Winter

The winter weather provided the perfect topic for our kindergarten children to experiment with writing their own Haiku. Breaking words into syllables helps us with letter sound recognition, blending sounds and spelling. A Haiku is a 3 line non-rhyming poem. The first and third line each have 5 syllables and the second line has seven syllables. We read together, If Not For the Cat, by Jack Prelutsky. It was a delightful book of Haiku poems that had us guessing about whom the author wrote. The children then set about writing their own “Who Am I?” Haiku poem about things we see in the winter. Here are a couple of poems the children wrote. Can you guess, “Who am I?”


“Falling down softly
 I feel cold and wet and white
 Children like to play!”

“I have three white balls
 I have buttons and a hat
 My name is Frosty”

Working with pattern blocks is fun and familiar to the children. Recently we introduced the pattern block template. We used the template to create unique people and animals. Each child traced 10 shapes from the template to make their creation. The challenge was to select the 10 shapes in such a way to construct the different body parts. The children made people, birds, cats and dogs!

Story mapping helps us to understand the structure of the story. We identify the characters and the setting of the story. Finally, we begin to understand how to summarize the story by recalling the beginning, middle and end. Working with our shared reading book, Let’s Have A Swim, the children worked together to create a large story map.

Then, each of the children selected his or her favorite winter sport to write about in a similar story. Each child selected a title and created a story map for his/her story. Finally, we illustrated our work. Check them out in our front lobby!