A warm welcome back to school and Happy New Year!  We are very happy to be back with our children at school!  They’ve grown so much in maturity,  they’re more settled, more regulated and very ready to learn.  

Following any lengthy time away from school, we start the week with a gentle review of the classroom routines and rules.  Little reminders you can talk about with your children include:

-select your storybook and walk to sit down quietly on the carpet after you enter the classroom in the morning

-raise your hand to speak without calling out the teacher’s name at the same time

-make eye contact with your teacher and your friends when speaking

-snack and lunch time are for eating; talking with friends can wait until afterwards

-listen to your body and ask to go to the bathroom when you need to

We love nothing more than “oohs” and “aahs” which came to us in spades as we showed the children the adorable “m is a mouse” craft for this week. How cute is that?

We thought the printed letter “m’s” were pretty awesome as well!

We’ve started our next unit in Social Studies:  Family.  We’re off to a great start with our Family Sharing.  Thank you to the children who’ve already brought in their Family photo.  Our first lesson focused on the people in our family.  The children did a great job with their brainstorming.

We’ve taken down all the Christmas decorations so we needed to get some Art up on the walls.

We made our January self-portraits on little mitten backgrounds.  Notice the use of detail, wide variety of colours and good sense of space and proportion the children are incorporating in their line drawings.

Our classrooms are not complete without something hanging from the ceiling:  Mitten snowman hangers!

Musical notes:  After some creative timetabling, we are able to offer our delightful Kindergarten-Grade One Singing with Mrs. Soderling for another term!  This means our children receive music instruction three times a week!  You probably noticed how wonderful the singing was at the Christmas Concert and this is due to the additional class.  We’re so pleased for our children to participate in this musical opportunity.

Upcoming Events and Reminders

Library Book exchange is on Monday. Please remember to return your book.

We are continuing to collect LEGO for our LEGO Drive. If you have a cup to spare please bring it in and get your name displayed on the donation display.

Please make a note that the next Professional Development Day is Friday, January 25th.  No classes for students.

Parent Volunteerong Opportunity: A reminder to all interested parents of the Multi-Cultural Event Orientation meeting scheduled for Tuesday, January 15th at 2 p.m. This meeting will be a time to review further details about this event and to work together as a parent community toward this school-wide celebration.  All parent volunteers and interested parents are welcome.