Last week on our way to Garden View, we noticed that the helicopters from the maple trees were starting to sprout on the ground.
On our way back we collected 2 maple keys each so we could plant and observe them.
We stopped by to look at the maple keys again today and many of them have taken root in the ground.
We had another great month of visits at Garden View! We chose to bring educational games with us this month.
Before I show those pictures, I wanted to show you how well the kids are keeping the little sitting room tidy when we drop off our boots and coats! I haven’t had any parent volunteers this month, but the kids understand the routine so well that it takes very little prompting to stay organized.
On the April 6th and 20th visits, we brought Alphabet Bingo. Our senior friends had a great time helping the kids recognize the letters and call out Bingo!
April 6th
April 20th
This past week we brought our Power of Ten cards and showed our friends some of the different math games we play with the cards including war, Salute, Slap Jack and memory.
When Mrs. Driscoll has a vision, she makes it happen! Last year in Kindergarten we made drums out of coffee cans. This inspired Mrs. D to want to do this not just for our school, but also with Marysville School! Mrs. D rounded up enough coffee cans, hot chocolate containers, yogourt containers and so on for our school and half of Marysville School. At the same time, Mrs. Keiver was rallying Marysville School and sharing the vision for the day. Mrs. Keiver also invited Bonnie from the Shuswap nation to join us.
It was an amazing experience to see close to 350 students gathered in a large circle in Marysville School’s front field. I got a few photos but I was also participating with my own little drum. If you have any photos from the morning, could you please send them to me? Thank you!
I read “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom” then “Chicka Chicka 1 2 3” to the class and we decided to do a coconut vs apple exploration. 
We used our 5 senses to explore both of them and we also decided to see if they would sink or float.
The kids each tried some coconut meat and coconut milk.
And of course some of the more familiar apple.
This led us to playing with our food and seeing what other items in our lunches would sink or float.
We talked quite a bit about an apple and a pear that were the exact same weight, but the apple floated while the pear sank.
We tried to think of reasons why this might happen such as weight and size. They weighed exactly the same (lucky coincidence!), but the pear was slightly smaller when we measured them using yarn. We even measured their stems!
Once we eventually cut them open ,we discovered that the pear seemed to be juicier. I was trying to figure out how to explain density and this seemed to be the simplest and easiest explanation of density to 5 and 6 year olds! This was a lot of fun and it really got them thinking about the scientific method without actually calling it that. It sounds like a lot of them came home talking about it too 🙂
Check out our hallway bulletin board and class door for some of the other little activities we did to tie into the Chicka Chicka theme.
Simon from the Kimberley Golf Club led our class through 3 golf sessions during our Thursday gym times. The kids got to try putting and hitting.
And at the end of the last session, the kids even got to hit balls at me while I wore a velcro suit! They weren’t really hitting very many on me, so Simon let them throw the balls at me.
On Monday April 3rd we went to McKim to watch a capoeira group that trains annually in Brazil. They performed a number of different songs and took turns dancing and performing.
The kids especially loved the last performance which included a lot of back flips!
We also had a Mystery Reader on April 7th! This Mystery Reader sent her clues with pictures. 
It was Vinny’s mom, Jenn, and she read the “Chester” books.
Our third Mystery reader came to visit our class on April 6th. She sent me the following clues:
Sparrow was so excited when she found out it was her mom, Samara! Samara read “The Bike Lesson” by Stan and Jan Berenstain.
We had another Mystery Reader join our class on Thursday! It was Claire and her clues were:
Claire brought along a few books for Dawson so he could choose. He chose “The Very Hungry Bear.”
I was a little short on parent volunteers this month, but the wonderful ladies at Garden View were so helpful with the kids and the activities we brought along!
March 2nd: Today was Dr. Seuss’s birthday. I read “Green Eggs and Ham” which was a huge success with the residents there since it’s such a familiar story. Diane was reciting it from memory as I read the book 🙂 Afterwards, the kids drew a picture of their faces if they tried green eggs and ham then finished the sentence starters. I’ve dropped off the pages at Marysville school to be laminated so we can make them into a class book. Helen, Diane and Kitty helped the kids spell out the words to fill in the blanks for ‘do’, ‘do not’ and ‘and’ as well as showing them where to put their names.
I had to include a picture of the kids’ boots to show how neat and tidy they are helping to keep the sitting area we use as a coat room.
March 9th: Animals in Winter. This week we brought along the pictures of animals we had cut and coloured in class. Students had to sort them into one of three categories: Migration, Hibernation and Adapt. Once they had them sorted out, they glued the pictures into the correct column. Helen and Diane were there to help us out.
March 16th: Rainbow Stained Glass art. In the spirit of St. Patrick’s Day, leprechauns and Spring right around the corner, we made rainbows to put up in the windows around Garden View. I had already prepared the rainbow outlines, so students had to stick them onto the clear Contact paper then place pieces of tissue paper within the lines. Once we finished, we put the rainbows in the windows in the dining room, the games room/library, the hallway connecting the 2 buildings and the sitting room. Take your child over to Garden View over the break to admire the rainbows and have a visit!
