packed with children every day.  It has since quieted down so that the children can actually have some room to build.  Ask your child what they have built.

It also worked...instead of building small towers or children working on their own creation, students are working together to build large castles or houses and then playing with them.  Another perk is that we now have room to leave the structures up for a few days.

Climbing

During our outside time I'm encouraging students to try new things.  For some the act of climbing is a new skill.  Often they could climb up like when they used the slide but climbing down was much more difficult.

 

 

The side playground at the school has a large semicircular climbing structure that not many students could climb over the first time we used it.  It was easy for them to get to the top but going down the other side was difficult.

 

 

Students also like to climb the other structures and spent a lot of time climbin up then down, up then down.

Outdoor Play

I've been doing a lot of reading about the importance of outdoor play.  Given that so many of our days are rainy and gloomy I thought that this might be the perfect time to try out the theories.  I have been impressed with the learning that is going on.

 

These kids are playing Mr. Wolf.  One of the children organized the game and invited the others to play.  The game went on for over 20 minutes.  This kind of playing stamina can be rare.  I'm pleased to see them work together for so long.

Puddles are always a big draw outside.  Most of the students spend a part of every outside time playing in the water.

Sometimes we can even find 'electric eels.'  Turning a plain object like a broken shoelace into a sea creature was exactly the kind of imagination that I was hoping to see.

 

This looks like just swinging but they are actually playing 'Jack & Annie' from the Magic Tree House.  Apparently Santa was in the tree house with them.

These look like leaves but they are fish.  They were collected from the pond and stored for later use.

 

The rest of the children were playing 'Rock Soccer'.  A version of regular soccer played with a rock.  Some kids play it the whole time we are outside in the front playground.  The rules seem to be similar than regular soccer although there are sometimes up to four goalies.