Kindie Korner Adventures

Today we talked again about how we can help save our earth and the polar bears  and we were gifted with the most amazing donation.  Each child will be coming home today with a tree of their very own to plant.  These trees were generously donated to us by Mr. Dennis Cayton of Brookdale Treeland Nurseries in Rosedale.  Thank you Mr. Dennis!  Ask your child today how planting trees helps stop global warming!

We also have the opportunity to adopt a polar bear through Polar Bears International!  If each student brings in a toonie we will have enough to adopt our very own polar bear.  It won’t be coming to live here with us, but we will get a photo of it and a certificate acknowledging our adoption.  I would like to adopt the polar bear by next Friday, February 9th.  Please send your child’s toonie before then!

I can’t believe it!  We have almost been in school for 100 days!  Where is the year going?!

We are going to celebrate our 100 days in school all day on FEBRUARY 16.

One of the ways we are going to celebrate is by dressing up as if we were 100.  Reaching the age of 100 is something to be celebrated!  Each child is welcome to come to school on 100 day dressed like they think they will look when they are 100.  No school uniforms required that day unless your child chooses not to dress up.

Also, each child is being given the task of creating, with some parental help I am sure, a 100 day project.  Here are the guidelines for the project:

100 day project

-must include 100 of a certain object (legos, cheerios, buttons etc).

-the 100 items must be used to create something (100 lego pieces could be used to build something, cheerios could be glued into flower shapes, buttons could be strung into a necklace…)

Projects need to be brought to school on February 16. Each child will be able to present their project and explain to the class what they have made and how they made it.

Also, we will be making 100 Day Trail Mix together.  I need the following snacks brought in for our 100 day celebration.  I will have a sign up sheet outside the classroom  for you, or you can email me and let me know what you can bring and I will sign your name for you.

Teddy grahams or gummy bears

Cheerios

Mini marshmallows

Pretzels

Goldfish crackers

m & m’s

Popcorn

Chocolate Chips

Coco Puffs, Reese Puffs cereal or some other sphere shaped cereal (2 parents for this please)

Feb 14 the team going to Guatemala on a missions trip will be doing a special hot lunch fundraiser.  Students can order french fries and/or hot dogs.  Pink order forms are coming home today with your child.  The order form says “please return your order, along with payment, to the school office” but if it is easier for you to send it in your child’s back and forth folder, I will see that it gets to the office for you.  Orders are due by Friday, February 9th.

Thank you to all of you for jumping on board and volunteering so quickly for our Valentine’s Day fun!

Everything has been covered.  Here’s who I have doing what:

Coming in to help:

Kristina

Andrea

Darlene

Shelby (also bringing icing)

Reyna (also bringing cookies)

(and Seo is sending candies)

Yikes!  February always ends up being such an incredibly busy and fun month!  I am going to be needing some help.  February 14th we are going to have special Valentine’s Centres and on February 16th we are celebrating our 100th Day of Kindergarten!!  (unless we have some snow days between now and then!)

I am looking for the following, please let me know if you can help with any of it:

Feb 14th- Valentine Centres (10:30 am -12 noon)

4-5 parent helpers to run centre games and art activities

20 heart shaped sugar cookies

2 cans of white or pink icing

small candies to decorate the cookies

Feb 16- 1ooth Day of School (10:30 am -12 noon)

4-5 parent helpers to run station activities

Stay tuned for more 100 day fun and information!

Here are some additional dates to mark on your calendar for February:

February 14 – Valentine’s Day, pink, white and red dress up

February 14 – Love Guatemala lunch (more information to follow)

February 16- Our 100th Day of Kindergarten

February 23 – Pro D Day

February 28 – Pink Shirt Day and Friendship Assembly

Today we reviewed what we know about our polar bear problem.

Problem:  The polar bears are hungry and things are changing

What’s changing?  The ice is melting and this is making it hard for the polar bears to hunt.

Today the questions were:  why is the ice melting and how can we fix it?

We brainstormed different reasons why the ice would be melting and one of the students said “maybe heat is travelling from here, all the way up to the Arctic.”

We looked at that as a possibility and asked how we could fix this.

Here are some of the students’ ideas:

“We could pray to God to fix it.”

“We could invent a heat sucker to suck the heat out.”

“We could use the earth’s gravity to pull it back down.”

After discussing and questioning, we watched two videos that helped us understand why the ice is warming up.  Take a look!

Now we are going to be thinking about things that WE can do to help!

Oops!  With all the half days and our polar bear investigation and art taking up so much of our Fridays, I totally forgot to ask the students their memory verse last Friday!  I will check in tomorrow and see who can say it.  My apologies!

Our next verse will be due Feb 9 and will be about love:

Mark 12:30-31

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength and love your neighbor as yourself.”

We will also be listening to a song with these words to help us learn them!

I am sending home a scholastic order form today.  I have asked that they come back by Feb 2 so that we can order and hopefully have books arrive before Valentine’s Day, in case anyone is looking at ordering gifts.

Thank you for your continued support with Scholastic!  We are able to add resources to our classroom that are of great benefit.

Please remember you can now order online!

We were working hard again today to see if we could make some progress into our Polar Bear Inquiry.  Today we reviewed what we already know about a Polar Bear’s habitat and appearance.  Our discussion led to a talk about camouflage and why a polar bear would need it.  Knowing the animals that polar bears share the Arctic with, we decided they don’t use their camouflage to hide from animals that want to eat them, but that they use it so they can be sneaky on the ice and hunt for seals.

We watched a couple of video clips, including the ones here, and followed up with a science experiment of our own.    We put a frozen block of blue water (our iceberg), in a bin of water and placed a polar bear on top of the ice.  We hypothesized that the ice would melt and then the polar bear wouldn’t be able to surprise the seal.  Sure enough, the ice melted by the end of the day, and our polar bear was stuck swimming, with no icebergs to rest on.

Now that we know the ice is melting and our polar bears can’t hunt, it’s time to figure out how we can fix this problem.  Stay tuned!!

January 25- Canada dress up day (casual clothes in Canada colours)

January 26- Family Friday- Special Edition! Come join us for some Go Noodle Fun! (The children are anxious to do this with you!) Pink Shirt Day orders are also due.

January 30- Math Mayhem 6:30 pm in the gym- some of the high school math students have been working hard to create a variety of fun math games for the younger students. You are welcome to join us for a casual evening of playing games with your children.

January 31- Knight Day