Curiosity at the Zoo

Since we had such a blast there last year,  we decided we should visit the Riverview Park and Zoo again this year. So that is exactly what we did.

Armed with some great questions, such as, "do you think we can get the peacock to show us his fan this year?" (MT), "I wonder if the snakes got any bigger?" (TL) and "I'm curious to see if there are any new animals" (Mrs. R), we set off to the zoo.

Upon our arrival, we had a quick snack and then were off to explore the zoo and see if we could find some answers to our questions with our volunteers. Many of us checked out the playground, potbelly pig and different fowl before making our way to splash pad.

It was so much fun playing in the water. "I remembered to hug the pole this year when the water buckets dumped out because last year I got super splashed!" (GS). "I liked using the zebra that sprayed water out of it" (CM). "Even though the water was cold it was so fun!" (VB)

In addition to having a wonderful time at the splash pad, we also discovered many different animals while we travelled around the facility. "The emu is looking right at us!" (AB) "I wonder why his eyes are that colour?" asked BH. We also took the time to find the peacock, who, again this year, decided not to show us his fancy tail. "We remember that only the boy peacocks have fancy feather to show off to the girls" recalled MT.

Finally, before heading home from a great day, we all took a train ride together. On this ride, we were able to help the park conductor find all of the missing animals stolen from the zoo by the "Crooked Man". It was so nice being able to help.

Overall, we had an amazing time and everyone learned at least one new animal fact, if not more! Thanks again to all of our volunteers who were able to come with us on the trip. It was so much fun getting to share our day with you.

Getting Ready to Garden

Thanks to our Toyota Evergreen Learning Grounds Grant, the past few weeks we have been busy starting our Kindergarten Gardens indoors where it is a little warmer than it is outside! Even though it is already mid-May, we decided to begin our growing season inside this year to see if it gave our plants some extra staying power. We realized last year that we should have done this because local wildlife helped themselves to the tiny shoots and stems that first started to sprout.
With this in mind, we currently have pumpkins, peas, beans and sunflowers growing in our window. Knowing they will need some soil to grow in, we headed outside to prep the gardens for their fast approaching arrival. Many of us already knew that the tiny plants already out in the garden, were, in fact, weeds, that needed to be pulled. By doing this, we are making sure our plants will not have to fit the roots of the weeds for the nutrients and water that we read about together.

Fingers crossed that the warmer weather starts to stick around so we can get our mighty sprouts out and growing into stronger stems, leaves and eventually flowers and vegetables!

Moving to the Music

"What a great beat I hear! Can we get up and dance to it Mrs. Ridgway?" How can anyone say no to that! So dance to the music is exactly what we did!
Inspired by Alex Boye and the Lumineers compilation, Ho Hey we decided to 'go with the flow' and see how we could move our bodies to the song. We tried out different levels (high, medium and low) as well as moving to the different tempos that took place during the song (fast, medium, slow). There were so many creative moves that came of this 'in the moment' learning opportunity, we couldn't not share our performances with you! Enjoy!

April Update

Over the past few weeks we have been very busy in Room 12! Mrs. Meneze, our student Early Childhood Educator has been a great help in our room and has introduced us to different ways to capture the season of Spring that is in full effect. Check out some of our artistic creations on our Twitter feed!

We have also been hard at work during Literacy getting ready for Senior Kindergarten and Grade One. Many of us are writing using lots of kid-friendly strategies in our journals every week and are adding more and more sight words to our reading skills!

In Math, we are still having small group Number Talks to help us learn about subitizing (‘just knowing’ the value a quantity) and to strengthen our ‘counting up’ and ‘counting on’ skills. We are also learning about probability and have determined that it just a fancy word that means, “maybe something will happen or maybe it won’t” as noted by JP during a whole class discussion. We have started using spinners to further our understanding about probability and in the picture below, you can see that we are using our math skills to determine what colour ‘might’ be the winner.

Colour Mixing in FDK

This week, we have been working on colour mixing after reading The Dot, by Peter H. Reynolds. Prior to any actual mixing, we made primary colour collages of red, blue and yellow. We even tweeted our masterpieces to Peter H. Reynolds and he wrote back! Check it out! So cool!

In addition to the collages we made, we shared our thoughts on what might happen when we mix the different primary colours with one another. Many of us shared some awesome thoughts, sadly, they weren't what actually happened when we started mixing red with blue, blue with yellow and yellow with red.

In the end, we learned that when mixed together, the following colours make:

red + blue = purple

blue + yellow = green

yellow + red = orange

Lots of amazing art learning continues to take place. Make sure to follow us on Twitter @RidgwayFDK for more updates!