Week 1
The kids have been interested in doing a space theme for weeks now, so here we are!
 
We talked about all the things we already knew about space; the planets, the moon, the sun and stars. We learned so many neat facts that we didn’t know, like the moon makes the Earth spin smoothly instead of wobbly, the moon’s gravity makes the tides roll in and out, the sun is the biggest and closest star in our solar system, and that moon is Earth’s only natural satellite. Many found it very interesting just how many things spin; the moon spins itself and around the Earth and the Earth spins itself and around the sun.
 
The first week of our space theme is focused around the moon and the stars. Did you know cows can’t jump over the moon?! Well you do now! We learned that the moon is always there in the night-time, even if we cannot see it fully. It’s just in different amounts of shadow sometimes! We played with the idea of moon phases and made moon suncatchers that had stars glued inside the crescent shape. The kids did a little exploring of size, weight, distance and gravity by dropping meteoroids (marbles) onto the moon (flour and cinnamon) to create craters.
 
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star was a very popular nursery rhyme this week, along with Hey Diddle Diddle (as noted above!). Where do the stars go during the day? Well they stay right up there in space! The kids went on a hunt for numbered stars with their telescopes, and also clipped the corresponding amount of stars on their number match wheel. They also practiced a new technique with watercolour paints, by drawing stars, and star related things, in white crayon and then using enough water in their paints to get a translucent wash of colour. It’s quite tricky to use watercolours when you are so used to using tempera.
 
We did some cooperative storytelling this week, that involved a lot of patience, taking turns, knowing the stages of a story and following the parts of the story that had already been laid out from the kids prior to themselves.
 
We also made some space star playdough using yellow colour and gold glitter and played a visual discrimination game.
 
Our letters this week were V and W. The kids built, matched and wrote these letters. They also put stars on letters, words and pictures that start with W, and wrote in their leftover “moon” material (flour and cinnamon).
 
The big kids continued their work on the “op” word family. This time they worked in partners; one wrote an “op” word and the other had to write it in “moon salt”.
 
On an unrelated note…We were so excited to have finally found crocuses!

Happy Earth Day! 
 
We hope you all did a little something to help out our home this week; the kids sure did! They sorted garbage, recycling and compost materials into the right bins, and cleaned toy animals after an “oil” spill. 
 
We had a lot of in-depth discussions about what helps the Earth and what makes it unhealthy. We played a Good Earth Bad Earth game where they had to look at a picture and decide if it belonged on the good or bad side. 
 
Our Earth drawing got a lot of use this week. It started off being used for sorting and placing green and blue cubes to represent the land and water. Then, by request of another, other coloured cubes were added to represent garbage on Earth, of which they had to then remove with “clippers” as they like to call them.
 
Holy Moly, did we ever get a lot of snow this week! We had plenty of fun shoveling, making snowmen (great team work on this one! The snowmen made were quite large!), making snow angels, digging out snow houses, etc. 
 
Our letters this week were M and N.
 
The big kids worked on the “op” word family. There was lots of fun to be had acting out “op” word family scenarios, and the kids did a great job looking at a picture and writing the “op” word beside it!
 
And we cannot forget a very special 3rd birthday to our littlest!

Happy Easter! I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend with their families.
 
There was much excitement to be had the week leading up to Easter. The kids did so many Easter egg hunt activities in preparation. They told me that they were really good egg hunters now, so they can find even the well-hidden eggs when the Easter Bunny came. The kids hunted coloured eggs to then sort, group, count, compare and do some addition, and they hunted eggs that contained letters and numbers to then identify and write on the board.
 
The kids made Easter sticker patterns using colour and/or shape in ABAB, AAB, ABC and AABB ways. They also played a roll the dice and trace game where they had to roll the dice and read the number to figure out which letter or line they had to trace.
 
Did you know that you can be a bunny and eat while you paint? That’s what the kids did! They were given a carrot, paint and paper. They ended up with some cute little paintings and half eaten carrots. Too funny! The kids also used cardboard tubes to paint a variety of pictures with ie; bunnies, eggs, flowers, abstract. 
 
Our letters this week were A and K. The kids did letter hunt and puzzle activities. The big kids, with the help of the little kids, started their work on the “op” word family. We all had a great time doing the actions to many “op” words, and also making stories with them because we really enjoy doing this!

