We always find this week before Hallowe’en preparations really get going a bit of a holding pattern.  We’ve put up a few decorations (so as not to overly take away from our self-regulated classrooms), strung a few lights around the room and have started working on a few crafts in anticipation of the BIG DAY.  In an informal classroom poll, deciding between Hallowe’en and Christmas as the classroom favourite produced some intriguing numbers, until we realized the participants were voting twice….

Last week we traced, cut out and glued together our Hallowe’en Wreaths with our Big Buddies.  This week we added a lot of special details so create a beautiful bulletin board display in our classroom.

We also painted the bat bodies for a cutie-pie bat craft we will finish next week during our Hallowe’en Centres party on Thursday, October 25 in the morning.  In Kindergarten, Christy and I like to have seasonal celebrations for our classes but we also like them to be productive. So now that our children have learned about Centres and rotating between the numbered tables in our classrooms (1-5), we’re applying that routine to something fun and new – crafts and activities on a Hallowe’en theme.  

There’s no need for children to dress up in costume, but if they would like to wear a fun Hallowe’en t-shirt or Hallowe’en headpiece (no masks, please), then that would be lovely.  I’m trying to decide whether to wear my Witch’s Hat or Hallowe’en Princess Crown. Decisions, decisions….

A very important event this week was starting work in our Alphabet Books.  We’ve been working on the loose Alphabet pages from A-D up till now. We’ve sorted and collated everybody’s pages and cerlox bound them into the children’s Alphabet Books and they are gorgeous (both children and the book).  We’re so proud of our classes for learning to follow a routine for printing their names in pencil, printing the alphabet letters and drawing and labelling pictures that begin with the letter of the week. We teach and model each and every step, and will continue to do for the rest of the year for all the letters.  We’re really encouraging the children to use the lowercase letters we’ve taught in their names instead of uppercase and it’s exciting to see this transition.

We’re continuing with Our Personal Identity in the Community and the Natural World portion of our Kindergarten Curriculum.  Earlier, we read Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes, about a little girl who overcomes teasing about her name, Chrysanthemum, when she starts school.  With the support of her loving parents and Music teacher, she comes to love and and appreciate her beautiful name. We explain to our children that the very first gift they receive from you after being born, is their name, a most precious and special gift, indeed.

We had some fun searching through the magnetic letters the children used at their Welcome to Kindergarten visit to find the letters for their names.  It was thrilling to hear them talking about the letters as being uppercase or lowercase, knowing they have substituted in uppercase letters for lowercase letters (we had a shortage of lowercase “a” and “n”) and everybody helping each other out to complete their names.  A quick counting of letters and an autumn picture completed our activity.

This week ended with an Earthquake Drill and full evacuation.  We had informed the children ahead of time, had a practise so that when we actually had the Drill, there were no surprises.

We’re going to really miss our children for the next few days.  It will be the first long separation since school started – 4 days and 1.5 hours.  They are starting to find their stride now as settled Kindergarten children. We see the children’s listening skills continuing to improve, they are remembering on purpose and waiting for the teacher to  give instructions before independently starting their own work — all important parts of their self-regulation.  So enjoy these beautiful autumn days and time together with your children. We know they will be growing even more mature with all of the sunshine that’s expected for the next little white.

Upcoming Events and Reminders

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.

Please return your Library books for Tuesday.  We are going to try to reschedule our Library time from Monday.

Wednesday, October 24 is the Ridgeview Family Skate.  

Thursday is our Hallowe’en Centres Party as noted above.