Weekly Round-Up: May 27

Hi friends! Sorry I haven't been keeping up with these weekly round-up posts.. I feel like they're turning into monthly updates! I'll be starting my maternity leave on June 8, so these weekly updates will be on pause while I'm off on leave.. but I'll probably have at least one or two more posts coming to round-up my last few weeks!  We have been doing a dinosaur inquiry as well so I'll do a separate blog post about that as well soon!

Anyways here is what we've been up to the last few weeks:

1. INQUIRY DOCUMENTATION BINDERS

We had our "Welcome to Kindergarten" last week, and I was in charge of setting up the inquiry room.  I found this a little tricky since inquiry is something you build with the kids.. but here are some things I came up with.

The first one was our inquiry documentation binders.  I usually have all of our past inquiry work that had gone up on the bulletin boards in a binder titled "Our Inquiry Journey".  Since I wanted to fill a table so multiple families could look at our work from the year at the same time, I just split up the work that was in our original inquiry binder (keeping our mini inquiry documentation in the original binder) to make smaller documentation binders!  We had one for "Farm Animals", "Bees" and "Hibernation & Migration".  Our sky inquiry stuff was still on our bulletin board outside since we had just started our dinosaur inquiry, so no binders for those.  

I had the kids make up covers for the binders after I split them up by subject.  We talked about how the cover needs to reflect the title and the contents of the binder.  They did a really great job with these and I love how they came out!

Here is how I set them out on our "Welcome to Kindergarten" night:

I am not sharing the handout I made for "Inquiry in Kindergarten" because I took a lot of the wording straight out of the THINQ Kindergarten book.  It is a great book if you are new to inquiry based learning!  I was able to do a book club with my board and get the book for free, but you can also buy it on Amazon here.

2. CELEBRATE YOUR CURIOSITY

Another centre we had out was this invitation to share what they wanted to learn in Kindergarten! We had parents ask their kids "What do you want to learn in Kindergarten?", record their child's answers on a post it note and stick it on the chart paper!  It was interesting to see what they wanted to learn about!

I also set-up a dinosaur provocation with dinosaur figurines, fossils, invitation to sort, invitation to record what they see/think/wonder, dinosaur name tracing cards and dinosaur books.

The other centres were set-up by the new K teacher (moving to K next year from Grade 6) and the new ECE transferring from another school.  They set up a centre where they brought in some nature items (different leaves, sticks, tadpoles) and we set those out with some magnifying glasses and an invitation to see, think and wonder and a centre where kids could match uppercase and lowercase alphabet rocks.

3. SUMMER PRINTING

I started putting out some of my summer centres this week!  A little earlier than usual, but I only have 2 weeks to use them so I thought, why not.  This group could still use practice with letter formation so I made up more of these simple sentence tracing and printing sheets to encourage letter formation  practice combined with sentence convention practice (capitals, finger spaces, periods).  The kids love dry erase activities so adding these new sheets every now and then is an easy way to keep them coming back to the dry erase centre and keeping it fresh!

This centre and the next two centres are all in my new "Kindergarten Summer Activities" pack on TPT.  You can click here or on the image below if you are interested in checking it out!

4. SUMMER SENTENCE SCRAMBLE

Again, I wanted a literacy centre where the kids could practice sentence formation and writing conventions so I made up this "Summer Sentence Scramble".  The students are invited to put the words in the correct order to make a full sentence and then write the sentence on the recording sheets.  I provided recording sheets with clip art for the kids who just want to colour and blank ones for the kids who wanted to draw their own pictures!  Then at the end, they use the writing checklist to make sure they used all of the writing conventions we have learned and have been practicing!

This centre can also be found in my "Kindergarten Summer Activities" pack!

5. UNDER THE SEA SUBTRACTION

Another skill my kids are working on is subtraction! I made these mats with both subtraction from 10 and 20 to differentiate for the different needs in my class.  Students are invited to put 20 (or 10) sea life manipulatives in the ocean, pick a number card, take away that many and then place the answer card in the last box.  You could also have them write the answer in the last box with a dry erase marker!  I also put a recording sheet at this centre for the kids who want to record their work.

You can find these subtraction mats in my new "Kindergarten Summer Activities" pack as well.    The ocean life beads are from Michaels!

6. WHAT CAN YOU CREATE WITH STRAWS AND PIPE CLEANERS?

This was a surprising hit this week! Super easy and cheap to set up too.  I just cup some straws (in half) and pipe cleaners (in quarters) and then set them out with this invitation to create.  The kids made a variety of things including a rectangle, a happy face and a maze!  Next week I'm planning to make and have some 3D figures already set-up and invite them to try to make something 3D as well, for an extra challenge!

That's it from me this week!
Hope you're having a great weekend!

Yukari