Happy Passover

If your family is celebrating Passover, please accept our wishes for a happy celebration!

What's cooking in Room 110?

As I look out the window, it is hard to believe it is April 11th.  Hopefully, spring-like weather will be with us soon.

For the past few months, we have had the assistance of Ms. Jav in our class.  She is a college student studying to become a Child & Youth Worker.  Unfortunately, her time with us is coming to an end.  The class wanted to thank her for all her help.  As part of our 'thank you', we wanted to bake something special to share with Ms. Jav.  We will be making chocolate cupcakes.

Here is the list of ingredients for the cupcakes: sugar, cocoa, vinegar, vanilla, flour, baking soda, salt, vegetable oil and water.

If you have any concerns/questions about your child eating the cupcake, please let us know.  We will be sharing the cupcakes with Ms. Jav on April 13th.

Kindergarten Spring Trip

As an extension of our learning about seasonal changes, the Kindergarten classes will be going to Bruce’s Mill Centre for Conservation on Wednesday, March 23, 2016 to participate in the Maple Syrup Festival.  We will be learning about the sugar bush, maple trees and how maple syrup is made.  

We will travel to Bruce's Mill by school bus, and we will be leaving the school by 10:45 a.m. We will return to the school by 1:15 p.m.  We will eat our snacks at school before we leave, and we will have lunch when we return.  

We would love to have parent volunteers join us on the trip to help supervise students.  As you may know, all school volunteers are required to submit a Vulnerable Sector Screening Test from the York Region Police. There is a fee for the screening test. The school is able to provide you with a letter that may assist you in having the fee waived.  

If you have not already done so, please go to www.SchoolCashOnline.com in order to give consent for your child to go on the trip and to pay for the trip.

If you have any questions/concerns about the trip, please contact us.

First Term Reports

The first term reports will be sent home tomorrow, Friday, Feb. 19th. Parents are asked to complete the second page together with their children and return it to school in the envelope as soon as possible.

'Achievement Scale' and Senior Kindergarten Reports: 
Parents of Senior Kindergarten students will notice 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 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/concerns about your child's report, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Roll  to  100
In celebration of the 100th Day of School, we are sending home a copy of our game, 'Roll to 100' along with dice for your child to keep. We played today at school, the teachers vs the students, and the students won! You will find the game and dice in your child's report envelope. We hope you enjoy playing together at home, too.

Lunar New Year

If you celebrate the Lunar New Year, we wish you and your family all the best for a Happy and Healthy year!

Valentine's Day ...

Exchanging  Cards

In the past, we have found that many students like to exchange Valentine cards with their classmates.  If your child would like to bring Valentine cards to school,  please follow these instructions to make the handing out of the cards as easy as possible for us:

1.  The easiest thing to do is to have your child just sign the cards, i.e., from (your child’s name) and send a card for each person;  

        or

2.  If your child would like to personalize each card, please make sure to include the number  beside each person’s name:

1, Alon	2.  Cyrus	3. Jordan	4. Emmy	5. Rhodes
6. Rhiann	7. Sammi	8. Taylor	9. Stefani	10. Juliette
11. Sam	12. Blake	13.  Myra	14.  Danny	15. Evan
16. Lian	17. Jordana	18. Benji	19. Ella	20. Elinor
21. Sophie	22. Bianca	23. Ethan	24. Sloane	25. Avigail
26.    Mrs.Gordon-Rak	27. Ms. May	28. Mrs. Mateo	29. Ms.  Guerriero

(Mrs. Gordon-Rak is our prep teacher.  She teaches the class when Ms. Guerriero has a prep period.   Ms. May is our Lunch Time Lay Assistant.  She helps Mrs. Mateo supervise the class at recess and lunch time.)

We will hand out the cards on Friday, February 12, 2016.

What's Been Happening in Math?

What Have We Been Learning About in Math?

If you have had an opportunity to come into the school, hopefully you had a chance to see our class displays of the work we've been doing in math during the first term of school.  We've been working on data management, sorting and patterning.  More recently, we have been focusing on number sense.


Surveys, Graphing and Sorting
At the beginning of the year, as we were getting to know each other, we surveyed our class and graphed the results of our surveys.  Here are some of the surveys we did:  How Many Letters are in Your Name?;  How Many Words are in Your Name?; and What is Your Favourite Colour?  Some children even came up with their own survey questions.  They surveyed the class and organized the data, and later, they reported their results to the class.

When our graphs are complete, we examine them and discuss the results.  What did we find out?  The students' observations are recorded and posted along with the graphs.

Here are  a few photos:

Home-School Connection:  Your child may be interested in collecting data (information) at home, too.  Young children can use simple graphs, tables, charts and other graphic organizers to help make sense of data.  Here is an example of an activity from 'Doing Mathematics with Your Child, Kindergarten to Grade 6:  A Parent Guide':
Have your child draw pictures on a calendar to record each day's weather.  At the end of a week or month, make a pictograph showing how many sunny days, cloudy days and snowy days were in that month.
(A pictograph is a graph that uses pictures to represent numerical data.)

You can access the resource mentioned above by going to the link below: 

Doing Mathematics with Your Child:  Kindergarten to Grade 6  -  A PARENT GUIDE

We have also been learning about sorting in math.  The children have been sorting various collections of objects and learning how to describe the attribute (e.g., size, shape, colour, etc.) they used to sort the objects.

Here are a few photos of some of the sorting done in our class:

Home-School Connection:  There are many opportunities for your child to practise sorting at home, too.  Any time your child is doing a task that involves tidying up and/or organizing he/she will likely be sorting items in some way.  Help your child become aware of what they are doing by talking about the sorting he/she is doing.  E.g., I like how you cleaned up your toys! Tell me about how you sorted your blocks.  Did you sort the blocks by colour or by type? E.g., Help me sort the laundry.  Let's find all the socks in the basket.  How should we sort the socks?  



Patterning
We have also been learning about patterns.  More specifically, we have been learning how to identify, extend, create and describe repeating patterns.  We have learned how to identify patterns by looking for or listening for the repeating part.  We have also stressed that we know it's a pattern when we are able to predict what comes next.  

Here are some observations about patterns that were made by the children:
Patterns can repeat.
We can use colours to make patterns. 
We can also use shapes, sizes, actions, instruments, sounds, numbers, letters, people, cars, toys to make patterns.  
We can use almost anything!  
There are lots of different patterns.


Here are a few photos of some of the patterns that were made in class:

More recently, we have been noticing the patterns in numbers using a number chart.  Here's one example from a recent counting activity in our class:  When we count by 5s, we are skipping four numbers and then we say the fifth number.  We end up with this sequence:  5, 10, 15, 20, 25, etc.  Using the number chart, the children were able to make predictions about which numbers came next.  They also noticed that one column of numbers all ended in '5' and the other column all ended in '0'.
  

Your child will probably enjoy noticing patterns at home, too.