We’ve had a lot going on around here, so please forgive us if we seem a bit distracted. Time to practice more mindfulness!

We’re having a lot of fun teaching Fairy Tales the past couple of weeks. For Sharing and Special Helper this month, the children are bringing in a favourite Fairy Tale, so we are getting a high rate of exposure to many stories and it’s broadening our understanding and perspective of this important genre.

Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf are back in town, and we’ve had an interesting time of it, reading three different versions of a familiar and much loved tale.

We started with a fun provocation: a basket filled with treats. We showed our basket to the children and slowly went through the contents, asking the children to think of a Fairy Tale where a basket has a part in the story. Inside the basket: fruit, juice…pizza. (Seems we had no croissant in the house corner). Admittedly, the pizza threw everybody off for a moment, but with a few good clues for our guided inquiry (“I’m going to Grandma’s house;” “I wear a red hood and cloak”) our well-read children were able to narrow down their guess to Little Red.

Our focus has been on story structure, and we’re talking about the beginning, middle and end in a Fairy Tale. We’re looking for common elements such as a story beginning with “Once upon a time…” and ending with “…and they all lived happily ever after.”

We then moved onto to house-building with “The Three Little Pigs.” We have had so much fun reading aloud familiar portions of the story; the children have really enjoyed being the little pigs (“Not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin”) to our Wolf (“I’ll HUFF, and I’ll PUFF and I’ll BLLOOWW your house down.”) Here, we are teaching about recalling and sequencing the main events within the beginning, middle and end of a story.

The children loved making these delightful little books which they read to themselves or to a friend when they’ve finished sequencing and stapling together the pages.

As for next week, well, we’ve got some magic beans we can trade you for your cow….

We’ve also been investigating shapes in Math, and looked for squares and rectangles in our classroom. Who would have thought we could have found so many? In continuing with our tradition of inspiring children’s literature, we read  Perfect Square by Michael Hall, and Brown Rabbit’s Shape Book and Grey Rabbit’s Odd One Out by Alan Baker.

We’re teaching PE to both classes simultaneously right now, as we start practising relays. Sports Day is fast approaching, and all of the races our teams participate in are relays. Not all the children have had an opportunity to see a Ridgeview Sports Day or run a relay, so we’ve formed small teams and started running relays down the length of the gym, turning around a pylon and passing a small piece of equipment among the team members. There is a high safety factor when teams are running simultaneously and turning, so the children’s ability to listen to the teacher to complete the task correctly is very much evident.

The children brought home their class photos earlier in the week. We were delighted to be able to use the “Seussical” background for our photo from our Intermediate Musical. We’ll send home a list of names in order of the photograph for your reference.

Upcoming Events and Reminders
Tonight is our Ridgeview Parent Gala in support of the Library Modernization Project at the Hollyburn Country Club in West Vancouver. Our beautiful platters will be available for auction. Best of luck to all the bidders!

Next week we’re talking about the jobs our families do inside and outside the home. Please have a wee chat with your children about the kind of work you do outside the home so they can share that information at school. The children are all quite familiar with the work you do at home — they know about the grocery shopping, cooking and baking, washing up of dishes, gardening, laundry and ironing, just to name a few tasks. We were delighted to hear about how many children help with dinner preparations and fold the laundry (“that’s my job”)!

We’re sending home a form from our Music Teacher, Mrs. Soderling, for children who are interested in auditioning for the Primary Variety Show. Please read carefully the expectations for the audition process. If you have any questions, please email Mrs. Soderling directly at hsoderling@wvschools.ca

Tuesday, May 30 is Library Book Exchange for both classes.

Home Reading Book Exchange is Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays.

We can’t believe it’s already Friday, and almost the middle of May!

For a regular five day school week it was actually pretty busy, with many changes, delightful interruptions and special visitors.

Our Library Book Exchange moved to Monday this week, instead of our regular Tuesday. By Monday at 2:55 pm the majority of children had two library books out (who knew last week’s book had to be returned for Monday?), rather than one, and that created great confusion about which book (one? both?) needed to be returned this week. We’re not really sure ourselves so we’re looking forward to next Tuesday when things return to normal. Please bring ALL school library books for Tuesday so we can start again.

