Week of December 18th

This Sunday is the 3rd Sunday of Advent.  This week we light the pink candle of joy on our Advent wreath.

Wednesday is Joy Day!  We hope to see you at 10:00 in our class.  The event should take about 1 hour.  Children are invited to wear red and green!

Friday is early dismissal at 1:50.  The buses will run at this time.

This month’s snack

We had an adorable cheese ball snack yesterday!  Thanks to all our school parent volunteers for making these cute snowmen for every class!

Bus safety Presentation

On Thursday we had a bus safety presentation.  The kids learned about the safety rules when riding a bus as well as how to get on and off the bus safely and cross in front of the bus safely.  Here are some photos.

Santa’s Workshop

Our Drama centre is Santa’s workshop right now.  All the elves have been busy making toys and wrapping presents. 

 HOHOHO!

Sparkles

Rosary Apostolate

 Today was the Rosary Apostolate visit.  The children learned about the third Joyful Mystery, the Nativity.  The children are also learning the “Our Father” and “ The Hail Mary” prayers.  We also sang Happy Birthday to Jesus.  Thanks to Mrs. Sparano for being our Rosary Apostolate volunteer again this year!

Sparkles

Sparkles is our class elf that appears in a different spot in our classroom each day.  One day last week he was zip lining between the classes with Mrs. Bertin and Mrs. Eramo’s class elf.  Each day sparkles leaves a message for the kids.

Advent

Today is the second Sunday of Advent.  Each Monday we “light” another candle on our Advent wreath on our prayer table.  We hope the children are enjoying the Advent bags that are coming home with different students each night.  The kids are enjoying sharing their entry in the Advent journal with their classmates.

Pajama Day

We had a fun pajama day on Friday.  During morning circle we had the children sort their stuffed toys using different sorting rules.  We asked the children to come up with the rules and this is what they suggested.
1. We sorted the toys into two groups, those with “bear” in their name and those without.
2. Then we sorted the toys in to 2 groups, those with an “e” in their name and those without.
3. Finally, we went around the circle and the children had to tell us what letter their animal started with and then place it on our alphabet carpet.

Week of December 4th

Wow! What a week we had!  We had many children out sick last week.  We have been using sanitizer on many of the surfaces in our class (tables, door handles, light switches etc.) and washing some of the toys in the dishwasher to sanitize them.  We have also been stressing to the children that they must wash their hands.  Let’s hope that is behind us now and we can go into the holiday season healthy!

December 4th-8th:  We are having our charity gift card card Drive this week for St. Vincent de Paul.  They are asking for gift cards to Superstore or Walmart.

Tuesday December 5th:  Family Advent Mass at Mary Mother of God is at 7pm.  Hope to see you there!

Week of November 27th

There is a lot going over the next few weeks as we head into the Christmas season.  Here are some dates and activities that are taking place.

Wednesday November 29: wear pink to support bullying awareness.  We don’t talk about bullying in Kindergarten, instead we want to spread the message of treating everyone with kindness in all we say and all we do.

Friday December 1st:  As you know, our class won first place for raising the most money at the dance a thon for the Kindergarten division.  On Friday we are going to be having pajama day and we will be watching a Christmas movie to kick off the Christmas season.  Children can also bring in a favourite stuffed toy.

Sunday December 3rd: This is the first Sunday of Advent.  Starting on Friday, we will be sending home our Advent bags.   For the remaining school days leading up to Christmas, we will send the Advent bags home with two children each day.  Please complete the activities and return the bag the next day, so that someone else can take it home.

December 4-8th:  We will begin collecting gift cards for our Tree of Love charity initiative.  We are asking for gift cards to Walmart or The Canadian Superstore.  All gift cards will be given to The St. Vincent De Paul Society for distribution to those less fortunate in our community.

December 5th:  Advent family Mass at Mary Mother of God Parish at 7pm.

December 20th:  Joy Day!  We will be inviting a family member to come in and make Christmas crafts with their child.  It will take place in the morning of the 20th.  More details will follow shortly, but we wanted to give you notice of the date.

Interviews

Thanks so much to all our parents for coming to the interviews.  Miss Araujo and I enjoyed speaking to you about your child's progress.   We both feel truly blessed to teach your wonderful children.   Thanks for all you do at home to support your child's learning.

Week of November 20th

Monday
This is our day to view the book fair.  We will not have library this week, as the book fair is set up in the library.

Tuesday
The Initial Observations Report comes home along with your interview time.

