As each school year goes on, we can’t believe how quickly the time flies.  We’re rapidly approaching December and nary a decoration has been hung (at school, anyways).  The stores are actually ahead of us! But that will all soon be changing as we get our students and classrooms ready for Christmas.  We will be sending the pictures along soon in our weekly newsletter.

This week we complete our Alphabet Craft “Itchy’s i” which is surely a huge favourite for the children.  We’re patterning the bodies, using sticker eyes, gluing on legs and pinching the legs so Itchy looks like he’s on the move.  Of course, beautiful printing was completed as well.

Kindergarten Singing is coming along nicely and the children are quickly learning words and actions for their Christmas songs.

For Art, our children made these delightful painted bear faces.  They are becoming very adept at using templates to cut out the important features.  

Using a similar technique to our tissue paper apples, we continue to improve our finger motor skills by cutting and gluing tissue squares and making these beautiful leaves.

Finally, we’d like to thank our two UBC Teacher Candidates, Miss Ellis and Mr. Pang for their hard work and dedication to providing quality lessons and great instruction to our children.  They learned a great deal from us and each other, received our feedback positively and made noticeable changes to their lessons to improve their teaching performance. Our UBC Students are now returning to school for two weeks of classes and assignments.  They will return one more time next Thursday and that completes the first term.

In January, our TCs will be in teaching on Thursdays for the second term as they did so earlier this fall.  Following Spring Break, Miss Ellis and Mr. Pang will return for a ten-week practicum. We’ve done a lot of planning with them so they are aware of our expectations for the final term, along with those of UBC Teacher Education and their Faculty Advisors.  As always, Christy and I will be closely supervising and monitoring everybody’s progress (TCs and our Littles).

Upcoming Events and Reminders

Christmas Sharing begins on Friday, November 30 for both classes.

Friday, November 30  is our Christmas Crackers Event with our Big Buddies.  Thank you to our parents who brought in wrapping paper, tissue and clean paper rolls.  We so appreciate your donations to help bring some Christmas cheer to those less fortunate than ourselves.

There’s just one more week before the Sock Drive ends.  We’re collecting brand new pairs of socks in ALL sizes for donation.  Again, if you make a donation, your child will write his or her name on a paper sock to hang on the sock clothesline.

We’ve just had three important holidays and celebrations pass us by, and all of our teaching of vocabulary, concepts and the crafts to go with them.  It is always delightful to be talking about our family traditions, making fun projects and reading lots of stories. We integrate as much of the Kindergarten knowledge, skills, strategies and processes to be taught into these activities where we can.  But we never forget our Language and Literacy foundations of phonological awareness, listening and speaking and beginning printing.

So this week, we found ourselves already up to the letter H in our Alphabet!  Clearly, the weeks are flying by. The children listened to the stunning A is for Autumn, by Robert Maass for alphabet inspiration.  The photography is absolutely beautifully, with simple alphabet rhymes about the fall.  We completed our Itchy’s Alphabet page, made heartfelt h’s and the printing in our Alphabet books…amazing!  Just look at these straight lines perfectly formed.

In this short time between Remembrance Day and our kick-off to Christmas (Christy and I are counting down the days), we are teaching a mini-unit on Bears in Literature.  The focus of our unit is on story structure: beginning, middle and end. This is the vocabulary we are teaching the children, and words you can also use at home when talking with your children following their bedtime story.  

For the first story our UBC student Teacher Candidates (TCs) taught Bear Snores On, by Karma Wilson and Jane Chapman.  Bear has started his hibernation and is sleeping when his animal friends come by and have a party.  He is very disappointed at waking up and missing all of the fun! The children had to pay close attention as they participated by choral chanting “and the Bear snored on!” every few pages.  They learned some unfamiliar animals, such as the badger and the wren, and reviewed what happened. In their follow-up lesson next week, the children will colour, cut and sequence pictures of the beginning, middle and end of the story.

Karma Wilson and Jane Chapman have written an entire series of wonderful books about Bear and his friends.  These are stories worth looking for at your local library.