Easter is on its way! And we cannot wait!
 
We learned a bit about what bunnies do all day (inspired by a book we read), and read and re-read Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter multiple times! 
 
The kids went on two Easter egg hunts; the first was to find eggs that contained letters that they then had to write on the board, and the second was to hunt for eggs they then had to sort, count, and write the number next to the correct colour word.
 
We worked on the letter R by doing a letter R puzzle, singing, and making actions to Row Row Row Your Boat. This ended up taking us into learning about different types of boats you can row with an oar or paddle and how to row them in a way to go straight. We had bum-scooting rowboat races on the wood floor and some of us couldn’t stop giggling when pretending to only row on one side of the boat, therefore going in circles. 
 
We reviewed “at” words with rotating plastic Easter eggs which were then written on the board in the sentence they belonged to. After each team read their sentence, the whole group acted out that particular “at” word.
 
The kids also “planted” capital letter carrots into lowercase letter dirt and painted tape resist paper Easter eggs.
 
We started reading Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren in the last couple of weeks and are finding Pippi Longstocking to be such a silly girl! We cannot wait to see what happens next!

What better way to finish off our chapter book than to celebrate with a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory themed party! This book by Roald Dahl was one of the most asked for read alouds every day. Some days during rest time they just wanted to get to reading our chapter of the day. We had loads of fun this week!
 
We did many chocolate and candy themed activities such as:
-Melting chocolate into moulds
-I made Fizzy Lifting Drink and they were not surprised to see that their bodies lifted into the air! They thought that part was really great!
-Finger painting with melted chocolate.
-I made Lickable Wallpaper by adding a tad bit of water to one side of a fruit roll up treat and sticking it to parchment paper. What fun that was to watch them!
-They played a Golden Ticket letter match game and sorted/counted/compared tiny candy colouring they did previously. 
-Candy themed colouring pages
-And we can’t forget the chocolate cereal with the chocolate milk!
 
We also learned how chocolate is made. There are so many steps!
 
A big thank you to all the families that provided chocolatey treats for our day! 

It’s Spring! We have been so excited to spend more time outside! Now we are just waiting for picnicing weather!
 
What reminds us of Spring? We did some brainstorming, listening and dancing to spring songs and reading books about Spring related activities. There are so many wonderful changes that happen in Spring!
 
We learned about the colours of the rainbow and how they appear. We also learned a little bit about why we see certain colours…it’s a bit past some of their understanding but they really wanted to know. Love the curiosity! The kids went on a colour hunt and made a rainbow cloud.
 
Our letters this week were D and P. The kids built these letters using wooden curves and lines, as well as practicing writing them on the board and in their journals. We also played letter Go Fish and a game called “Pick a Pig” which involved sequencing and looking for similarities and differences in pictures.
 
Word Work this week was quite funny! I brought out many of the words we have been informally learning throughout the year (ie: no, on, I, a, you, is, me, we, see, she, he, etc) to see what they could remember. It turned into everyone making hilarious nonsense sentences by placing these words side by side and then trying to read them. After they tried reading it, I would read it as quick as I could and the giggles that came out of them was too funny. Playing with language is such a fun way to learn!
 
The kids also did some free painting, Spring journaling, and started drawing pictures to decorate for next week’s chocolate party.
 
We finished our Charlie and the Chocolate Factory book this week and we were sad to see it come to an end.  L  We are very excited to be celebrating the imagination, creativity, and fun of this book with our Chocolate Party next week! Woo hoo!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! The kids were so excited to have the leprechaun leave them gold coins at the end of the rainbow they worked so hard to make together! After the leprechaun came they were so excited to open the leprechaun’s bag to see what was inside! They then lined up all the coins to count and grouped them to see how many each person got. 
 
The kids worked on a variety of St. Patrick’s Day themed number puzzles this week. They matched numbers with number representations, we also blocked out the number so only the number word was showing so we can practice our number words, and they sequenced numbers 1-20.
 
The kids also worked on finger printing and painting a shamrock using only the one finger of their choice.... some fingers proved harder to use than others!
 
Our letters this week were S and J. The kids made a shamrock S in their journals and moved in many ways that began with S ie: slither, sit, stand, shuffle, skip, etc. J was also a great letter for movements.
 
