Remembrance Day

Many of our lessons this week focused on peacefulness, ways to spread peace, and how we can help ourselves feel peaceful. We also learned about the importance of Remembrance Day in Canada.

The class did a phenomenal job performing “Little Poppy” and singing their song at the Remembrance Day assembly.

Poetry and Song books

Every week we learn a new poem or song. At the end of the week the students add the poem to their own “poetry and songbook”. We re-read all of their poems every week. This opportunity allows for lots of awesome reading and sharing!

Imagination Playground

We are fortunate to have these really cool play blocks at our school for the month of November. The kids were working together today to create some awesome structures.

Have a wonderful weekend! Please remember that school will be closed on Monday.

Halloween fun and outdoor activities

This week started with lots of excitement surrounding Halloween!

The students had a wonderful time dressing up in their costumes, marching in the parade, and participating in the Halloween assembly.

Alphabet Exchange

As part of our alphabet exchange, we prepared our letter Z’s and mailed them to 25 other schools in British Columbia. Everyone was excited to drop the letters into the mailbox! We have received 3 letters so far and cannot wait until more arrive in our school’s mailbox!

Garden time

We have been learning about the pumpkin life cycle. We collected all of the extra pumpkins in our school and placed them into our garden bed. We will be watching the pumpkins decompose over the course of the next few months, learn about composting, and observe this process as an important part of the life cycle. Perhaps we will even notice new pumpkin plants growing in the spring!

We also planted some bulbs today so we will have some beautiful flowers to enjoy in the Spring. Thank you to Amara’s family for the soil donation. Thank you to Bulbs 4 Kids for the bulb donation.

Playtime photo – check out the cool zoo!

Dates to remember:

Wednesday Nov. 8 – Photo retakes for students who were absent on photo day or who wish to have a new photo taken

Monday Nov. 13 – School closed to observe Remembrance Day

Friday Nov. 24 – Pro- D Day – School closed for students

Halloween Fun!

We were fortunate to have so many Halloween activities to enjoy today!

We all chose a pumpkin from the pumpkin patch and we were invited to a “not so spooky” haunted house in the library!

Counting Seeds and Carving our Pumpkin

We estimated the number of seeds in our pumpkin then counted by 10s to find out how many were inside. We counted 102 seeds!

Gr. 4/5 Buddies

This week we met with our big buddies from Mr. Cole’s class to make paper chains. Looking forward to many more buddy activities this year with them.

Five Little Pumpkins

This week we learned the song “5 little pumpkins”. We sequenced the story, sorted pumpkins by size and learned about speech bubbles.

Alphabet Exchange

We will be participated in an alphabet exchange where 26 schools within B.C. make letters to send to all of the schools. We made “zig zag Zs” to send to all the schools. We received our first letter in the mail today. Ask your child which letter of the alphabet was inside the envelope!

Fun in the classroom

A few reminders:

-Tuesday Oct. 31 – students are welcome to wear a costume to school. Please wear comfortable clothing underneath the costume so they can change independently when they want to remove their costume.

-Parents are welcome to watch our Halloween parade from the undercover area around 9am.

-Please do not send treats or goodie bags for Halloween.

Have lovely weekend!

Hello families,

I hope you enjoyed the extra day with your children on Friday.

A few things to note this week:

–Pumpkin Patch on Friday Oct 27 – we are very fortunate to have a PAC sponsored pumpkin patch at our school! The students will choose a pumpkin to take home. Please send a grocery bag on Friday so they can carry their pumpkin home.

–Halloween – On Oct. 31 we will be celebrating Halloween at school. Students are welcome to wear a costume to school that day. I recommend that they wear comfortable clothing underneath their costume so they can easily take off their costume when they get uncomfortable. We will begin the day with a Halloween parade around the school followed by a Halloween assembly in the gym. Please do not send treats or goodie bags to school-I will make sure they have a fun day without lots of sugary treats! I’ll save that experience for you when you take the kids trick-or-treating!

Ask:

I have been fortunate to receive a donation on 400 bulbs (tulips, daffodils, etc). I would love to plant the bulbs with students in “tubs” then place them around the school in the spring when they bloom. I am wondering if any families are able to donate plastic tubs (the kind you may purchase a plant or small tree in) about 12 to 18 inches tall. I would also love donations of potting soil (maybe you have a half used bag in your garage?).

Thank you so much! Looking forward to planting with the students!

Apples, Apples, Apples

Many of our lessons this week involved apples!

You may have heard that we made applesauce, used apples as stamps, sequenced the steps to make applesauce and

read some cool books about apples. Everyone tried the applesauce. Most students really liked it!

Apple printing

Apples and Math

We read the stories TEN APPLES UP ON TOP and TEN RED APPLES while we learned about 10 frames and explored different ways to make 10.

Ten Little Apples

Ask your child to sing our song this week to you. It’s called “10 Little Apples”. The grade 1s learned the number words for all of the number to ten.

Outside Play

Dates to remember:

Thursday Oct. 19 – Student Photo Day

Friday Oct. 20 – Pro- D Day – School closed – I will be attedning the BC Primary Teachers Conference where I will attend workshops from Gordon Neufeld and Adrienne Gear (one of my favourite early literacy presenters).

Have a fabulous weekend!

