This term’s focus on Letterland has really allowed the children in the Kindergarten class a chance to interact with the Letterland characters, consolidating initial sound knowledge and learning all the fun Letterland stories which help to explain why letters make certain sounds when standing together in a word.
Did you know for example, that when Sammy Snake stands next to Harry Hat Man in a word, Harry turns around to Sammy and tell him to SH…. He hates noise and Sammy makes so much noise hissing around all over Letterland. When Clever Cat stands next to Harry, his hairy hat tickles her nose and instead of saying her usual “C” sound, she sneezes, making a little “Ch” sound.

Please enjoy looking at the pictures of the Kindergarten children having fun with Letterland!

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This term, Kindergarten has been exploring different animal habitats around the world. After learning all about the weather, the plants and the animals in the rainforest we were excited to visit a garden rainforest right here in Provo!

Mark and Barbara Pankhurst kindly let us explore their rainforest grotto; we got to see a waterfall, a turtle pond and lots of vegetation that looked like they might belong in a real rainforest. When we saw some fruit trees, we could imagine monkey’s jumping tree to tree to nab the precious fruit!

Read on to see more amazing photos of our trip.

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Our Kindergarten children have been working really hard these last six weeks learning their letters and sounds. Now, they’ve moved on to sounding out simple words with word families, such as “at”, “og” and “an”.

Kindergarten was invited to the Year 1’s class to listen to some lovely reading and they enjoyed it a lot.  The children in Year 1 are becoming confident readers!  Every two weeks, we plan on getting together to listen to each other read.  Both Year 1 and Kindergarten children are really excited to add this new element of ‘Reading Buddies’ to their Literacy programme.

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Kindergarten’s beginning topic is Habitats around the World. Within this topic, we will be identifying and making a connection between different animals and their habitats. First, we’ve been learning about the polar habitat.  So far, we’ve been learning all about polar bears that live in the Arctic and next we’ll learn about penguins in the Antarctic. We’ve learned how polar bear keep warm in the icy cold weather, what food they eat and how the mother polar bear creates a den to have her babies in.

For our weekly craft activity, we made polar bears!  Have a look at some of the Kindergarten children having fun making their textured polar bears.  Aren’t they cool?
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This term, my Kindergarten children have really blossomed into confident beginning readers!  They have worked really hard throughout year with learning their sounds, blends and sight words.

Each day after lunch, the children pair up together to explore and read their “just right” classroom levelled reading books.  First, they read them to themselves and then they read them to their partner.  Each day a child also gets chosen to read their book out-loud to the whole class.  I’m so proud of their amazing progress and their increase in confidence when sounding out unfamiliar words.  What an amazing Kindergarten class!

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This week, Kindergarten has investigated how fruits, vegetables and flowers grow.  We have read lots of different storybooks and non-fiction books about growing and changing. We visited the garden of one of the children in the class for an outdoor play and a picnic.  We also got to plant 3 different kinds of seeds and starter plants—bok choy, black beans and pumpkin.  We also got to smell and taste mint and basil.  Thank you to the family for letting us visit their lovely garden!

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This half term, Kindergarten has enjoyed learning all about dinosaurs. We’ve learnt about how dinosaurs grew from eggs, facts about lots of different dinosaurs (Did you know that dinosaurs that walk on four legs are plant eaters?).  We painted a Harry and his Bucketful of Dinosaurs mural.   In our role play area we created a dinosaur museum and acted as tour guides for the visiting Year 2 class.  As our culminating task, we made junk model dinosaurs!  It was so interesting to see how creative all the children were in picking out their materials for the different body parts, cutting, gluing and taping independently, and then finally, painting their dinosaurs! Please check out the pictures to see how much fun we had learning about dinosaurs and making our 3D dinosaurs. [Read more…]

As part of our learning about Toys this term, the Kindergarteners read the book Things I Like by Anthony Browne. In the book, the main character shows himself doing all sorts of his favourite things like playing with toys, making a cake, having a bath and even painting! So, we decided that we would make something we liked. After voting, we decided to make crowns.

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This week, Kindergarten held its first open house of the school year! It was a great success and an absolute pleasure to see the children so enthusiastic, proud and independent while showing off their learning and their classroom to their parents.

Some of the highlights included showing off our turtle table, exploring the home corner, playing numeracy games on our interactive white board, sounding out our pocket chart rhyming words, explaining who’s who in our Letterland characters and looking at the Transport and Travel board displays.

I would like to thank all the parents who were able to come. It was lovely to see the big smiles and the pride and happiness from both children and parents. I look forward to our next one!  Read on to see more photos.

Download a copy of our November Newsletter and find out more about what’s going on in our Kindergarten class this upcoming month.

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As part of the Literacy programme this year, our class has been combining the best parts of the phonics schemes, Letterland and Jolly Phonics. This allows the children to learn all the sounds and letters in a multi-sensory way. In class, we learn about sounds and letters using the Letterland characters and stories, and then we combine them with the Jolly Phonics actions. The children are coming along really well and I am really proud of their efforts!  See our Kindergarten Letters and Sounds Newsletter for further information on how you can support and help your child at home with these early reading and writing skills.

Last week, Kindergarten got their drama shoes on when they acted out our story of the week– Sheep in a Jeep by Nancy Shaw.  The story is about a bunch of silly sheep that cram together in a jeep and take an ill-fated road trip.  Take a look at our acting chops!