We had a full week of activity as we near the half way point of Kindergarten…we know!  And we’re just as amazed to find ourselves in the middle of the school year with our sweethearts.  Where has the time gone?  We’ve already started the January birthdays, another indicator that the children are growing up quickly.

We’ve been busy with our Alphabet, and we finished “o is an octopus” on Friday.  We’re working hard on learning and practising the letter names and sounds.  During your nightly read alouds, you can focus on the letter of the week by looking for words beginning with that letter on each page; point out words you see in the environment or make a small collection of 5-10 items you have at home to grow your child’s vocabulary.

One of the most important things we can all do as adults is model our own love of reading, literature and the written language.  Something fun for your children would be to read aloud your childhood books to them, if you have not already done so.  We have brought many of our own children’s books to read aloud to our classes.  They love to hear the dedications and know how old our kids were at the time they received the book.  It’s fun for us, too, to revisit well-loved favourites

In the Library, Mrs. Kennedy read aloud the beautiful, My Heart Fills with the Happiness, by Monique Gray Smith and illustrated by Julie Flett, and then the children shared some of their ideas of happiness…

One of things we’ve noticed about lunch this term is that pizza is a very, very popular choice for our little eaters!  Lots of children are bringing pizza from home and we’ve also had thumbs up for the Hot Lunch Pizza which is from the Rocky Mountain Flatbread Company.  So if you’re looking for an idea for a special once a week treat, this might be something worth considering.

In Social Studies, we finished our last lesson on Personal Identity with talking about our feelings.  We chose the book Wemberly Worried by Kevin Henkes to share with the class.  Poor Wemberly worries about EVERYTHING and Mom, Dad and Grandma try to encourage her “take it as it comes.”  We know our Kindergarten share the same concerns…who will they play with today?  Will they like their lunch?  Will they be the last one to be picked up at home time?  These are very real concerns for our children.  We talked about other words for worried, such as anxious and nervous and what might be the opposite feeling we can find in ourselves by taking a few deep breaths to calm down the amygdala and clear our mind…confident, brave, peaceful.  

At the end of the lesson, when we talked about how they were feeling today, almost all the children felt “happy.”  We think we probably have the most fabulous professional ever…who else gets to be in their workplace surrounded by “happy” all day long?  Our next unit in Social Studies is “Family.”  Thank you for sending in your gorgeous family photos for Sharing.

Chinese New Year officially began on Saturday, January 28, but we will have a small celebration on Monday this week with some fun Centres and Chinese food “tasting,” thanks to classroom parents.  We got a head start by working on our dragon masks to decorate our rooms.  We sent home a Remind last week that if you have something red to wear, please do so.  We can never have too much good luck!

Upcoming Events and Reminders

Monday – Chinese New Year Celebration in class

                   PE in Division 15 and 16 so please wear runners to school

Tuesday – Library Book Exchange and Music for both classes

Wednesday – School-wide Lockdown drill

                          PE in Division 16

Thursday – PE in Division 15

Valentine’s Day is fast approaching… we will be sending out information about our class celebrations in the next week or two. Stay tuned….