It was amazing to us how quickly the past ten weeks flew by.  We’ve already finished the second term of Kindergarten!  The  children were certainly feeling the progression of time and thinking about how much some of them were going to miss coming to school while we were all on Spring Break.  Although we might talk about the school break “a change of pace” or “time for a break” it is not lost on us how much the classroom and friendships mean to many children.

We had a quiet, although very productive, week at school.  We have suddenly arrived at the letter U in our alphabet work.  Over the term, we’ve become quite particular about the printing of the children’s names, encouraging the class to always start their name with an uppercase letter, then follow through with lowercase.  It’s been a hard transition for some, especially if they have been printing in all uppercase letters since their preschool days.  We will continue working on this at school, as you can in reminding your child when they are printing their names on papers and cards at home.

We finished our work on the number 7 for math.  In addition to all that we see in what  they are learning about number sense, counting and flexibility in their thinking about number, we’re also really delighted to see the children’s social and emotional growth in their small groupings.  

We typically create the math groups and designate seating for written work all through the year so our class is continually getting to work with everyone, strengthening new friendships while maintaining the ones they have from previous years.  We believe the children should form as many friendships as possible; having just a “best friend” does not always work out, as we know from experience.  Children get an opportunity to be a leader (putting away the math materials in their special places in the classroom), practise sharing and taking turns, help each other out and get to learn about their classmates in ways other than free and outside play.  

The children sang one of their showpiece numbers, “Ev’rybody Wants to be a Cat” from Disney’s “The Aristocats” at our term end school assembly on Thursday.  They are so musical and the cat hairbands helped everyone to “meow” their very best.  Also performing at the assembly were the Grades Two/Three and Grades Six/Seven singing groups, and the Grade Six and Grade Seven Concert bands.  It was a musical morning for sure!

On Friday morning we were privileged to have a small group of parents talk to the Kindergarten classes about the Persian holiday, Norouz, and the “Haft Seen” Table.  The children were very interested, and it was a valuable learning opportunity for everyone to learn and appreciate the diverse cultural backgrounds of our Ridgeview families.  The children enjoyed some delicious treats afterwards and quickly ate over five dozen cookies between them.  Thank you to our parent volunteers for organizing this special event!

We wish you all a safe and relaxing Spring Break!  We will see everyone in two weeks time!

Upcoming Events and Reminders

April’s Calendar:

Monday, April 1 – School re-opens for the Third Term

Wednesday, April 17 – Do 1 Give (more information to follow)

Friday, April 19 – Good Friday (school is not in session)

Monday, April 22 – Easter Monday (school is not in session)

Wednesday,  April 24 – Student Led Conferences (early dismissal at 2 pm)

Friday, April 26 – Ridgeview’s Family FundRaiser (more information to follow)

We know it’s not much to look at but here is the first harbinger of Spring to come. Those poor crocuses appeared before the snows of last week. Talk about resilience in the face of all kinds of adversity….The children were charmed by the snow showers that fell and insisted on a quick runaround on the blacktop for an end-of-winter-thrill.

It’s been another power packed week full of activity in the Kindergarten, not the least of which was the three birthdays in Division 16, Buddies and a concert put on WVSS Concert Band and Concert Choir!  

We are galloping along the Alphabet trail and made these wonderful little “t is a tree” with paper squares and sparkling sequin berries.  The children’s brainstorming for T has become quite sophisticated.

We’re always changing up our Math Rotations activities for the children.  Currently, we’re focusing on sets 5-9, with an emphasis on number 6 this past week.  Besides creating sets (treasure boxes) and matching numerals to sets (Math Their Way Workjobs red game boxes), the children have been using rolling dice to record number formations with bingo marker towers and double-sided bean counters for more work on hierarchical inclusion.  

Hierarchical inclusion means understanding how do numbers relate to each other (that a number contains all of the previous numbers).  While using their double-sided bean counters, the children are learning about various combinations to 6. They are always so surprised each time they “spill” the beans to find that the two numbers make 6.  So in this fun, play based activity, our children are learning that 6 and 0, 1 and 5, 2 and 4 and 3 and 3 all relate to each in that their “spilled” combination (no matter what the order) always adds up to 6.

We made our monthly Self-Portraits for March on these cutie penguin backgrounds.

