I just found out about this important date (I know some students in our class missed photo day).
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It’s going to be an exciting week with our first field trip AND Halloween celebrations! Please refrain from sending candy to school in your child’s lunch (during this Halloween season, but also in the future). I am also asking parents to refrain from sending Halloween goodies for the whole class. I do my best to follow a Healthy Schools policy in my classroom and do not give out candy or sweets as prizes. Healthy, nutritious snacks are so important to a child’s learning and overall development. Eating candy and sugary treats at school creates "hyper" behaviour which then leads to sugar-crashes (and most often social problems and challenging behaviours). We have Pizza Day on the 30th so that’s a treat already :). For future reference, if you want to send something special to school for your child’s birthday, please speak with me about some healthy options (e.g, fruit-kabobs or tray, veggie tray, homemade muffins, etc). Thanks very much for your cooperation with this matter. :)
HIGHLIGHTS FROM LAST WEEK: Constable Sofie Winkels came to visit our class and spoke about Halloween safety. Please review these safety tips before Tick-or-Treating (see the orange slip of paper that went home in agendas last Friday). Another highlight was family-teacher interviews, where the kids got to “wow” parents by showing their printing and journal books as well as reading aloud our class-made books! Thanks to those parents who came, we had such a wonderful turn-out. If we did not get a chance to meet, please let me know so we can set something up. WHAT’S HAPPENING THIS WEEK: We have our first Young Peoples Concert on Monday morning. We will boarding the buses shortly after 8:30am announcements and returning to the school around 11:10pm. This means our snack break will be quite a bit later than our usual time, so please feed your kids a nice, big breakfast! :) We will focus on the letter "Ii" this week. I is a special letter because it can make 2 sounds (a vowel)! The Pro-D conference I attended last Friday was about phonological awareness (the ability to analyze sound structures of a word – more than just “hearing” sounds and identifying letters) and I am very excited to try out some new strategies with the kids. The “Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See?” book has been such a hit, that we will be making a Halloween themed, “Black Cat, Black Cat, What Do You See? mini-book throughout the week. We will practice correct formation of the numbers 1-3 using a variety of printing materials, “air-writing” (using your finger to print in the air), with tracing cards, on mini whiteboards, with pencils and paper. Children are remembering that we being nearly all letters and numbers at the TOP! We will also explore and learn about PUMPKINS using our five senses! If you have a pumpkin you could donate, I would love to have 6-7 pumpkins (of all different sizes) for special Math/Sceince centres on Friday. We will only be cutting 1 or 2 open, so many can be returned "unharmed" if need. We will learn about circumference, weight, whether pumpkins will sink or float, count seeds, etc. I will definitely need 2-3 more parent helpers for this. Please let me know if you are able to help run a centre from 10:25-11:30am. If you are volunteering it would be wonderful if you could arrive around 10:15 so I can explain the centres before the kids come inside from recess play. We are continuing to work on our Whole Body Listening skills and following class and school expectations. Please take time to discuss your child’s day with him/her daily. There will be a coloured dot and possibly a note in the agenda to show you what “colour day” he/she had. I have searched high and low for a “yellow bingo dabber”, but have only found orange – so that is why you may see orange in the agenda. :) Friday is Pizza lunch and Halloween Dance in the gym. The primary students are welcome to go to the dance during lunch (12-12:45pm). Kindergarten students will need to eat their lunch before they go to the gym. There is no concession; however, PAC will be selling glow sticks for 50 cents. Students are allowed to come to school in costume provided that:
REMINDERS: Monday – YPC concert (please be at school before 8:30am as we need to get ready to leave on buses right away) Tuesday - Library (changed due to the YPC concert on Monday) Wednesday – P.E. with Mrs. Gustafson – wear comfy clothes clean indoor shoes are needed Thursday – Roots of Empathy visit with Wayne, Baby Ava and her Mom (discussion about emotions and why babies cry) Friday - Pizza Day and Halloween Dance (12-12:45pm for Kindies). Early lunch due to dance HOW PARENTS CAN HELP:
UPCOMING EVENTS: -Wednesday, November 11th – No school due to Remembrance Day -November 9-13th – Scholastic Book Fair (more info. will be posted later) It's hard to believe we are half-way through October already! I'm still working away on adding pages, links and more information to the blog. Thanks for your patience. I am looking forward to saving lots of paper each week, so please get into the habit of checking the blog each Monday. I will do my best to have my weekly post done before each Monday morning. :)
HIGHLIGHTS FROM LAST WEEK: We continued working with the "s" and "a" sounds (practiced printing these upper and lower-case letters, sang songs, brainstormed and drew pictures of things that started with the "s" and "a" sounds). The students working on letter recognition by identifying the letters in their names (out of sequence) then rearranging them back in the correct order. The kids had another visit from "Zero the Hero" on Wednesday - our 20th day of school. Zero brought them 20 different shapes. The kids helped sort them by colour, type, and size. We also made a class book about circles. Each child illustrated a page by turning a circle into something new; for example, a bouncy ball, a smiling face, a fuzzy cat. We read "Brown Bear Brown Bear" multiple times (it was quite a favourite because the kids could read it aloud all on their own!) and created our own colouring books that followed the same rhyming pattern but with colours and shapes rather than colours and animals (Brown Circle, Brown Circle what do you see? I see a Red Square looking at me). We also had our weekly Roots of Empathy visit with Mr. Wayne Tresierra. Wayne and the kids talked about emotions and how babies and children react to emotions. The students and I have talked each day about "Whole Body Listening". Our "Listening Larry" poster reminds us what Whole Body Listening looks/sounds/feels like: Eyes - look at the person talking to you Ears - both ears are ready to hear Mouth - quiet (no talking, humming or making noises) Hands - both quiet in lap or by your sides Feet - both quiet on the floor (side-sit or criss-cross legs) Body - faces the speaker (not laying down) Brain - thinking about what is being said Heart - caring about what is being said and those people around us who are also trying to listen WHAT'S HAPPENING THIS WEEK? It's going to be a short, but busy week! We will focus on the letter "t" (upper and lower case). We will work on identifying the letters of the alphabet with another class-favourite book, "Chica Chica Boom Boom". Our coconut tree art-work is almost finished and will be displayed in our classroom ASAP. In Math, we will focus on identifying, and sequence the numbers 1-10. We will read "Ten Apples Up on Top", act out some "addition stories" (e.g. if Craig has 3 apples and Lily has 2 apples. How many apples are there all together) and making a class book. As you can see, I love reading books and making class big books. I find the most popular books in our class library are the ones the students have made themselves! We will keep discussing our Whole Body Listening and our Traffic Light Behaviour expectations each day too! REMINDERS:
UPCOMING EVENTS:
See you Monday! Ms. Gartrell |
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