Learning News Kindergarten

Welcome to our first Newsletter for the year in Kindergarten!

Literacy 

InitiaLit (Our learning to read program)

In our InitiaLit sessions, our little learners have been busy exploring the building blocks of reading: syllables and rhyming. These skills are the essential "warm-up" for blending sounds together to read full words.

One of our favorite activities is a game called Fast and Slow. Here’s how it works:

• The "Slow" Way: The teacher says a word broken into parts (e.g., "Ti...ger").
• The "Fast" Way: The students "zip" the word back together and say the whole thing out loud (e.g., "Tiger!").

It’s a fun, high-energy way to train their ears to hear how sounds fit together!

How to Play at Home:

You don’t need any fancy equipment to help your child develop these "super-hearing" skills. Here are a few quick ways to practice:

• Robot Talk (Syllables): While making dinner or driving, talk like a robot by clapping out words. "Can you please pass the nap-kin?" or "Look at that he-li-cop-ter!"
• Rhyme Time: See if you can find things in the room that rhyme. "I spy something that rhymes with log..." (Dog!)
• The Fast and Slow Challenge: Try the classroom game at home! Say, "I am thinking of a snack. It’s an ap-ple." See how fast they can shout the whole word back to you.
• Jump the Beats: For active kids, have them jump once for every syllable they hear in a word (e.g., "Cat" = 1 jump; "Um-brel-la" = 3 jumps).

Learning to read starts with listening, and your support at home makes a world of difference!

Writing

In our writing sessions, we have been busy learning how to share our personal experiences through recounts. To help our students find their voice, we provide a fun topic—like a weekend adventure or a favorite school activity—and ask them to start by drawing a detailed picture. Our teachers then "scribe" their spoken story in yellow highlighter, and the students trace over the letters to complete their work. This process is about more than just storytelling; it’s a vital way to build fine motor skills and the physical stamina needed for longer writing tasks as they grow. By tracing, they are learning the flow of letter formation and gaining the muscle memory required to become confident, independent writers.

Helpful Hints to Build Writing Stamina at Home

Building the tiny muscles in the hands is the best way to make writing feel like a breeze. Here are some fun ways to help:

• The "Yellow Pen" Trick: If your child wants to write a card or a list, write the words in a yellow highlighter or light pencil first and let them trace over the top. It builds great confidence!
• Playdough Power: Squeezing, rolling, and pinching playdough is like a gym workout for little fingers.
• Pinch and Pick: Use kitchen tongs or large tweezers to move pom-poms or pasta shapes into a bowl. This strengthens the "pincer grip" used for holding a pencil.

Maths

These past weeks, our classroom has been buzzing with excitement as we become "Shape Detectives" exploring the world of 2D shapes! We are focusing on identifying squares, circles, rectangles, and triangles, but we’re going beyond just naming them. The children are learning to describe the properties of each shape by counting their straight or curved sides and feeling for those pointy corners (vertices).

Science 

Our classroom has a very special tiny guest! We are incredibly lucky to have a Butterfly Kids Hatching Kit and a butterfly named Coco which has turned our science corner into a living laboratory. As part of our Science unit on Living Things, the students are captivated as they watch our caterpillar Coco transform and eventually emerge from the chrysalis. To help our butterfly "blossom" into their full beauty, the children have taken on the important role of caretakers, ensuring the habitat is misted with water twice a day. It is wonderful to see such high levels of engagement as the students observe these miraculous changes firsthand, sparking curious questions about how living things grow, change and thrive. 

Art

Our Kindergarten artists have kicked off the term with a colourful bang! We have been diving deep into our creativity, using a variety of mediums to explore colour and self-expression. Our young creators have already been busy with some wonderful projects: Self-Portraits: Using mirrors to observe their unique features and carefully drawing what they see. Watercolour Fish: Exploring how paint flows and blends on the page to create shimmering underwater friends. Oil Pastel Rainbows: Layering vibrant colors and adding fluffy cotton-ball clouds for a 3D effect! Beyond the beautiful masterpieces, these activities are essential for fostering development. Whether it's the precision needed for a self-portrait or the pressure applied to an oil pastel, every stroke is building the fine motor strength and hand-eye coordination our students need for writing and daily tasks as well as building their creativity and wonder.