After the holiday weekend, it was hard to get our usual rhythm this week at school. Sometimes we find that when we miss our Mondays and not going to Library and Music on our regular days.  But on this gorgeous Sunday as we write up the newsletter for our short week, it seems we were still very productive and have made some very good progress in all areas of our learning.

Boho Birds… Beyond Adorable!

This week we’re most proud of the beautiful boho birds we made for “theCardProject,” which is an RPAC fundraiser for our school.  Each classroom teacher selects an art project to make with his or her class, and these often incredible pieces of art are turned into cards, journals and other stationery items.  We’ve written a charming blog post detailing all of our children’s efforts which we will post and you can read later this week (and also the reason why this newsletter is late).

For now, let us say how very, very proud we are of our KinderArtists who each made a sweet birdie using mixed media.  It was so fun to work with our children, who were the best of listeners and followed many directions incredibly well. We are always uncertain about how well our art project will be received by the children.  As to be expected in Kindergarten, the range of their fine motor skills is vast; we’re trying to find a project that they can all do mostly independently, feel pride and accomplishment, yet is lovely enough beyond the eyes of the artist (it is a fundraiser, after all).

But this year we think have something very special.  We know you are going to love the children’s little birds and purchase some thoughtful gifts for yourself and your extended family members (you’ll also get the original art as well which is definitely frame worthy– priceless!)

We worked on the letter “d” this week, pasting beautiful paper diamonds to a lowercase d.  In a moment of thrift, we used up the leftover pieces of scrapbook paper from the boho birds to make some very pretty diamonds.

We’re taking our PE classes outside right now with the good weather because this might not happen again.  We have been working on fitness, using the playground circuit and we introduced the agility ladder as well following the Physical Literacy (PL) Assessment last week.  The Foundation Skills of running, hopping, jumping, throwing and kicking are ones we will be focusing on (we also review skipping and galloping). We’re using the agility ladder to add excitement and challenge for our children whose PL skills are already well developed.  Part of the assessment was also the vocabulary, comprehension, and ability to follow the instructions given by the PL teachers, which we will follow-up with in class.

More fun…and art…on Friday with our Big Buddies.  Now, we know we just had Thanksgiving but we realized we wouldn’t see our Buddies again until October 26 (Professional Day on October 19) so we had to make start our Hallowe’en Wreaths.  (We personally realise it’s all about perspective when we saw the Christmas decorations and decor in Michaels and HomeSense this weekend, and the Hallowe’en bits and pieces were on clearance, but we digress….).  So to keep our excitement in check, we decided to just trace our templates (ghost, moon, pumpkin, bat) and glue them on and save the decorating (once we’ve located our Hallowe’en stickers) for the week ahead. Although we had some sad faces (Grade 7s, not the Kinders), we know we’ll be happier working on Hallowe’en crafts the closer we get to Hallowe’en!  Christy and I are not one for rushing through each celebration and holiday. We like to savour and enjoy it for what it is…part of our self-regulation.

Thank you again to Mrs. Kennedy, our Teacher-Librarian, for squeezing us all in our Tuesday so we could have our new Library books.

We also wish to formally welcome our UBC Teacher Candidates (Student Teachers) Miss Ellis and Mr. Pang to Ridgeview Kindergarten.  They will be visiting on Thursdays to observe your Kindergarten Teachers, and have a two-week practicum in November. In the new year, they will continue their weekly visit and have an extended practicum in the Spring.  Christy and I are known as School Advisors and we will be observing and evaluating their practise teaching, along with a UBC Faculty Advisor.

Christy and I both had amazing practise teaching experiences (Christy right here at Ridgeview; and mine was in the Saanich School District) with very knowledgeable, experience School Advisors.  Although we’ve had quite a few Teacher Candidates come through our classrooms over the years, it is always our Professional responsibility to mentor today’s promising young people in the most worthwhile and satisfying helping profession, that of TEACHER.  

Finally, our heartfelt thanks to our BFF and webmaster extraordinaire, Ms. Cari Wilson (Innovation Teacher for Technology) @kayakcari for creating our new header for theselfregulatedteacher.com.  It is gorgeous and we love it! Thanks, Cari!!

Upcoming Events and Reminders

There’s lots for the next few days…

Monday is Library Book Exchange.  Please return your Library Book to get a new one.

Thursday, October 18 is Early Dismissal for all students at 1:30 pm.

Friday, October 19 is a Professional Development Day.  School is not in session for students.

Monday, October 22 is a Non-Instructional Day.  School is not in session for students.