There’s a sense of change in the air and it’s more than just the late arrival of Spring. We’re at the end of our huge focus on the Alphabet as we completed the letter Y this week. As we were looking through the children’s Alphabet Books in anticipation of last Thursday’s Student Led Conferences, it made us realise the ever increasing pace of the passage of time as we head into our final two months of Kindergarten. We’ve seen remarkable progress over the year and certainly a big jump again since Easter, in self-regulation, refined fine motor skills, emotional maturity and resilience when confronted with conflicts. We still have many fun and exciting activities planned for our classes and look forward to seeing their increasing independence as they approach this unique time of Grade 1’s in training.

Christy and I are feeling particularly nostalgic, and it’s going to get worse, as Christy’s oldest daughter, and my youngest child, my son, are beginning to think about their upcoming high school graduations and all that that entails. They’ve been been accepted by their universities of choice, so now it’s on to scholarship applications. Then, there’s the course finals, the Grade 12 Provincial English exam, graduation banquets and Convocation, not necessarily in that order, but all part of what we’ve got going on this Spring. Kindergarten children moving on to Grade 1, and our own kids moving on to…life.

This week we will complete Alphabet Z. Then, we’re going to have a few catch-up days to finish up the odd Alphabet page your children might have missed from sickness or travel. We will do what we can in class; however, if your children missed a great deal of school or was late to start in Ridgeview Kindergarten, you can certainly finish up the pages at home when we send home the books.

We will be starting our Fairy Tale unit next. We’ve told all the children the next theme for Sharing will be Fairy Tales, so please start talking about what Fairy Tale your child would like to bring to school for us to read aloud. It shouldn’t be more than about 15 minutes long so we can read it during Storytime.

We finished our big unit Numeracy unit this week, culminating with 10 and the delightful book, 10 Black Dots by Donald Crews. Using the frame, “___ dots can be a ___” our children each made a page to contribute to a big book of the same name, which we showcased as part of our Big Books Centre at Student Led Conferences. In the same way we revisit Patterns, Sorting and Classifying all year, we will continue to integrate Numeracy in our upcoming Math units on Geometry and Measurement.

On Wednesday we saw our Big Buddies, and started decorating our classrooms for Spring with our cute little robins. Our Buddies also brought books about Spring with them for a cosy Big Buddy Little Buddy reading time.

Of course, our big focus this past week was Student Led Conferences. The children were very excited to have you visit our classrooms so they could present their work. We just love watching our children with you, your deep love for one another and your interest and pleasure in looking at their printed letters, iMovies and colourful art work. One of the most fun things we did to prepare for you was walk through all the Centres and pretend we were “Mum.” Many of the children call us “Mum” by accident at school when they are super excited to show us something (“Hey Mum, I mean…”), an emergency bathroom visit (“Mum, I need to go…I mean…”) or they’ve had a spill on the table “MUM!” So imagine the smiles and giggles as we questioned and praised our “daughters” and “sons” for practise at each Centre! We would like to thank everyone for your kind and thoughtful words in our Guest Book. We both feel very privileged to be your child’s first schoolteacher and to participate in their learning, development and understanding of what it means to be a Ridgeview Dragon.

Upcoming Events and Reminders

Library Book Exchange is on Tuesday. Please bring your book back to school and into the classroom so it can be placed in the Library Book Bag.

Our class photo and school panorama photo will be taken on Friday, May 5! Please mark this important date on your calendar because we will want every student to be at school that day. Kindergarten classes usually have their photos taken first (while we are still neat and tidy, before we eat at recess) so it’s important to be on time for school as we mobilize very quickly following the morning bell.