Friday morning saw the West Vancouver Secondary Concert Band, conducted by Mr. Justin Ratzburg, and the Concert Choir, under the direction of Mrs. Suzanne Fulton, arrive at our gym for a fantastic concert.  Ridgeview students can join our school band program in Grade 6 and 7; from there, they can register for Concert Band in Grade 8. Starting in Grade 9, WVSS offers programs in Orchestra, Jazz Band, Rock Band or students may continue in Concert Band.  

Currently, Ridgeview students are involved in singing programs at the school.  Upon registering at for Grade 8, WVSS students can join the Concert Choir without any prior experience, audition for the Chamber Choir or audition for the West Vancouver Honour Choirs which represent our entire school district.  

We rounded out our week with a second digital literacy session with our Big Buddies. We have now progressed to using the app Book Creator to record our research. Each Buddy pair is creating a digital book with a title page and dedication, individual pages for different aspects of penguin (habitat, appearance, young, food) and voice-overs. These will be ready for your viewing at Student-Led Conferences on Wednesday, April 26. Please save this date on your calendar. We will have an early dismissal at 2 pm and you and your child will return to school for your appointed conference time.

As you know from the first Report Card, we include a Self-Reflection of the children’s learning for each Term.  They did a wonderful job of really thinking about what was important for them in Kindergarten this Spring….

…and an even better job of representing their learning!  How cute is that?

Reminders and Upcoming Events

Please return all Library Books.  We will not be taking out new books for Spring Break to allow Mrs. Kennedy to do some inventory.

Early dismissal at 2pm on Friday, March 15th. Report cards will also be sent home that day.

We’re almost done with the snow.  It’s melting away and we noticed the first of the spring bulbs starting to appear in our home and school gardens.  It’s a welcome relief after this long spell of cold weather, snow boots, mittens and toques.

We were so happy to have a full week of school — really, nobody is more relieved than the teachers as there is always SO MUCH going on in the Kindergarten.

We’re officially over the hump of the alphabet – this week was “S” and our craft was “s is a snake.”  These are totally adorable and will make a welcome addition to your alphabet wall at home.

We’ve made it halfway through our numeracy stations.  We’ve been working on the number 5 (tricky to print, no doubt about it) and playing with 5 and 10 frames.  We’ve been rolling the dice, as it were, to create numbers to 10 using double sided counters for each number.  It’s a great way to teach our children dot pattern recognition and subitizing (the dice), building sets to 10 and part-whole relationships (the number of objects remains the same even they they are arranged spatially).

In Social Studies we’ve continued talking about our Families and the number of people in our families.  We read The Family Book by Todd Parr and the children created this graph:

Thank you to everyone for dressing up in pink on February 27 to promote Anti-Bullying Awareness, or as we like to say, prosocial behaviour so our children understand the importance of empathy and compassion and the ways in which they treat one another. Some of those familiar sayings such as “Treat others as you wish to be treated” and “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all” may seem trite but their meaning is just as powerful as it was 50-60 years ago. Right now, phrases we’re using often are “Helpful hands, not hurting hands” and asking “Is that a helpful comment or a hurtful comment” to delineate at a simple level the difference for our children.

As we mentioned in Remind this week, it was a double-header of the best kind– Big Buddies and a Popcorn Sale!  We saw our Big Buddies this week to conclude our research on the penguin (habitat, appearance, food, young, characteristics) and began using the app Book Creator to record our research and insert photos from the internet. Thank you so much to our BFF and West Vancouver District Innovation Teacher (Technology), Ms. Cari Wilson for assisting us with our annual digital literacy project. You’ll be able to view this amazing digital books at Student-Led Conferences in April.

We’ve been having a lot of fun with Sharing this term.  The collections have been so much fun, from small cars to rocks, Pokemon to Paw Patrol, stuffed animals to LEGO figures.  This will be the last round of Sharing before Spring Break. We will start a new theme when we return.

Upcoming Events and Reminders

Library Book Exchange for both classes on Monday.  We have had many browsers lately so please help to remind your child to put their library book into their backpacks Sunday night.

We will be back to the gym this week to continue our work with small equipment and the physical literacy skills of running, hopping, throwing, and kicking.  Please wear runners for our gym days (Tuesdays and Thursdays)

March Scholastic Orders went home this week.  Order forms are due next Friday, March 8th.

If you are leaving early  or arriving back later from Spring Break please let us know so we can let the office know about the upcoming absences.