Our UBC TCs are also teaching the final lessons in the “Personal Identity” portion of Kindergarten Studies.  Poor Wemberly, from Wemberly Worried by Kevin Henkes, is worried about starting school.  Her parents and teacher encourage her along but she is still worried.  Until she meets a friend…and then the whole world (and school day) is a lot brighter.  The children talked about their own worries, and reviewed the four main feeling groups of happy, sad, angry and scared.  Next week, they will create a graph about their feelings for the day and discuss their findings.

In Math we’ve been reviewing our Math rotations routine using new Math Centres such as treasure boxes, sorting bears, geometric flats and connectors.  We’ve doing a lot of sorting and classifying of objects, and going over the patterns we’ve learned this term, AB, AAB and ABC. It’s really exciting to watch the children create, copy and extend patterns – especially when they catch an error they made and self-correct.  Now that is learning! And we are so privileged (and just a bit thrilled) to be able to observe their thought processes.

We had our second practise of Kindergarten Singing on Thursday…what beautiful voices your children have!  They are currently learning their songs for the Christmas Concert – “Holly Jolly Christmas” and “Frosty the Snowman.”  

Upcoming Events and Reminders

Wednesday, November 21 has been scheduled by Mrs. Kennedy for our Library Book Exchange for both classes, just before lunch.  Please return your books on time.

The Grade 4 students are holding a Sock Drive for those in need.  We are looking to collect brand new pairs of socks in children’s sizes.  Your child will write his or her name on a paper sock to hang in our front hall to note the donation.

We’re our annual Christmas Cracker Event on Friday, November 30.  We will be making Christmas Crackers with our Big Buddies using the candies you all donated from Hallowe’en.

A few supplies we could use are rolls of Christmas wrapping paper, curling ribbon and clean, tissue-free, paper rolls.  If you have anything you might be able to donate to us, we’d really appreciate it!

We can never quite get over the shift from the witches, ghosts and goblins of Hallowe’en to the sombre thoughts that come to mind as Remembrance Day approaches.  Here in the Kindergarten, the orange paint barely finished drying on our jack-o-lanterns when the black and red acrylics were hauled out to make our Poppy prints.  Ah…such is school life.

Despite holidays and special days, Christy and I still manage to keep the alphabet train moving along.  We’re always looking for new ideas for our cute Alphabet crafts and this year we have the most adorable idea for “g” – a gumball machine (courtesy of Pinterest, of course).  We were very excited to make these with our children and they very much enjoyed using the Bingo markers to make the gumballs.

We have an exciting new event to add to our timetables and that is Kindergarten Singing!  The Kindergarten children will have a six week module of an additional singing class with Mrs. Soderling, our Music Teacher.  We had our first session this week and our children sang very beautifully. They’ll be showing you everything they learned at the Christmas Concert in mid-December.

Our Boho Birds were returned to us from The Card Project.  You will have received your complimentary card with your child’s artwork.  The children’s original work is now hanging in our classroom. Please feel free to come by anytime to see it.

We had quite a lot of preparation for Remembrance Day this week.  We made the aforementioned Poppies using an acorn squash and potato as our block for printing making.  The children were fascinated with the insides of the acorn squash (“Hey, that’s just like a pumpkin!”) and the mass of a relatively small object.

We practised out cutting and pasting skills cutting out these small maple leaves to each make a Canada flag.

We contributed half of our Art collection to the Remembrance Day Assembly and made these lovely displays.  Following the ceremony we will add the children’s artwork to the classroom bulletin boards.

In class, we read several good books, including O Canada:  Our National Anthem, published by Scholastic, The Peace Book by Todd Parr and A Poppy is to Remember by Heather Patterson and Ron Lightburn.  This gave us quite a bit of common content as we talked about what peace meant to each of us personally.  The children came up with an impressive list:

-reading a book

-riding my bike

-my family

-sharing my toys

-my cousin

-my mom

-hugging and loving my brother

-playing with my friends

-sharing pumpkin pie with my family

-sitting and breathing quietly

-going on trips with my family

-jumping in the leaves

-playing outside with my dad

-taking care of our world

-splashing in puddles

-reading a book with my mom

-listening to quiet music

-sitting calmly

-thinking about my family

-babies

We used these ideas to each make a page to contribute to a class big book.  It’s at times like this we are reminded that peace begins at home, in the hearts and minds of our little students.  

