Now, look at this adorable little craft. It’s enough to make us go through the alphabet all over again just to get to this cutie-pie Zebra! Thanks again to Pinterest for their awesome alphabet craft inspiration this year. This is the last letter we will make in Kindergarten. Your child should have an (almost) complete set now hanging up at home, so that they can review the letter names and sounds.

It was another BIG week in the Kindergarten. We finished our last Itchy’s Alphabet sheet and this page, along with the zebra, will be sent home next week. It also meant that we completed our Alphabet Book!! Let’s have some thunderous applause (we certainly did in class!). We’ve been talking a lot about perseverance this week, and our children certainly demonstrated that as we made our way through 26 gorgeous pages of printing, drawings and labels over the past eight months. We’re going to add a bit of decoration to the cover and these precious books will be your children’s to keep. It’s time to buy a Rubbermaid container to store all of the wonderful Kindergarten keepsakes we will slowly be sending home.

In Social Studies, we continued with our discussions on Needs and Wants. The children are learning that Needs include food, shelter and clothing, and Wants are things like toys and video games. But to extend the concept, they are also discovering that some Needs, like clothing, can be also be divided into necessary clothing (warm, long sleeved shirt) and clothes we just want to have (branded shirts, fancy runners). We’re very proud of the children who seem to have quite a good understanding that Needs are things that keep us safe and healthy and beginning to articulate this more clearly.

As you know, April is Earth Month. We’ve seen the Earth Rangers, and back in March we watched Dreamrider Productions “Zero Heroes.” At school we have a food waste management program. And we even wrote our own big book!

But we couldn’t let it go by without asking our own Jacqueline and Nic Way (Tyler’s mom and older brother) of http://www.365give.ca to come in for both classes to talk about celebrating our Earth and how we can help to give back to our planet. Our children have an amazing knowledge base of the importance of recycling and they are all familiar with sorting papers, plastic, glass and organic food waste. Many have even been to the dump and know about donating clothes, footwear, toys and books as a means of reusing items. For a special give back to the earth and the honey bees, we planted sunflower seeds which the children will bring home after the plants have sprouted. We’ll be blogging our entire class discussion and activity in the next week.

Very quietly at the back of the classroom, we’ve been working on a special Mother’s Day project….we’re loving listening to your children talk about you It’s very sweet.

Upcoming Events and Reminders

Library Book Exchange – on Tuesday as usual for Division 15 (Mrs. Campbell’s class). Please note that Division 16 (Mrs. Daudlin’s class) will have their book exchange on Thursday due to a conflict with the Ultimate Jamboree for Grade 7s.

Seussical – we’ll be watching a special dress rehearsal for students only on Tuesday morning. Thank you to Ms. Wilson for inviting us to watch our older brothers and sisters and Big Buddies!

The May homework calendar went home this week. Please return April’s calendar to school for a sticker.

We will start our Home Reading Program on Monday so look for a book coming home. We sent a letter regarding this program earlier this week.