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Wow! How can it be December already? The first term of school has flown by so quickly!

This is the time of the year when we see so much growth in all areas. I am definitely seeing growth in social skills, literacy skills, and math too! Amazing progress everyone!

Gingerbread Bakery

Our house area has been converted into a Gingerbread bakery while we learn all about the gingerbread man stories.

Adventures of Gingerbread Man

Throughout the month of December, the special helper will bring home the gingerbread man bag. They are invited to draw and write about gingerbread man’s visit at your home. Be on the look out for your turn! Olivia is the first to take him home this weekend!

Jingle Bell Walk

We lucked out with beautiful weather on Thursday for our annual jingle bell walk. The kids were so excited to share who lived in all the houses that we delivered our flyers to.

Glass Jar Request

Over the next 2 weeks, I will be collecting clean, label free jars for an upcoming project. If you have any to contribute I would be very grateful. Any size from 500ml to 750 ml will be great!

Hopefully everyone received the new December calendar yesterday!

Have a lovely weekend!

Colours everywhere!

Our exploration of colour and colour mixing continued this week using stories such as Mouse Paint, Mix it up, and Rabbit’s Colour Book as springboards for our activities.

We were busy mixing colours to make colour wheels and learn about primary and secondary colours.

Our colour collages are looking great! If you have any scraps or little objects that can be added to our collages please send them to school.

Jingle Walk

On Thursday we will be walking through the neighbourhood delivering flyers to homes to advertise our school’s donation campaign.

Please make sure your child dresses for the weather especially on Thursday.

EDI survey info

On Monday, Kindergarten students will receive a very important notice about EDI surveys. Please look for it in your child’s backpack on Monday.

Library Books– please return every WEDNESDAY in their library bag!

Grade 1 book bags – please return every MONDAY to receive new books.

Have a great week!

Our week at school

Diwali

Thank you to the PAC for providing us with the supplies to make our own diyas and learn more about the holiday called Diwali!

Colours

For the next few weeks, many of our lessons will involve exploration of colours. Many of my favourite stories like Pete the Cat, Mix it up, and Mouse Paint will provide us with a stepping off point for learning.

Check out our “Pete the Cat” creations where we learned about speech bubbles.

Colour Collages

Over the next 2 weeks we will be collecting items that we can glue onto our group colour collages.  Please help your child look for scrap papers, food wrappers, and other miscellaneous items that we can sort based on colour. These items will not be returned as they will be glued onto collages. For example, a purple milk cap or a red kit kat wrapper. Your child can bring these any day over the next 2 weeks.

Jingle Bell Walk

On Nov. 30, our class will be walking along Brantford St. to distribute flyers for our Jingle Bell Walk. We will be giving information to neighbourhood houses that we will be collecting food and toy donations.  I would love to ask for 2 to 3 parent volunteers to accompany us from 9am to 10am on Nov. 30.  Please email me to let me know if you can volunteer.

Holiday Concert

Our class will be participating in a concert on Tuesday Dec. 19. We will be having an afternoon and evening concert.  More information about tickets will be sent from the office.  Save the date!

Our class will be singing “Must be Santa”. I am sure the class will love to sing for you!

Gr. 1 RAZ Kids online

Gr. 1 students will have password and website information on the inside cover of their planners. Please feel free to use this program at home for additional reading practice.

Gr. 1 Book bags

Please read these books multiple times throughout the week and RETURN on MONDAYS. I allocate time every Monday to select new books for the students. On average I am only receiving 2 out of 6 book bags on Mondays! Please listen to your child read, you will be amazed at their progress!

PAC Thank you

Huge thank you to the PAC for purchasing our new favourite toy for our classroom…plus plus blocks! These are an amazing toy and I’m very appreciative to our PAC for using their funds to buy these for our classroom. Thank you!

Please note that Friday Nov. 24 is a Pro-D Day. School is closed for students.

Have a lovely weekend!

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.