My busy time with this wonderful kindergarten class!

~Today's post is brought to you by our ECE student extraordinaire, Tanya Ramsay!~

Thank you to each and every student who has made me feel quite at home and welcome in their class.  In addition, I want to thank all the parents I've met who have also been so kind and supportive.  We have had many discoveries together in room 132.  It is hard to believe that in only two weeks my time in the classroom will be over.  My last day will be April 19th.  It will be very difficult to say good bye.

I wanted to take some time to share with you all some of the activities I have been a part of with your children.  

Building with Boxes

Thank you parents for bringing in all these boxes!

I built a robot.  I made a plan and shared my ideas.

We built enclosures together.

We made pizza!

We can work together

Oh no!

My blueprint for a robot

Here is my robot and my plan 

Just the right amount of recyclables for a dump truck.

Sharing with others how I did it! 

Our skating rink

I can tell you about what I made!

I used tape to hold it together.

My basket has a pattern.  I carefully selected the colours and materials.

I made an Easter basket.  "The cup is for more chocolates."

I made a basket too.

Building with boxes is one way for children to use inexpensive items to develop valuable skills.  They learned to make plans, understand physics (the laws of gravity), and to manipulate the materials to represent their ideas.  These are all ways to build their confidence, understanding of the world and to prepare themselves for future inquiries.  Some children played together, others independently.  The children have been working hard making "blue prints" and plans for many of the other things they create in the classroom.  This is one way we encourage prewriting and literacy skills through play in the classroom.

Colour Mixing

This activity was about the science of colour mixing....

"I made pink again."

Olivia noticed, "I need black, because look, that is super dark there." 

"I made pink again."

We were trying to only use a little paint at a time.  It takes practice to do that!

"Look there.  I made the same - mix it all about."
"Almost - what happens if I mix yellow?"

"It's the same."

"I made a lot of colours - this makes paint."
Caitlyn experimented, painting samples until she matched the colour and proudly said, "That one!" 

The colour mixing activity encouraged the children to see that colours come in many shades and variations.  They learn to recognize and appreciate the colours of their world - the world around them and in their every day life.  This activity encouraged them to develop fine motor control by only using small amounts of paints.  It also encouraged them to experiment and learn cause and effect when mixing colours.  We have been using these skills when painting representational pictures - images of things that are real.  When we look carefully at things in our world we learn to recognize their shapes, (great for our developing writing skills), patterns and how we relate to these experiences.  Caitlyn proudly exclaimed to me, "Ms. Ramsay, I'm going to stay here all day".  

 

Our colour recipes.  After looking at different shades and colours more closely we began working on recipes for colours.  This recipe was to make the purple and green in our lilies.  First we mixed the paint, then we tested to see how close it was by painting the lilies.  Some children have begun making their own recipes, so that others can make the same colours they did.  

 

 Little Bunny Foo Foo

Although I knew through personal experience that children love to pretend and make believe, the Early Childhood Education Program taught me that acting out stories you know is called Creative Dramatics.  What is great about acting out stories we know is that we work on our ability to remember, to recall and to understand the stories we read, the songs we sing and to make better sense of our world.  Pretending is a valuable way to explore different roles, work with our peers and express our feelings and thoughts.  We talked about what kinds of "props" we would need for our performance and what characters we wanted to represent.  The morning of our show Cameron Ha told me upon arrival, "I am excited to do Foo Foo today".  Ella had decided she wanted to be the "woods".

My friend Lily helped me make my ears.

"It's not ears - it's wings!"  

"Look, now it's just like yours."

"I need some help wrapping it up." (to make it go around my head) 

Big group of bunnies and fairies

Fantasy enables children to look beyond their world and to dream.  The repetition in children's songs and rhymes allows a child to predict what will happen next.  They learn by joining in and repeating.  Children build on their vocabulary when we sing and read with them.  We talked to our children about behaving, what is a goon.  This song gave us an opportunity to discuss ways we can play nicely (without "bopping" our friends) and more.

In the coming weeks ...

I know my last two weeks will fly by!  We are continuing many of the activities we have started, welcomed new pets (our crickets) into the classroom and will have many more learning adventures!  I look forward to seeing where the children take me on this fantastic journey.