It’s Thanksgiving Week in the Kindergarten and we’ve been doing all things Turkey.

We’ve read a variety of Thanksgiving stories, including some of our long-time favourites, Franklin’s Thanksgiving (Paulette Bourgeois) and The Thankful Book (Todd Parr).  We brainstormed the many, many things we are thankful for; it’s a special list which we will share with you on Sunday.  From these ideas, each child made a thankful leaf.  They independently drew their own pictures and the teachers scribed their wonderful ideas.

It was time to see our Big Buddies on Wednesday.  It’s become a tradition to make a Thanksgiving centrepiece in Kindergarten so we made our very fun, adorable turkeys.  Each child brought his or hers home for the holiday table.  One of the most fun things Christy and I have been doing is teaching Kindergarten long enough so that our former Kindergarten students are now our Big Grade 7 Buddies.  Many of the senior students had a huge smile when they saw the familiar turkey craft and shared that they still had theirs at home.

We’ve been learning about Patterns in Mathematics.  Patterning, sorting and classifying are part of our foundation teaching in Math.  We’re teaching our children how patterns can be found in daily living, nature and surrounding environment.  Sorting and classifying objects helps us to organise, categorise and group together similar concepts.  Our September pattern was AB and now it’s AAB for October.  We’ve been using a variety of math manipulatives to explore and create patterns, and during our daily Math Their Way calendar we are extending our monthly patterns every day.  For Thanksgiving, we coloured turkeys using warm colours and selected our own pattern for the feathers.

As always at the beginning of the month, we drew our monthly self-portraits according to our criteria of Big (fill your space), Bright (use five colours or more) and Beautiful (do your personal best).  We love the growth we see in our children as the school year moves along; they’ve become very attentive to the details in their drawings and working towards independently meeting the criteria.

Upcoming Events and Reminders

Monday, October 10, is Thanksgiving Day, so schools are not in session.

October Scholastic orders are due Tuesday, October 11th. The online payment for parents is available now.

Family BINGO Night Order forms are due Wednesday October 12th

If you would like to order your child’s photo, please have the form handed into your child’s teacher no later than Tuesday, October 11th.

Parent/Teacher Interviews are scheduled to take place October 24th and 27th, and there will be a 2:00 pm early dismissal on these days.  Look for the sign-up sheets outside the library starting Monday, October 17th.

With the rainy days ahead, please ensure your child has shoes to wear inside, boots to wear outside and a rain jacket.