We’ve had two Assemblies now, but the Remembrance Day Assembly is a very serious and solemn one.  Students are asked to enter the gym in silence, there is no talking nor clapping following any of the performances and presentations.  We all listened quietly to the “Last Post” and stood still for the one minute of silence. Then we listened again to the “Reveille”.

You can imagine our thoughts as Kindergarten teachers as we go over the expected behaviour with our children before leaving the classroom.  This Assembly is a marker for us in how well we’ve been teaching and practising the self-regulation strategies. Does the deep breathing really help?  Will the children remember to do a calming countdown if necessary? Will the children read correctly their social situation and respond appropriately?

And they do.  Our children were exceptionally well-behaved and remembered on purpose everything they had been taught.  They listened well, used their eyes to reference their peers and paid attention to the cues from their social context.  We’re always so proud of our classes. We set our expectations high and they consistently rise to the challenge.

Upcoming Events and Reminders

EMERGENCY RELEASE DRILL – NOVEMBER 15^TH

Please mark your calendars that on the afternoon of Thursday, November 15^th we will be conducting a student release drill.  There will be staggered pick up times starting at 1:45pm for Grades K-2, 2:10pm for Grades 3-4, and 2:30pm for Grades 5-7.  More information will be sent out closer to this date.  Please note that it is important that you bring photo ID with you when you pick up your child and/or a child you are listed as a designated alternate.

Save the Date:  Our Christmas Concert will be on Thursday, December 13.  We have a matinee and an evening performance. Information on what to wear will follow soon.

Scholastic Book Fair is coming to Ridgeview Library!  This is a really exciting event where we have a pop-up book store in our Library.  Kindergarten children may shop and purchase books with their parents only. The Book Fair is open from 8:30-8:50 am,

We packed a lot in this week, beginning with our painted pumpkins.  Look! Aren’t these fun? We painted these last week, colour mixing a palette of yellow, orange and red.  After cutting out the pumpkins, the children worked in small groups to add the facial features. Each jack-o-lantern is as special and unique as each of our children.

On Wednesday, we were off to the Ridgeview Halloween Parade and Assembly.  After Mrs. Brady collected Grades 1-3, Kindergarten took over the lead of the Parade and led everyone through the Intermediate classrooms.  We were greeted with waves and smiles as we all walked down the hallway. Thank you to all of our parents who were there to support us!

Somehow in between the Hallowe’en festivities, we were able to squeeze in some beautiful work on the letter F and made these sweet “f is for flower” crafts for your alphabet wall.

We do a lot of fine motor work in Kindergarten.  We’re printing, cutting, pasting, drawing and colouring almost every day.  We’re manipulating small pieces in Math Treasure Boxes, building with Lego and Playmobil and gluing on googly eyes and beads.  The children are getting stronger and more capable as the weeks go on. So we thought it might be a fun challenge to make these little owls.  

Using pattern templates, the children cut out every single piece and glued it on to create these little birds.  Haven’t they done a marvelous job? Shapes of every size and kind, from ovals, circles to triangles were cut out and carefully pieced together.  We were so proud of the children’s excellent listening and ability to focus on, and follow, teacher directions.

We had the perfect cap off to our week and saw our Grade 7 Big Buddies to make peace doves. We will be using these to decorate our classrooms and the gym for next week’s Remembrance Day Assembly for Ridgeview students.  We are collecting money for the poppies which will be given out next Friday.

Upcoming Events and Reminders

Save the Date:  Our Christmas Concert will take place on Thursday, December 13.  We will have a matinee and an evening performance. There will be much more information to follow on our children’s costumes.

We’re starting our new theme for Sharing and Special Helper, “All About Me.”  Please help your child to find three objects that tell something about him- or herself.  It would also be so helpful if you make a few notes for your child about the significance of the objects and include that in the bag.  We’re looking to see the children develop more confidence in speaking aloud, so you may want to practise a little bit at home.

October Homework calendars are due now.

We are continuing to collect non-perishable food for our sister school, Grandview Elementary in Vancouver.  

We are also collecting Hallowe’en candy for our Christmas Cracker project.  These candy gifts will be donated to a variety of charitable organisations.

Monday, November 5 is Library Book Exchange.  Please bring your book back to school.

Friday, November 9 Scholastic Book orders are due.