Our snail inquiry is really popular amongst our students! They come to school each day with cucumber slices, lettuce and apple pieces (although the snails have not really touched the apple yet) to feed them.
We will continue to learn about snails this week!
Since Thanksgiving is around the corner here in Canada (we will be focusing more on that next week), we set up our Dramatic Centre to be a Farmer's Market!
These are magnetic alphabet tracing boards. I bought them several years ago from Scholastic.
Let's explore numbers!
Use loose parts to trace the letters. These felt letters are from Target (bought them a few summers back) but you can easily make your own with a Cricut or use die cut letters!
Match the magnetic letters to the alphabet strips (so many different ones included!).
You can find these ready to use alphabet strips here:
What can you build? We left out loose parts as well as our picture book about structures.
Coming up this week our school will be focusing on Safety Week! Our poem of the week, "Stop, Look, Listen" focuses on staying safe as we have a number of drills we will be practicing.
Here are a few invitations for learning we set out:
At our Science and Discovery table, we added snails! This tied so well with our shell inquiry from the first two weeks of school. Since it rained yesterday afternoon, I found a bunch of snails (and a big thank you to Mrs. C. who also collected some for me!). Looking forward to seeing where this takes us!
We added orange food colouring in our water table along with plastic leaves and acorn for students to make "fall soup". I can't believe later this week we will be celebrating the first day of fall!
How many ways can you show the number?
At our playdough centre, students can use these "I am special!" mats to make themselves!
We survived Week 1! We had a fun week getting to know one another and exploring the classroom.
Our Year 2 (SK) students are called "leaders" in our class - we all take that role very seriously! This past week we had our first meeting. We brainstormed what a leader looks like!
Now that our schedule is a little more concrete, we are starting to implement our regular lessons. I find it much easier to plan one literacy activity in the morning and one math activity in the afternoon, plus games/read alouds/etc. throughout the day when time permits.
For instance, on Mondays we always open our literacy circle with a new poem of the week!
You can find all of the poems I use here:
We follow weekly lesson from my "I Can Write!" packs:
My math lessons are taken from my math units - this coming week we will be continuing to focus on number sense by playing games and fingerplays:
We also went on a number hunt around our classroom!
We also added these games to our Math Centre for students to play with each other!
You can find all of these ideas and games in my Number Sense in Kindergarten pack (click the picture below)!
I've had a few requests to share the parent/guardian letters we hand out in our communication folders on the first day.
These mailbags are from Dollarama and I made the labels (this year we added numbers to each student to make it quick and easy to see who didn't return). Click the picture to download!
Click HERE to download the Parent/Guardian Questionnaire.
You can find the Back to School Flip Book by clicking below:
Looking for the soap/tissue note? Click below!
We also keep this note handy near the cubby area for quick access. If we notice students need extra clothes/shoes/etc. we check mark it on this form and send it home. Much faster than writing a note each time!!!
I've had some requests to show what I use to record how students go home each day. I made this simple poster and have it visible near our door.
Click below to download your editable copy for FREE!
What's coming up Week 2?
We set out this invitation for students to use small wooden stackers, popsicle sticks and magnetic letters to build an ABC tree.
Dot Day is this Friday! Students can explore creating dot designs using these loose parts.
We will be reading the story The Dot and singing along to the Emily Arrow song The Dot Song.
We added a doll house with simple furniture to our small world play centre.
This is our felt board. I'll be reading the story If You Take a Mouse to School and made these felt pieces years ago!
This felt board is AMAZING! It's so large and durable! Highly recommend! It's from Tiny Feats and you can click HERE to see more.
Simple Lego set out at the large table.
Our game we set up is a Disney Mickey Mouse matching game.
We will be working on identifying and building the letters in our name. These name cards are from A Pinch of Kinder.
We left these shells at our Science and Discovery Centre as students are still quite interested in looking closely and drawing!
Sorting colourful animals!
Our water table has star ice cubes (we add coloured water) with a variety of scoopers and bowls.
Here are my weekly plans if you'd like to download!
If you would like the editable version to modify this for your own class click HERE.
The original blank PowerPoint file has been uploaded onto Google Slides but the formatting has changed.