A beautiful day for outdoor learning!

First we visited Sharkey. We observed that Sharkey has almost no leaves left at all.

The snow was amazing for packing into balls and rolling to make them bigger (but not for throwing of course!). We had an outdoor math lesson on comparing and ordering the snowballs by size.

For Mindful Monday we learned a calming technique called "Fist squeeze" When we are feeling in the red zone (or maybe yellow) you imagine all of your energy in your hands. Make your hands into a fist - real tight- then imagine that you release that energy as you release your hands from the fists. 

We also started a system of zones check-in each day. First thing in the morning, we find our personal clothespin and clip it to the zone colour that we are feeling as we start the day.

Ms. Babcock continued our learning about "home". She read Phyllis's Orange Shirt. We talked about how when we are not at home, we can have something special that reminds us of home. Like Phyllis's orange shirt that her Grandma bought for her. We are continuing this conversation this week - including thinking about what comfort object reminds us of home? and  thinking about what it might be like if someone took our special object of home away from us.

Zones week comes to a close, but we will continue to use the zones vocabulary to explain how we are feeling. I hope you will also consider mirroring this at home for consistency.

Quote of the day that made our hearts sing: " I was in the blue zone, but now I am in the green. I'm feeling better." ~ Ben

Earlier this week, Ms. Babcock did some graphing around the zones.

We played emotions Bingo - connecting each emotion to one of the zones.

Reminders: 

Library will be on Fridays until the winter break (and beyond)

Tuesday is picture day!

Zones week continues with our look at the red zone.

It is extremely difficult to learn or focus when we are in the red zone. We maybe feeling angry, very scared, or overly excited. 

Our ability to have a conversation or listen to others is hampered and we cannot think straight.

We can help ourselves when we are in the red zone by talking deep breaths, counting slowly to ten, going for a little walk or listening to calming music.

Here are our reflections after learning about the red zone:

 Zones Week continues with our look at the blue zone.

The blue zone is generally connected to low energy. We maybe feeling tired, sad, bored or sick. It is difficult to learn when we are feeling this way.

Here are some of our reflections after learning about the blue zone:

 Continuing in our Zones Week, Tuesday we looked at the green zone.

When we are in the green zone we are calm, happy, focused are ready to learn.

When we are trying to learn, the green zone is the zone that helps us to learn the best.

We can use different techniques such a deep breathing, take a drink of water, and mindful meditation to bring us into the green zone.

Here are our reflections after learning about the green zone:

 Welcome to our Zones of Regulation Week! (aka" zones week"). 

Each day this week we will be talking about the different zones and how we can help ourselves if we are in a zone that is not conducive to learning. This will help the children build a toolbox for self-regulation. We are hoping that you also use the zones at home so the children see consistency and that they can use these tools all the time - not just at school.

Today we looked at the Yellow Zone

There are good feelings when we are in yellow such as silly and excited, and not so good feelings in yellow such as worried and frustrated. 

When we are in the yellow zone, learning is harder than when we are in the green zone. We can be distracted and over-energetic that makes it hard to focus.

Here are some of our reflections on what we learned about the yellow zone.

Another wonderful week in the kindergarten room! It was so wonderful to speak with so many parents over the last two days. Please remember I'd love to keep the lines of communication open. If you have questions, concerns or celebrations - please feel free to get in touch.

On Thursday we read "House Mouse". This story talks beautifully about what a home is. Here are the words we found in the story that describe home.

We continue to notice that home is much more than the building we live in.

For Thankful Thursday we talked about the comforts of home that we are thankful.

Here are some of this week's explorations:

In preparation for "Zones of Regulation Week" next week. We finished creating our own Colour Monsters."

Examining non-human homes.

GOOS paper creativity!

GOOS paper is Good On One Side paper -a great way to lessen our environmental impact. Let's make sure we use paper fully before we recycle it.

Quote of the week "Ms. M could I get some duck paper please?" (meaning GOOS paper) 

😊

We had a great morning in the gym learning with hoops and bean bags! We are working on our throwing and catching with an underhand throw. You can continue this at home! Practice throwing and catching with a variety of objects. 

We read the book "My Friend is Sad." 

It turns out Elephant Gerald didn't need all kinds of special gifts to feel better,  - he just needed his friend. 

For Wondering Wednesday, we asked- What is your favourite shape? 

First we all voted.

Then we counted the votes.

Then we wrote tally marks and numbers to tabulate the votes.

 We started the day exploring shape with string.

Making triangles and rectangles

Damien made his rectangle into a five frame!

Exploring scale

We also played "I Spy" with shapes - you can do this at home too! "I spy with my little eye something that is a triangle."

Ms. M made a wonderful display of our own Aiken Drums!

 Mindful Monday

Ms. Babcock began the day with reading "I am Peace".

We also continued our discussions of  how to recognize how we are feeling. Specifically now, we are learning the zones of regulation. This is a great framework that you can use at home so children have a vocabulary that they can access. If children can't come up with the specific word to describe their emotion, they state the colour area that they are in and this gives us a lot of information to work with. We work on strategies that children can use to maneuver into other zones if needed.

To learn more about the Zones of Regulation please click below.

https://www.zonesofregulation.com/learn-more-about-the-zones.html

Here are a few of last week's explorations:

What a great connect-a-cog airplane by Lucas Z.!

Loose parts explorations of making a home.

"Who lives in this home?"

"Everyone! it is an apartment building!"

Shape sorting

We started the day in the library where Mrs. Angastiniotis read us "What does peace feel like"? Perfect on this Remembrance Day. Then we made peace doves.

In continuing our thinking and learning about "home" we read The Kissing Hand. 

Chester really wants to stay at home. Why? What makes home so safe and comfortable? See below for the amazing and thoughtful answers.

Our classroom received a beautiful gift today. A wonderful new book. Thank you Ariana!