If your family celebrates Christmas ...

Wishing you and your family a very Merry Christmas!

The Aroma of Gingerbread...

Have you heard the news?  We started making gingerbread cookies in celebration of our reading of the Gingerbread Man fairy tale.  We mixed the dough yesterday, and put it in the fridge.  Today we'll roll out the dough and bake the cookies. (Hopefully, none of our gingerbread boys and girls will jump out of the oven and run away!)  We'll decorate the cookies tomorrow, and taste them.  If we have enough cookies, the children will bring a couple of cookies home, too.

Stay tuned for more news soon!  

If Your Family Celebrates Hanukkah,

Best wishes for a Happy Hanukkah!  

We hope your holidays have started well,

 and you are enjoying the celebrations 

with family and friends.

Junior Kindergarten Visits & Senior Kindergarten Meetings

As you are aware, we have been meeting with parents for the past few weeks to discuss their child's progress in our Kindergarten class.  We have enjoyed meeting with parents and discussing their child's growth over the last few months of school.

Some parents have asked for information about ideas that they can do at home to help their child learn more about letters and/or words.  Here are some ideas that we think your child may enjoy:
1.  Play letter/word games together. Here are some examples of games you can easily adapt for either letters or words:

• Play "I Spy..." at home or when you are out.  It's a good way to occupy young children when you have a few minutes to wait.   E.g.,"I spy the letter 's' on the menu.  Or "I spy the word 'the' on a sign."  Of course, you can always play 'I Spy..." for numbers, shapes or colours, too;
• Play "Memory or Concentration":  make a set of word/letter cards.  Each word/letter will need two cards.  We like to print two versions for each word/letter.  For e.g., The ... the,   And ... and,   M ... m,  S ... s, etc.   A set of 12 cards is a good start.  Mix the cards, and lay them face down. First player takes his/her turn by turning over two cards.  If the cards match, he/she reads the cards and takes the matching cards.  If the cards don't match, he/she turns the cards over again, and the next player has a turn.  The player with the most matches at the end of the game is the winner;
• Play "Letter/Word Detective":  Your child will need a piece of paper, a pencil and some pages from a newspaper/magazine.  Ask your child to locate and record letters/words from the newspaper/magazine.  Print the letter/word at the top of his/her recording page.  If your child needs help to correctly form the letters, show them once or twice how to correctly print the letter/word and have him/her practise. Praise his/her efforts.  If he/she needs more help, you may want to print the letter/word with a yellow marker a few times on the recording page.  Then he/she can trace the letter/word each time he/she finds one;
• Play commercial games and puzzles together. There are various word/letter games and puzzles available for purchase.  For e.g., letter/word Bingo or Junior Scrabble; and
• Websites/Apps:  Your child may enjoy playing word/letter games on websites/apps.  You can link to the 'Starfall' site from our Blog.  If you have other favourite websites/apps, let us know in the comments section, and we'll pass on the information.

2.  Continue reading to and with your child.  As you read, point under each word.  It may help your child notice what you are attending to when you read.  In class, we sometimes play 'secret signal' when we are trying to notice a word/letter while we are reading. For example, 'touch your nose (our secret signal) when you see or hear the word:  can'.

3.  Encourage your child to write for meaningful purposes.  For e.g., cards, shopping lists, E-mail, messages, signs, etc.  Let them have access to various kinds of paper, pencils, crayons, envelopes, etc.  (Short pencils/crayons encourage a better pencil grip.)   Here is a chart that shows the stages of writing that we often see in Kindergarten writing:

As you can see, standard spelling takes a while to develop.  Rather than spelling words for the children, we prefer to tell them to 'say the words slowly, and write down the letters that they hear'. We find that when a child worries about spelling each word perfectly, he/she often ends up not wanting to write very much, and he/she often has difficulty rereading what he/she recorded.  As we learn words, we do ask many children to spell the 'word wall words' correctly.  Here are the words we have worked on so far in our class:

a     and     can    I    is    like    look    no     see   the   we    yes

In addition, we have worked on 'ing family words' (e.g., king, sing, swing, playing, etc.).  Many children are aware that if they hear the 'ing' sound in a word, they will need to write   i n g.

We hope you find the above ideas informative and useful.  If you have any questions/concerns, please let us know, and we will do our best to help.  

We're Back!

It has been a while since our last post ... hopefully, your child has been letting you know what we have been doing at school for the last little while.  If not, here is a partial update (it will take a few postings to catch up) ...

Thank you to all the families who have already sent in their family photos.  Many children love to look at the photo display throughout the day.  If you have not sent in your photo, yet, please do so at any time.  We would love to have everyone's family represented in our classroom display.  

