Our big focus this week was our school Christmas Concert.  Thank you to everyone for attending!  Our children worked very hard.  They had a lot of words to learn, actions to remember and how about all that fancy stepping up and down the stage?

As expected, our children felt the “post-performance” euphoria that accompanies performing on stage. But in addition of deep breathing, reading stories and listening to quiet music, we know that playing and crafting are two excellent activities to help channel all that energy in a positive way.

We brainstormed lots of Christmas vocabulary for our word wall.  We’re going to be colouring pictures and printing the labels in our Christmas word books.

We made these fun “k” kites for our letter of the week.

We had fun with our December self portraits…lots of cutting, lots of gluing, lots of colouring.

And our Reindeer feet…our beloved Grade 7 Buddies had helped us to trace our feet and trace and cut out our hands at previous Buddy times we so all we had to do was cut, make the features and glue.  

We’re still working hard on developing our repertoire of self-regulation strategies, and activities to help us self-regulate.  They might not all be as cute as these reindeer feet…they’ll probably be cuter.

Upcoming Events and Reminders

We reached another milestone this week as we are approaching independence as a class of Kindergarten children:  almost everybody can put on their own winter coats and snow boots by themselves.  Every time we go outside, or come back from playtime, it can take 10-15 minutes for us and the Grade 7 monitors to put on hoodie jackets, ski jackets, boots and gloves.  We go outside 2-3 times a day so you can imagine what the cloakroom looks like…”a clothing store,” was how one of the children so delicately put it.  When all the children can put on their coats, do up their zippers, get in and out of snow boots quickly and pull their gloves on, it shortens the amount of time to get ready.  Please encourage your child to get ready for school independently when you’re at home….practise makes perfect.

Temperatures will be very cold this week.  Please ensure your children have gloves or mittens and a hat if they will wear it.  A lot of children do not like to wear their jacket hoods as it blocks their peripheral vision.  You can support us by checking with your child and being sure they are prepared with the necessary winter clothes.

If your child does not have an extra change of clothes at school, we can’t think of a better time than now to send a bag of clothes along.  Many children get soaking wet when they are playing, coming down the slide or simply have a fall.  We want them to be comfortable and dry when they are in class.  It’s hard to concentrate on learning if your pants and socks are wet.

Our Second Annual Gingerbread House Event is on Tuesday evening, December 13 from 6-7 pm, in the gym  We hope to see you there!  We will be helping out in the kitchen filling icing cups for gingerbread house construction.  If you want to join in the fun, but have not yet signed up, please see Mrs. Lytle in the office.  This fundraising event is sponsored by the Me to We Team, to provide the necessary school fees for a Primary Education (K-6) for children in a developing country.

Please return your report card envelopes before the end of the week.

Friday, December 16, is the last day of school for the holidays.  Our school will be dismissing students at 2 pm.  School re-opens on Tuesday, January 3, 2017.