We are grateful

Many of this week’s lessons focused on “gratitude” and seasonal changes.

Sometimes, we create a “brainstorm” where I document the students’ ideas about a certain theme. Check out two brainstroms we created this week: “___ is thankful for ____”  and “In the fall, we like to___”

Oral Language

Oral language is an extremely important component of early literacy. Talking, playing with language, choral reading, singing, and poetry are all ways early learners expand their understanding of language.

Every week we learn a new song or poem. Ask your child to sing this fun song titled “Mr. Turkey”

We are thankful for…

Fall Leaves

Amazing creations

Have a lovely long weekend! Wishing you all a happy thanksgiving!

Please note that school is closed on Monday Oct. 9 for Thanksgiving.

Getting into the swing of things!

We are settling into school routines very well. Fortunately, the weather has allowed us to get outside for fresh air playtime every day. Thank you very much for sending the students prepared for the weather. Just a reminder that if your child comes home wearing their “extra clothing” please replace the extra clothing at school asap. Also, please tell your child to take their extra clothing bag out of their backpack to put into their cubby.

Library

Every Wednesday, we will visit Mrs. Dias in the school library. The students get to choose 2 books to take home for one week. Please return these book IN THE PLASTIC LIBRARY BAG to school every WEDNESDAY so they can check out 2 new books. These books are for you to read to your child and share together.

Names

We continue to explore alphabet and letter sounds through a variety of stories. Our favourite story this week was Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. We had lots of fun sorting letters, counting letters in our names, and making coconut trees with our names like the story.

Orange Shirt Day

We participated in Orange Shirt Day on Thursday. I read a story to the class to introduce the origin of “orange shirt day”. I hope you can continue the discussions at home about the significance of orange shirt day.

The students created orange hands filled with drawings of reasons that they are special. Check out our group collage in the photo below.

Morning Choice and Exploration

You may hear your child use the terms “morning choice” or “exploration”. Morning choice is a time when students can choose an activity when they arrive at school every morning. There will often be literacy activities on tables for them to try. This gives them a time to reconnect with their peers and a chance for me to check in with them.

Exploration is a longer play time every afternoon when the kids can engage in a variety of activities like art, “making table”, kinetic sand, dramatic play, building tubs, puzzles, dollhouse, and many more.

I hope you are able to enjoy the extra time with your family this weekend. Please note that school will be closed on Monday to honour National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

Hello everyone!

I am hoping that every family will receive this update. Please email me with a quick “got it!” to let me know you were able to access this blog update. Simply reply to the email you received or email at jennifer.capitanio@burnabyschools.ca

We had a very busy week. Here are some photos to show you all the learning that has happened.

Weekly Poem/Song

Every week a new poem or song is introduced. We read/sing it many times throughout the week. This week we learned our classmates’ names by singing “Higgelty Piggelty”.

Math Exploration

Many of our math lessons so far have involved playing with numbers and patterns. Beginning next week, the Kindergarten students will join Ms. Grippo’s class for K math lessons every day. Her Gr. 1s will join our Gr. 1 students in my room for Gr. 1 math.

Hands-on Learning

We will be using playdough for many learning opportunities. Today we were counting how many little balls of playdough we cn make and we made the letters in our name.

Letters of the Week

This week we focused on M and S for our activities. The Gr. 1 lessons involve listening for the sounds at the beginning and end of words and correct letter formation in printing books. The K lessons involve more of learning the letter sounds with some whiteboard printing.

Terry Fox Run

Everyone enjoyed running like Terry today. Here we are stretching pre-run with our race #s on.

Gr. 1 Intake Conferences

I sent home a notice confirming your meeting time with me for Tuesday. Please email me if you did not receive it.

Friendship List

I will be creating a list of student names with parent emails so you can connect for playdates, etc. Please let me know if you do NOT want to be included in this list. I hope to have it completed next week.

Important dates to remember:

-Tuesday Sept. 26 – early dismissal at 1:55 for conferences, 2-5pm

-Thursday Sept 28 – Orange Shirt Day and Assembly. Students are welcome to wear  orange this day for National Day of Truth and Reconciliation

-Friday Sept 29 – Pro-D Day – no school for students

-Monday Oct 2 – School closed for National Day of Truth and Reconciliation

-Monday Oct 9 – School closed for Thanksgiving.

Have a lovely weekend!

Hello families!

Thank you for visiting the blog. Please remember to subscribe by entering your email address.

I will update the blog every Friday with some classroom photos from the past week. You may wish to bookmark this site so you can access it at any time.

Here are a few photos from this week so you can have a peek into our classroom.

We had amazing drumming lessons with our instructor Daniel! So much fun learning about rhythm.

Getting to know each other through play.

Please complete all the forms that were sent home today and send back to school next week.

Thank you very much for all of your support as we get into our “groove” at school!

Jennifer Capitanio

Dear families,

It has been an absolute pleasure to teach your children this year. Watching them emerge as readers, writers, mathematicians, and witnessing them growing into lovely humans has brought immense joy to my world this year. They are special little people that will always hold a place in my heart!

My daughter created a slideshow for the class. We watched it today but I wanted to share it with you so you can also watch it with your children at home!

Have a wonderful summer! Enjoy all of the special moments that summer allows!

xo Ms. C

PS This slideshow may require a few moments to load. Hope you enjoy it!