Terry Fox Walk - Thursday, Sept. 28th

As you may already know, our school will be participating in the Terry Fox Walk/Run tomorrow.  All donations will go to the Terry Fox Foundation to fund cancer research.  As a school, we were hoping to raise $2000.  We have not reached that mark, yet, but you can still help.  Please make your donation on line at:  https://secure.terryfox.ca/registrant/mobile/mobileTeamPage.aspx?TeamID=749445&Referrer=direct%2fnone&moreText=true
Or if you prefer, send a donation of a 'twoonie' to school with your child tomorrow. 

Our Kindergarten class will be walking around the school field a few times as our contribution to the Terry Fox Walk/Run Marathon of Hope.  

Happy Rosh Hashanah

To all the families who are celebrating this week, we wish you all a                  Happy Rosh Hashanah!

Lost & Found

We found a hoodie jacket, but no one in our class has claimed it as their own.  Please let us know if it belongs to your child, and we will gladly send it home.

International Dot Day!

Friday, September 15th was International Dot Day!  

We read the book, The Dot, and learned how Vashti (the character in the book) overcame her fears and made her mark. In celebration of Dot Day, we also made our mark!

On Monday, we'll be starting our 'Writing and Drawing Books' and making more marks!

What kind of class do we want to have? - Our First Inquiry

For our first inquiry, we asked the children the following question:  What kind of class do we want to have?  We wanted to explore the topic as a way to establish our class rules/norms.

Here are the responses that the students gave us:
We want to have a good class.
We want to have a nice class.
We want to have a polite class.
We want to have a kind class.
We want to have a clean class.
Everyone agreed that if we had a nice, polite, kind and clean class, it would be a good class.

Then we began exploring the various concepts that the students listed.  Each day, we read and talked about books that highlighted the various characteristics of a 'good class'.  Here are some of the books we read:

We discussed how we are in charge of making good choices.  We can choose to make good choices every day to avoid problems, and we can choose to react in better ways to solve problems.

           Being polite means using your manners.  We learned that even dinosaurs can make good choices and behave appropriately at school.

The opposite of being kind is being mean.   Lily Jean learns a lesson:  you won't keep friends if you are mean to them.

What does kindness look like?  Big Al is kind and helpful, and he doesn't give up.  (We also discussed how you can't tell what a person will be like by the way he/she looks.  Big Al didn't look nice, but he was very nice and kind to all the other fish in the ocean.)

Why is it a good idea to have a clean class?  It is helpful to keep our class tidy and organized so we can easily find things.  That way, we can spend more time playing and learning.  

In additon, to reading and discussing the various books, we also acted out and modelled what the various behaviours looked like and sounded like.  Also, we highlighted students' positive behaviours and choices as we noticed them in the classroom and on the playground.

At the end of the two weeks, we came up with our class promise:

As you can see, everyone signed the promise.  The promise is posted in our room, and we will refer to it everyday as a reminder about the kind of good choices we should be making so we can have a nice class.

Terry Fox Walk at Nellie McClung Public School

Like many other commuities and schools in Canada, Nellie McClung Public School participates in the Terry Fox Walk to raise money for cancer research.  This year, our school is hoping to raise at least $2000 for the Terry Fox Foundation.  Please help our school reach this goal by making a donation on the secure site: https://secure.terryfox.ca/registrant/mobile/mobileTeamPage.aspx?TeamID=749445&Referrer=direct%2fnone&moreText=true  

The Nellie McClung Terry Fox Walk will take place on September 28th.  The Kindergarten classes will be walking around the school field several times in support of the Terry Fox Foundation.

Room 110 News

It's our second week of Kindergarten, and we are getting to know each other and learn our routines.  Hopefully, the children have been coming home and letting you know about what they have been doing at school.  

For our first inquiry, we asked the children the following question:  What kind of class do we want to have?  We are exploring the topic as a way to establish our class rules/norms. (Stay tuned for another blog post in which we'll describe the process in more detail.)

Thank you to all the families that have returned the green 'Parent Contact' pages and the blue 'School Start Up Forms' packages.  We will let you know in the next few days if your family has any outstanding forms that need to be returned.

Scholastic Book Clubs ... we will also send home some order forms in the following days.  If you would like to place a book club order, please follow the instructions on the order forms.

Birthdays ... we like to acknowledge and celebrate all of our classmates' birthdays.  In our class, when it is a child's birthday, we sing 'Happy Birthday' for him/her, and the child also gets to choose a small gift from the 'birthday box'. Please do not send any food treats to school for your child's birthday.  As per Healthy Schools Policy, we will not be able to hand them out to the class.  

Mark your calendar ... Nellie McClung is having its Open House/Curriculum Night on September 28th from 6:30 to 7:30 pm.  We hope you will be able to join us, and we know the children will enjoy showing you around their classroom!

Happy Labour Day

Hello Everyone, 

We hope you have had a great summer holiday and are enjoying the sunny weather today!  

Mrs. Mateo and I have been getting the classroom ready to welcome you all back to school. We are excited about seeing you again tomorrow as Senior Kindergarten students!  We also hope that our friends who are going to Grade One have a great day. If you have a chance, come by and say hello. 

See you tomorrow morning!  Just one more big sleep.