#pgkindnessproject

It has been exciting over the past few weeks to have a focus on being kind in our school. Trillium Lakelands District School Board has a Week of Kindness every year. Our school board shares it's learning on Twitter at #TLDSBlearns. It has shared lots of great happenings around the Week of Kindness on Twitter. I would encourage you to check it out. Our school, Pine Glen Public School, has been tweeting about our kindness movement at #pgkindnessproject. This is a project our students have been fired up about and something that we have decided to continue with all year. Keep up to date with the movement at #pgkindnessproject.

The following pictures are of our class, #pgkinderland, and it's contributions with to #pgkindnessproject as of late.

Kindness Quilt

Water colour kindness cards

Special messages to people that we appreciate like moms dads, grandparents, great grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, teachers, DECE's, EA's, friends, bus drivers, crossing guards, leaders of clubs, etc.

Giving popcorn to people around our school community

Keep the movement alive!

A little spark of kindness is a colossal burst of sunshine into someone's day.

Kinderland Remembers

In Kinderland, we remember. We remember the many people who helped in the past and currently help Canada be safe and free. Kinders have been free to explore their thoughts and feelings about the love and sacrifice that went before them in a developmentally appropriate manner. Kinders have been able to self-select a variety of activities based around Remembrance Day in art and literacy.

A collage of Remembrance Day activities

A Poppy flag similar to our Canadian flag

A handprint dove 

A coffee filter poppy wreath. Coffee filter cut in poppy shape and coloured with marker and sprayed with water.

We made poppies with tissue paper and pipe cleaner stems as well as these tissue paper poppies on paper.

Some intermediate students said these finger print doves look like the Twitter bird.

Painting poppies

Pop bottle bottom print poppies and negative space tape crosses. Take the tape off when painting is dry.

Literacy at Remembrance Day

Remembrance Day writing about things we love and appreciate.

Little Poppy Poem

Little poppy

Given to me.

Little poppy 

Remember me.

Little poppy

As red as can be.

Help keep Canada

Safe and free.

Song for Remembrance Day Assembly

I Got Peace in My Fingers

Fun Friday: Monster Mania Hallowe'en

On Hallowe'en we celebrated with our Learning Buddies. The kinders self-selected from different monster related activities. We experienced Monster Mania!

Monster blow paint with watered-down paint. 

Qtip Skeletons 

 Toilet Paper Mummies 

Target practice with Spider Web

Monster Symmetry Blobs 

 Monster Play Doh 

Tissue Paper Monsters

We had a great time with our Learning Buddies. They helped bring the activities to life, guide the students learning, and encourage the kinders to take risks.

Hallowe'en Provocations

The following are some provocations/invitations for learning that we had out around Hallowe'en.

With beautiful pens, pencil crayons, highlighters, and crayons, kinders had opportunities to write about Hallowe'en. Vocabulary prompts were visible for kinders as a reference and fun and spooky writing paper was photocopied freely.

Our Hallowe'en Sensory Tubs had black beans and orange split peas. We found ice cube trays that are perfect ten frames and Hallwe'en props like spiders and ants. Funnels, scoops, and volume cups were readily available.

See our Bat Bonanza blog entry for ideas about bats.

Ghost beans, numbers, Hallowe'en Dollar Store items and reflective cd's create an inviting space for kinders to explore and create with Math.

Stimulating ideas with Rache had this Monster Math freebee on it.

Kinderland Newsletter Oct 29

Fun Friday: Bat Bonanza with Learning Buddies

This past Friday in honour of Hallowe'en, but more importantly student interest, we held a Bat Bonanza with our Learning Buddies. We have one kinder who is especial interested in Batman. 'Interested' is not a strong enough word. This kinder's enthusiasm for Batman has stirred engagement and learning for many young kinders in Kinderland. Inspired by student interest, we created a Gotham City in our Small World play area complete with chalkboard buildings, co-created maps with literacy and numeracy, labelling, super hero designing, and using block play and loose parts to explained their thinking with plans.

We got Batty!

Kinders made Bat Flyers! They practiced different techniques similar to flying paper airplanes. 

Kinders painted negative space bats. 

Bat Hats

Echolocation Music Game: One kinder, the bat, stood blindfolded in the middle of a circle of kinders holding instruments. One kinder at a time played their instrument and the bat had to rely on the hearing and point to the direction they heard the music coming from. Just like how bats rely on their hearing to locate food.

One kinder explains: "Bats make a screech sound and the screech sound echoes of the bug, so they can hear where the bug is, and they can go eat them."

Toilet Paper Roll Bats

Researching bats on iPads and recording wonderings and learning on stickies displayed on a giant bat tree mural. This is what they found to be the largest bat in the world.

Bat measurement with non-standard units of measure. One kinder learned that a common bat in Ontario named the small brown bat has a wingspan of 22-27cm. So, we cut out cardboard bats of that length and kinders measured with a variety of materials.

Non-Fiction printable Bat Books from www.teacherspayteachers.com

See my Hallowe'en Pinterest page for many of these great ideas and more.

http://www.pinterest.com/smelmax/halloween-kindergarten/

Pumpkin Inquiry Part 1

We were excited to bring home our own pumpkins from our field trip last week to Morrison Meadows Farm in Bracebridge, ON. On our bus ride home we started our wondering about pumpkins. How do they grow? Do they grow in a field of grass? Our research began by cutting apart our pumpkins and making some observations.

Pumpkin Observations:

I see lots of seeds.

There is orange goo in the pumpkins.

The seeds are whitey and yellowey.

It's slimy.

It's cold and hard.

The pumpkin is orange and bumpy. 

There's 100 seeds.

The pumpkin is a circle.

The stem has lines.

We started documenting our findings right away. We decided that stems must be pretty important to help the pumpkins grow. So, we started investigating other stems that we found outside. 

We collected some stems for some further investigation. We asked questions like: What has stems? What is attached to stems? What do stems do? 

We opened apart some stems to see the inside. Some students noticed how some stems are white inside. Some stems have holes. 

More questions arose like, "how do we know the difference between a root and a stem?". Some kinders explained that roots are in the ground. Together we collaborated our ideas to determine roots are in the ground and stems are near the leaves. 

Stem Experiment

We wondered what stems were for so we tried an experiment with different plants and food colouring. 

Predictions:

The stems will be turn rainbow.

The stem will be a new colour then go back to its old colour.

The stems will die.

They will be different colours.

Observations:

The leaves turned blue. 

The purple is in the stem.

The lines are purple. 

Conclusions:

Stems help the leaves get water. New vocabulary: The stems absorb the water and help transport it to the leaves.

Child-led Exploration

Some kinders decided to try their own experiment inspired by the book, "The Runaway Pumpkin" by Kevin Lewis. They wanted to know if a small or big pumpkin would roll down the hill the fastest. One student timed it on the iPad while the other student did 3 tests. The results were the larger the pumpkin the farther and faster it would roll. 

Our pumpkin inquiry will continue 'student engagement' permitting.