Wednesday
The Rosary Apostolate begins today.  A volunteer will come to our class to teach the children about Mother Mary and the Rosary.  This is a lovely program that began at our school last year.  Each grade has visits from a volunteer and the lessons are geared towards each age group.

Thursday
Parent\teacher interviews begin at 3:40 today and run into the evening.

Friday
This is a PA day for students as interviews will continue today.

Tower Inquiry Continues..

The kids made a town with various sizes of towers and buildings.  What a fantastic example of co-operation and collaboration!

Tower Inquiry

 We have a tower inquiry underway in our class right now. Some of the children have been doing some research on towers  from around the world, some have been creating their own towers  or building the CN Tower out of blocks.

Paint the Town Red

As a fundraiser for United Way, we are having “Paint the Town Red”

day on Friday, November 17. Please dress in red and bring in a toonie donation for the United Way.

Remembrance Day

Hair Salon

Our drama centre is now a hair salon!  The kids are learning to role play, take turns and share when they are playing in the drama centre.  We also have a cash register with “money” so they are also learning the value of Canadian bills and numbers while they are playing.

SK Snuggle Up and Read

SK CHILDREN ONLY
Your child is bringing home their Snuggle Up and Read duo tang today.  Please read the note on the inside cover of the duotang for strategies to use when reading with your child.  Please note that the average age of reading is 6.5, so don’t worry if your child isn’t reading yet and please don’t focus on their reading level or pressure them to “move up”a level.  We want this time with your child to be fun and we want them to feel proud and confident in their reading.
The JK students will bring home their reading books in January.

Week of November 6

Monday 6th
Interview forms due.  10 minute interviews will take place on the evening of Thursday November 23rd and during the day on Friday November 24th.

Wednesday 8th:

library books due back

Thursday 9th:

Scholastic book orders due.  Our school will also be having a book fair during the week of November 20th.  More information will follow.

Friday November 10
Pizza day - send plate

Kindergarten will not be going to the Remembrance day liturgy in the gym.

Seasonal Changes

We asked the kids to paint a tree and then they got to chose their favourite season.  Have a look at our beautiful creations!  We love how each tree is different, just like in nature.

Yay We Won!

Thanks for all your generous donations to the dance-a-thon!  As a school we raised $20,135!

AND our class raised the most money out of the 5 Kindergarten classes, so thank you!
 We will let you know what our class prize is soon!!

We Scare Hunger

As of Wednesday we had collected 45 food items!  We arranged each item on our hundreds carpet!

Library

Today was our first library visit.  We will be going every Wednesday.   You can keep the library book until the following week.  Please make sure your child brings back their book each week so they can select a new one.  Thanks!

Halloween

 The kids voted on the pumpkin face and the scary one was the winner.  See Miss Araujo in action as she carves the pumpkin with the kids.  The children enjoyed the sensory experience of scooping out the seeds!  We are using the seeds for math activities.  We are having the JK's count out 10 seeds to enhance their one to one correspondence, which is understanding that each object in a group is only counted once.  Then we ask them how many seeds they just counted as we want them to know that the last count of a group of objects represents the total number in that group.   Some children will be able to tell us that they counted 10 seeds and others will count the seeds again.  Try this activity at home with any objects to assist your child in understanding quantity.
With the SK's we want them to know what 100 looks like so we will be making a chart of 100 seeds and then we will look at counting by 10's to 100.  We want them to understand that by grouping objects together, it makes it easier to count.

Dance A Thon

On Tuesday, October 31st, we are having our Halloween Dance-a-thon.  Your child is welcome to dress up in their costume and come to school.  Please have them wear their costume to school as we will be the first group to dance from 9:30-10:05.  Please join us in the gym at that time if you can!  Please do not send accessory items with their costume (wands, masks, weapons etc) as they may get lost or broken.
Each child will be given a peanut free pumpkin shaped cookie.  These are the same cookies that come with the pizza lunches. 
We will be taking each child's picture, in their costume, so we can make a classroom Halloween book.

Food Drive

We are having a food drive at St. Andrew's!  Starting Monday October 30th and running until Friday November 3rd.  Please see the list for the most needed items.  Help us help those in need!  Thanks for your help.

Halloween Activity

We did this Halloween activity with the kids in order to see how well they listened and followed the step by step instructions (we read the instructions out of course). Part of being an effective communicator, which is an expectation in Kindergarten, is to be able to listen to others.  We were very impressed with how well the kids did with this activity.  We also had the kids cut out their pumpkin, which is a way for us to assess their cutting skills.