Also, thank you to all the families who sent in items to help us create our number charts.  The children did a great job with the task!  


Indoor Shoes, Extra Clothes & Colder Weather

As the weather gets colder and wetter, the students will need to have a pair of 'indoor' running shoes to wear at school.  Please make sure your child's shoes are labelled with his/her name.  

Please send in extra clothing (pants, socks, underwear & tops) to keep at school in case of bathroom accidents, big spills or very wet/snowy weather.  If soiled clothing is sent home, please make sure more clothing is sent to school again as soon as possible.  

As was mentioned in the recent email from our school, please make sure your child is dressed for the weather each day.  For safety reasons while playing outside, we prefer if children wear 'neck warmers' or hats that also cover their necks/faces rather than scarves.  We go outside for recess each day unless it is raining or extremely cold (temperature range is determined by the Board).

Example of a neck warmer

                                 

                          Example of hat

             

    

If you are buying new winter clothing and/or boots for your child, may we suggest that you please consider 'ease of use' before making the purchase.  By 'ease of use', we mean, will your child be able to manage dressing him/herself for outdoors as independently as possible?  For example, coats, jackets and/or boots with removable liners seem like good ideas but are often very tricky for little ones (and sometimes even their teachers) to manage.  We are always available to help the children get dressed for outdoors, but please remember it is 1 or 2 adults trying to help 25 children, potentially, at the same time.

Lastly, please label all outdoor clothing and boots with your child's name.  We often have more than one child wearing the same looking items.  

Franklin the Turtle

    

Franklin has been enjoying himself in our Kindergarten class, but he is ready to start travelling!  This weekend, he is at Ms. Guerriero's home, but he would like to visit with each child in our class, too.  Franklin will be sent home with each child starting this week.  Franklin will get to spend about a week with each child. He will be sent to your home in a travel bag along with some books and a journal.  (You will find some more information in the front cover of the journal.)

We hope you enjoy visiting with Franklin!

What's Been Happening in Room 110?

We've completed our first two weeks of school, and the children appear to be settling in well.  We have been getting to know each other and working on learning some of our classroom routines.  A big 'thank you' to the returning SK students!  They have been great role models and helpers with the new students in our class.  

Thank you very much to the families who have already sent extra clothes and running shoes to keep at school.  Your child will use the running shoes as 'indoor shoes' as well as gym shoes.  If you have not already done so, please send these items with your child as soon as possible.  Thank you also for returning your child's plastic communication bag to school each day.  

Gym Days & Library:
For timetabling purposes, our school operates on a Day 1 to Day 5 schedule.  Our class has use of the gym on Day 5.  Tomorrow, Monday, Sept. 21st, will be our second gym day. Please make sure your child has running shoes to wear for gym.

Our class will go to the school Library to sign out books on Day 3.  We expect to be able to sign out books starting at the beginning of October.  Your child will bring home his/her library book in a plastic bag. Please return the library book in the plastic bag to school on each 'Day 3' so your child may borrow another book. (Please note:  Families will be asked to pay for lost or damaged books.)


 Here is a partial list of the dates of our Library Days (Day 3s):

• Friday, Oct. 2                  
• Friday, Oct. 9
• Monday, Oct. 19
• Monday, Oct. 26                                
• Monday, Nov. 2
• Monday, Nov. 9
• Monday, Nov. 16
• Monday, Nov. 23
• Tuesday, Dec. 1
• Tuesday, Dec. 8
• Tuesday, Dec. 15     

Home - School Connection:

We love to have beautiful stuff to create even more beautiful art!  Please help us replenish our Art Centre supplies by sending in reusable items from your recycle bins such as:  paper rolls, small boxes, wrapping paper, magazines, buttons, lids, etc.

       

Family Photos:  We would like to set up a Family Photos display in our classroom. Please send in a picture of your family that we may keep for the year.  We will return the photos at the end of the school year.  

Number Posters:  We will asking each child to help us create a set of number posters from 1 to 25 to display in our class.  To help with this, we are asking each child to bring in small items that can be glued down on paper.  Here are some examples of items that your child may want to bring to school:  beads, stickers, cotton balls, paper clips, broken crayons, twigs, small leaves, seeds, etc. Please do not make any special purchases for this activity.

If your child is a JK student, please have him/her bring 1 to 12 items to school.

If your child is a SK student, please have him/her bring 13 to 25 items to school.  (We will return any items that we don't use.)

Please send the items to school with your child by Friday, October 9th.