The Whales Return!

/

After a peaceful and joyful break, the Whales returned ready to take on new challenges, and enjoy the process of learning and growing together.

This week began our unit study on hibernation, migration and adaptation. During classroom choice Ms. Ellie and Ms. Julie showed us how to play a new Hibernation Game at the numeracy table. We pretended to be black bears as we rolled the dice and moved around the game board collecting the things we needed to begin hibernation. It was fun, and a little bit silly!

At the storytelling table, we were animals who hibernated; sleeping the cold winter months away in burrows, dens, caves or in the mud at the edge of a pond. 

We have been reading books on hibernation this week. One fiction book called Hibernation Station showed all the various hibernating animals in their jammies, getting ready for a nice deep sleep! We read a non-fiction book that had photos of animals in their dens, burrows, caves, in logs, under rocks and even in the mud! On the smartboard, we looked at photos of various animals hibernating and had to match the sleeping animal to its correct name. We discovered that there are plenty of animals that sleep, sleep, sleep in the winter!

Whales have started small group work in both literacy and math. We are excited to take on new challenges, and work with our peers to grow our reading and numeracy brains!

We do enjoy a party, and we were lucky enough to celebrate our week back with a birthday celebration in Whale style: birthday lantern, crown, chair lift, placemat, dance party, and popsicles. What fun!



Celebration of Bread, Books, and 2 Birthdays! 12/19/15

/

Whales enjoyed plenty of celebrations together before heading off for Winter Break!

We celebrated two Whale birthdays with birthday placemats, crowns, chair lifts, lanterns, and dance parties (The Chicken Dance & Let It Go!). We Whales really know how to party!

Whales baked a triple batch of gingerbread with Ms. Julie on Friday. We shared the bread with all our friends at the ELC, and found that (just like the tale of The Little Red Hen) working together means that there is plenty to share with everyone. Our Bread Celebration was a chance to share the fruits of our labor with the entire ELC community.

Ms. Ellie and Ms. Julie gave the Whales a little holiday gift to take home over the Winter Break: bookmarks with special messages, and a copy of their very own Piggie & Elephant book! The Whales declared it was "the best gift ever". We Whales are indeed kids who really LOVE to read!



Shoemaker & The Elves - Whale Thespians Perform for ELC Friends! 12/17/15

/

Whale thespians performed their final rendition of Shoemaker and The Elves to a rapt audience this week. Our kindergarteners are stretching themselves through drama; learning skills in communication, cooperation, imagination, literacy, memory retention and art.

Please find a video of the performance on the "Watch & Listen" tab, located on the homepage.


Author's Celebration 12/11

/

The Whales Writers Workshop Club had it's first Author's Celebration. What an exciting and fitting way to celebrate the stupendous writing the Whales have been doing this year! Whales taught their parents and friends the W.W.W.C. secret "club chant", then shared their latest piece of published writing with members of our big Whale Family. We drank fancy sparkling juice and ate the brownies we baked earlier in the day with Ms. Julie. An amazing and happy celebration of writing!

The Shoemaker and The Elves 12/7

/

The Whales began a study of the Grimm's Fairytale, The Shoemaker & The Elves. We listened to many versions of the fairytale; comparing and contrasting elements of the text, setting, characters and illustrations. Practicing our fine motor and art skills, we designed a shoe we could lace and tie. Using skills in numeracy, we sorted a rather large collection of shoes in many different ways: by color, size, and type of shoe. Our storytelling table was set up with a snowy scene, complete with little elves, a shoemaker and his wife; and the Whales spent time re-telling a version of the story on their own.

The Whales were lucky enough to be invited to watch a real live cobbler do his work! On a particularly wet and wooly morning, the Whales walked across campus to pay a visit to Mr. Dennis at The Shoe Clinic. He invited us into his workroom, where Whales learned about how shoes were taken apart and then put back together. We learned that cobblers use leather, thick thread, small nails and hammers, brushes, and shoe stretchers to do their work. We learned that a cobbler uses lots of special machines to make old shoes look brand new again!

Later in the week, the Whales watched a puppet performance of the story, acted out by Ms. Julie and Ms. Ellie. On Friday, we had out first dress rehearsal for our play next week!

​

Wonder Monday & A Birthday Celebration 12/1 & 12/7

/

One of our Whales celebrated a 6th birthday one week, and then celebrated with a glittery Wonder Monday presentation the next!

The birthday girl's celebration included a birthday lantern, birthday crown, birthday placemat, birthday chair lift, and a Frozen Dance Party; friends twirled and sang and shared in "letting it go"!

The very next week, our birthday girl shared her Wonder Monday presentation with her Whale friends. Whales learned that a cowboy named Henry Ruschman invented glitter by mistake when he was sharpening his tools one day. We also learned that there are 20,000 different kinds of glitter. Wow! Whales had great questions for our Wonder Monday presenter, and she was happy to share her knowledge with her friends.