And we also cannot forget we celebrated a very special 5th birthday with rainbow cupcakes and all! Thank you for baking those very appropriately themed treats!

This week was all about dogs, as it was Bella Dog’s birthday! She was pampered at a spa, where she received a massage, some scratches, a facial, a brushing and trimming. We made Bella some dog treats. The doggy treats were also enjoyed by the pretend dogs! The kids sure made her birthday special!  <3 
 
We already know so much about dogs! We had a wonderful brainstorming session! We learned about jobs that some dogs have such as guide/helper dogs, police dogs and herding dogs. It was fun to learn about varying breeds of dogs too.
 
We learned why dogs are stinky, especially when they are wet. Who knew dogs had tiny microorganisms living in their fur and on their skin to help them stay healthy, but also leave waste as they do so?!
 
We had a lot of fun playing dog games like tug ‘o’ war and fetch and had some fun following dog commands which turned into quite some silly commands. We also made our own paint for paw print art. That was quite a lot of fun seeing everyone’s process.
 
We really enjoy the book Go Dog Go by P.D. Eastmann, and so we played a game where I would give them a shape/colour/size to find then yell “Go Dogs Go!” and they would run in search of such an item.
 
Our letters this week were Q and G. The kids built Q with our wooden lines and curves, as well as played search and find activities.

This week was all about The Farm. We started by brainstorming all we knew about the farm, such as the animals and some of their characteristics, what animals give us, the farmers’ job (in a general sense), and the fruits and veggies that a farmer can grow. We watched videos on milking cows, goat sounds, pigs and chicken coops.
 
The kids journaled about something they really liked about The Farm and we played a game called “Do You Have My Moo?”. After learning how to milk a cow, the kids did some udder paintings using a paint-filled disposable glove with holes poked in the fingertips. Messy fun! Some of us had a little extra fun filling the big paper barn with different barnyard animals too!
 
Our letters this week were C and O.
 
Our “all” word work continued this week. The kids even did word work during their play time! The drew “all” word pictures on the whiteboard and then spelled the words too. They sure are doing well with “all” words!
 
We can’t forget all the frosty, icy, snow hill playing days we have had. What fun!

This week, and all weeks, we stand together for love, kindness and acceptance for all. We honored Pink Shirt Day for the entire week by wearing pink, celebrating differences (those within our own group and those we see in books), and learning how we have room enough in our hearts for everyone no matter their size, shape, colour, etc. 
 
So many wonderful books were read this week; some we have read before and love to read and some are new. Books are such wonderful conversation starters; we listen to other points of view, we ask questions and we learn. The books we read this week brought about conversations on skin colour, family make-up, how you are worthy of love and kindess just the way you are, using our voice to stand up for others and/or gain clarity and understanding, how stereotypical gender roles and identifiers do not fairly represent all people, how we feel when we are kind to ourselves and others, and how we are all here on this Earth together.
 
Just Ask by Sonia Sotomayor
Stick and Stone by Beth Ferry and Tom Lichtenheld
The Big Umbrella by Amy June Bates   (We drew/wrote and attached hanging examples of kindness to an umbrella, as an activity inspired by this book.)
Say Something by Peter H. Reynolds
Pink is for Boys by Robb Pearlman  
You Matter by Christian Robinson
You are Enough by Sofia Sanchez
A Family is a Family is a Family by Sara O’Leary
When We Are Kind by Monique Gray Smith
Here We Are by Oliver Jeffers
Our Skin by Megan Maddison, Jessica Ralli and Isabel Roxas
 
Our library continues to expand! I think I have the kids enjoying that new book sound, which I love so much, of the spine cracking when you open a book for the first time. Anytime a new book comes in the mail the kids ask me to open the book so they can listen. It’s exciting stuff!
 
We worked on the letter U this week. The little ones are doing such a good job at remembering their letters and letter sounds! They coloured the unicorn’s horn in rainbow colours in their journals for the letter U. 
 
The kids worked on their listening, following instructions and teamwork skills a lot this week, through floor puzzle making, threading different coloured/shaped beads and through play scenarios.
 
We all had a lot of fun creating our own Golden Tickets (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory)! Our most recent chapter inspired us to not only make these Golden Tickets, but also take turns being Mr. Willy Wonka to lead the group through the maze-like halls that is the Chocolate Factory (Left! Right! Right! Left!)