Room 8 Kinder Explorations

Our first week sure was a busy one!
Lots of new routines and places in the school to learn and get used to. The class has been taking the time to explore their new classroom and all of the activities that go on in a typical day in Kindergarten.

We have been learning each other's names and finding out new cool things about each other!
There is always so much to learn about one another when we are in a new classroom.

The students have also been learning their day routines which include some pretty fun stuff!

One of those new routines is our Discovery Bins. Every morning, once the students have changed their shoes, handed in their red folders, and hung up their coats, they can chose to explore the discovery bins.

The bins are all designed to be engaging and interactive. The student can choose to go to one bin and stay there for the full 20 minutes or they can choose to try a variety of different bins within that time. Every bin offers a different goal for the children. The different activities can help a child build their skills in numeracy, literacy, fine motor, gross motor, turn-taking, and communication. All of these skills are key part of development in Kindergarten!

Here two students are learning to take turns during a board game. They are also practicing their numeracy skills by rolling the dice and identifying the number of spaces that they can move during their turn.

Here students are using their fine motor skills to pick up and place blocks to create an imaginative design! They are also learning to share and ask each other for help or to be gentle when moving around the table so their structure doesn't fall over.

At this discovery bin, students are using their fine motor skills to string beads onto pipe cleaners. Building of fine motor muscles in the hands is very important for young children since those are the muscles that will help them with more academic tasks such as holding a pencil and having the strength to write or draw for an extended period of time.

They are also looking for beads with letters that match the letters in their name which helps with letter ID.

Every week we will have 5 new discovery bins out that the students can explore and discover.
They are also learning to be responsible for cleaning up the stations once Discovery Bins are over.

Some other exciting new spaces we are learning about are the gym, library, and music room and how to respect those spaces and the equipment we use there.

The gym is a space that we can play interactive games and build our gross motor skills. Activities such as running, hopping, and skipping are all safe activities to try out in the huge gym space. Right now the class is learning to identify the different lines around the gym based on their colour and how to identify their teams by number.

The library is a much more quiet space than the gym! In the library we walk around to look at the books and sit on the carpet during story time with Mrs. Woods. After the story, we are allowed to pick one book from the tables to borrow for the week until next library day.

The music room is a mix of quiet and loud space. Sometimes we are listening to Ms. Rempel teach us a new song or rhythm. And other times we are trying out new instruments and exploring the sounds we can make.

Some fun snapshots from our Valentine's Day party!

We made patterned heart crowns with Ms. Janz

We played Valentine math and letter games during Discovery time.

We created Valentine envelopes to collect our Valentine cards in. Their mission was to make an envelope with one opening and it had to be big enough to hold all their Valentine cards. Students had to decide what materials they needed before they started. And then could add and change materials as they built if they noticed one idea wasn't working so great. The decorating was fun too! So much glitter!