On Monday we also had a wonderful visit from Elmer the Safety Elephant and Ruff the Dog of the North Shore Safety Council to talk about pedestrian safety. We always enjoy seeing our favourite elephant and dog and we were so pleased with our classes who know a great deal about keeping themselves safe while out walking in their community.

West Vancouver Secondary School’s Concert Band and Concert Choir came to Ridgeview on Wednesday to perform as part of their Feeder School Tour. These were amazing performances with so many Ridgeview alumni and our children were fortunate to see what the future looks like in the performing arts of their local high school. The children’s listening behaviour was outstanding. We are so proud to be their teachers.

We worked on a special art project for our contribution to the Ridgeview Parent Gala and Auction in aid of the Library Modernization Project happening at our school. We’re so grateful to our parent helpers who helped our children with their fingerprint flowers on what will be a gorgeous platter when it’s all finished. We will be sharing more information about the auction and how you can place a bid as soon as the details are finalised.

We had more performing arts fun when Mrs. Segers invited us to watch her Grade 3 students perform “Jane and the Dragon” and “Hearts and Tarts.” You might well imagine how tickled Christy and I are when we get to see our beloved Kindergarten children now in Grade 3 acting and speaking with such incredible confidence. These children might not be in Kindergarten anymore but they always, and forever will be, our students.

Upcoming Events and Reminders

Home Reading Book Exchange: Monday, Wednesday next week
Library Book Exchange is on Tuesday for both classes. Please return ALL library books.

Thursday, May 18 is Welcome to Kindergarten for the 2017-2018 Kindergarten students.

Friday, May 19, is a Professional Day. School is in session for teachers only.

Monday, May 22, is Victoria Day. Schools are not in session.

It’s been a super busy week with the Intermediate Musical, our Mother’s Day project, Alphabet Book finish-up, class photos and a discombobulated schedule. We are so proud of our classes for coming through it all with maturity, flexibility and a let’s do this attitude. We know ourselves how difficult it can be when our class’ timetables and schedules get switched around as we try to accommodate everything going on in our school. But we see the benefits of teaching self-regulation strategies to our children, talking aloud about our feelings and valuing the character traits of perseverance and resilience as we’ve pushed through. Everyone should take some well deserved rest over the weekend.

This week we coloured our Alphabet Book covers and glued them to the front of our books. We’re progressing slowly to finish up as much of the missed pages as we can, but we will only continue this for another week or so. At that point, we will send the books home and children can complete missed work at home.

It’s the beginning of May so we completed our beautiful self-portraits. It`s been amazing to watch the children’s skills develop as we revisit this project every month.

We started our study of Shapes and Geometry this week. We read Brown Rabbit’s Shape Book and did a very through brainstorming of know two-dimensional shapes. We will continue to explore the shapes through a variety of geometric math manipulatives, the common shapes we see in our environment and introduce some simple vocabulary.

We’re into Week 2 of Let’s Talk About Touching, focusing on ways to keep ourselves safe and healthy such as visiting the dentist and doctor when necessary. Tools such as toothbrushes, bandaids, soap and tissues are all useful items for looking after our bodies. Our next lessons will focus on fun and helpful touches.

We are successfully exchanging our Home Reading Books in class. We’re so happy to see the children remembering to return their books on the appointed book exchange days (Monday, Wednesday, Friday). Please remember this book is in addition to your daily read alouds at bedtime. Our children still need to hear you reading higher level books so they can learn more sophisticated vocabulary, complex sentence structures and questions and see you model reading aloud with expression and humour. We guarantee that these times of reading with your children will be among those most treasured by them as they grow up.

Upcoming Events and Reminders

We’re back in the gym again for PE next week so please make sure your child has runners on your class’ PE days. We will be working together with both classes to teach the children how to run various relay styles in preparation for Sports Day on Friday, June, 16.