Family Day and Other Recent Events

We hope you and your family are enjoying the long weekend and are able to spend some time together having fun.

Valentine's Day

We had fun on Friday exchanging Valentine cards. The children delivered their cards to their classmates' Valentine bags.  It was a good opportunity for the children to practise reading names and numbers.  
In the afternoon, most children chose to spend some time looking at their cards.  It was interesting to see and hear how some children were sorting their cards and treats.  Everyone did a great job of resisting the temptation to eat any of their treats at school.

First Term Reports  

Our first term reports were sent home on Wednesday, Feb. 12th, and we hope you have had a chance to read the report by now.  Parents and students are asked to complete page 2 together and return it to school in the envelope as soon as possible.

'Achievement Scale' and Senior Kindergarten Reports: 
Parents of SK students will have noticed that in addition to the anecdotal comments, your children have also received ratings in the various literacy and mathematics curriculum strands.  The ratings range from Beginning to Extending.  
According to the our Full Day Curriculum Document,
"... reporting must always indicate the child's growth and achievement in relation to the learning expectations for the end of the Full-Day Early Learning-Kindergarten program."
(page 32)
Sometimes a child will receive a rating of 'Approaching' because we have not covered all the curriculum expectations, yet.  The anecdotal comments will, hopefully, give a clearer indication of how your child is progressing.

If you have any questions about your child's report, please do not hesitate to contact us.

A Friendly Reminder re. School Entry

Starting Monday, February 3, 2014, all school doors will be locked 15 minutes  after the bell rings.  In order to enter the school, you will need to call into the school using the buzzer by the front doors of the school.

For more information, please see the January Newsletter on the school website:
www.yrdsb.ca/schools/nelliemcclung.ps

Happy Lunar New Year!

To all our families who celebrate 

the Lunar New Year,

we send you wishes for a Happy and Healthy New Year!

Building ... Creative Problem-Solvers at Work!

Every day we have opportunities to build with various materials in our Kindergarten class.  Building is one of the most popular activities in our room, and we encourage the students to explore and build with a variety of materials.  Building is a great problem solving activity.  Over time and with many opportunities to use and re-use materials, students develop interesting ways to build with the materials.

Here are two photos of recent building projects from our class:

Kaiwin and Michelle worked together to build this interesting structure.

Matthew, Jaxon, David and Jonathon worked together to build these interesting structures for the dinosaurs.

More photos will be posted soon!  Stay tuned ...  

Something to Chew On...

In Health, we have been learning about how to take care of our teeth.   We've been reading story books and information books about teeth, and we've watched some good videos as well.

Here is an article that the class wrote about teeth:

We are also making models of our teeth.  Here are a couple of photos of children in the process of making their models:

How many teeth has this girl lost already?
  Count the bottom teeth to figure out the answer.

We also carried out an experiment to answer the question what can pop, like cola, do to our teeth.  Here is the write up of our experiment:

Left:  egg in cola   Right:  egg in water

The eggs we put in the cola became stained after one day.
The egg we put in the water was still white.

We tried brushing the egg with toothpaste, but it was still stained.
The shells of the eggs in cola also appeared to be more fragile.
Several of the eggs cracked easily when we handled them.

Home-School Link:  we'll be sending home a chart for your child to keep track of his/her teeth brushing for a week.   If you have any questions, please contact us.  

A Belated Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!  

 We hope that 2014 has started well

for you and your family!

Wishing you and your family

all the best for a happy and healthy year.

 

 

 

Just  a  reminder...

Friday, January 17th is a P.A. Day.  There is no school for students.  Staff will be in the school if you need to contact anyone. 





What's Cooking in Room 110?

'Run, run, as fast as you can. 

You can't catch me.

I'm the gingerbread man!'

For the last couple of weeks, we have been reading different versions of the gingerbread man fairy tale.  We have read 9 different books, and we have been comparing the various stories.  We have also worked on retelling and writing our own version of the story.

All this reading about gingerbread cookies made us hungry, so we decided to make our own gingerbread cookies.  (Most children in our class took their cookies home last Friday.)  Here is the class' group writing about our baking:

Making Gingerbread Cookies

 

Yesterday, we made gingerbread dough to make gingerbread cookies!  The dough smelled good, and it tasted scrumptious. 

 

Today we rolled out the dough and cut out gingerbread boys and girls using cookie cutters.  Ms.G. and Mrs. M. baked the cookies in the oven.  Ms. G. and Mrs. M. also made a big gingerbread man for the class to eat.

 

In the afternoon, we decorated our gingerbread cookies.  But when Mrs. M. went to get the big gingerbread man cookie, he was gone!  Instead we found some crumbs and notes.  The gingerbread man wanted to explore the school, but he got lost.

 

We finally found him in our 'Gingerbread Bakery and Cafe'.  Ms. G. decorated him, and snip-snap, we ate him up!  What a yummy way to end the week!

 

Here is the recipe in case you would like to make some cookies at home, too, but be careful, gingerbread boys and girls like to run away!: 

 

Dairy, Egg & Nut-Free Gingerbread Cookies

 

Ingredients:

1/2 cup of dairy-free margarine (like Becel Vegan)

1/2 cup light brown sugar

1/2 cup molasses

1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce

3 cups all purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp salt

 

Combine the margarine, sugar, molasses and applesauce.

In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, ginger, cinnamon and salt.

Combine the wet and dry ingredients and mix.  Work the dough until it forms a ball.

Wrap the dough in plastic wrap, and chill the dough for 30 minutes to 1 hour.  (The dough will also keep well in the fridge for a few days.)

 

Preheat oven to 350F.

Line baking sheets with parchment paper.

Roll out dough to approximately 1/4 inch thickness.

Cut out shapes with cookie cutters and place on a baking sheet.

Bake for 8-10 minutes or until lightly browned.

Let cool.

 

You can decorate the cookies once they have cooled.  We used icing, gum drops, chopped apricots, raisins and sprinkles.