Apple Tasting

Yesterday we did some apple tasting in our class.  The kids tried red delicious, golden delicious and Granny Smith.  The votes are in and red delicious was the favourite!  Graphing questions help us to understand the concepts of most and least and encourages the kids to ask questions that can be answered through data collection and then represented using graphs.

Boo! It's Halloween!

Check out our scary monsters and haunted houses that the kids made using different shapes!

Tim Hortons

Double Double

Our drama centre is currently a Tim Hortons,  complete with a "Drive Thru"!  I am trying to post photos but there have been some technological difficulties.  Stay tuned!

Last week events and next week news

Fire Drills
We had two fire drills on Friday and we were so proud of our kids!  They lined up quietly, walked in single file and line up without talking outside.  They were awesome!  We are done our three drills for the fall, we will do three more in the spring.  We still will have to do a lockdown drill and a bomb threat drill this fall.  When we prepare for the lockdown we tell the kids that we do them in the event that an animal gets into the school.  We tell them we have to sit quietly in the class so that we don't scare the animal in the hall until the animal control people come rescue the animal.  We feel this is the best way to handle this type of drill with such young children.

Reading Buddies
Friday was the first time our Reading Buddies came to our class.  Our Reading Buddies are Mr. Hundt's grade 4 students.  Each of our kids is paired with a "big kid" for one on one reading.  The grade 4's love the sense of responsibility and leadership that comes with being a Buddy and our kids really look up to the "big kids".  Our buddies come every Friday in the afternoon for about 30 minutes.

Photos
Our school photo re-take day is October 24th.  If you want your child to have their picture re-taken, please send us a note.

Early Bird Draw for the Dance-a-thon
Friday October 20th is our early bird prize draw for those families that get their donation in by this Friday.  Please use the on-line donation button on the school website.
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Art in Kindergarten

We have an art station in our class where the children love to create.  Art in Kindergarten is not about the final product, it is all about the process of creating.  We want the children to make decisions about the materials they use and how they put them together to represent their artistic vision.  We value all children's work.  The above picture is a collaborative project by two SK girls.  They created a "Friendship Castle" from used cardboard.  So lovely!
Please help keep our art station supplied with any "beautiful junk" that you may have at home.  This includes things like cardboard rolls, yarn, material scraps, buttons, ribbons, anything that you don't know what to do with, but don't want to throw away.  We welcome your "junk".

Pizza and milk

The milk program starts this week if you ordered milk for your child.
The first pizza lunch is this Friday.  Please send in a reusable plate.

Family Tree
Don't forget to send us a family  photo for our tree!

Volunteers
If you would like to volunteer in the classroom, please send us a note letting us know your availability.   You can come every week, every month, once in a while...whatever suits you best!  All help is appreciated.   Just remember you must have a police check on file with the office.

Recent Books

Here are a couple social stories that we read last week.  Mine - o -saur was brought in by a student.  I love when we learn from each other!  This was not a story I was familiar with, so I was very excited to read it.  It was about a dinosaur who did not want to share, and eventually he realizes that no one wants to play with him because he won't share.  In the end he decides that sharing is awesome!

"Don't Squeal unless it is a Big Deal" is a story we read each year to help the children learn the difference between coming to the teachers to get "someone in trouble" and coming to the teachers to get someone "out of trouble".  Peer conflict is a normal part of growing up and we are teaching the children skills to help them problem solve when conflicts arise.  We tell them to use their "I statements", if someone does something they don't like (takes a toy, says something mean) for example, " I don't like it when you always decide to be the mom, you should give someone else a turn".  We talk about what a big deal is, someone is hurting you or won't listen after you have told them to stop.  It is important for children to learn to be assertive and stand up for themselves, and not always look to an adult to solve their problems.  It helps build their confidence and resiliency.

Leaf Animals

Have a look at some of the leaf animals that our kids created with some loose materials.  We love to encourage creativity and experimenting with different materials.

October Reading

 Today in your child's mailbag is a reading log for the month of October.   Please read a book each night and record the title on the log.  The log can be returned November 1, in order for your child to receive a special certificate of participation.  We will be starting the Snuggle Up and Read program with the SK's in November and with the JK's in January.

Leo the Late Bloomer

We  read the story today about a lion who is a late bloomer. In the story the father is worried because his son is not reading, writing or drawing yet.  The mother reassures him that their son is just fine, he is just a late bloomer. By the end of the story the lion is indeed reading, writing and drawing.  We  discussed with the kids how we are all at different stages of learning in our class. Some kids know all their letters and sounds, some only know the letters of their name and others can write sentences.   We want the children to understand that whatever stage they're at in their learning is just fine and that everyone learns at their own pace.