What a marvelous opportunity our children have had this week with the production of “Simba’s Story,” written specifically for Ridgeview’s Primary classes to accompany our Broadway version of “The Lion King Jr.” for our Intermediate Students.

The musical was our main focus this week with two matinee performances.  We are so very proud of our Kindergarten performers who sang and danced as young Simba lion cubs.  Their costumes were so cute. Thank you to our parent helpers for the preparation of the crowns and t-shirts.  And thank you to so many parents who took the time off work to come and see this special event. Your child’s smiles were all for you!

Our UBC Teacher Candidates have now completed Week 8 of their final practicums, and are teaching at 100%.  Christy and I are feeling a bit adrift, as you can imagine, but we are expected to provide the same opportunities we had as student teachers many years ago – to take full responsibility of the classroom instruction and duties while under the watchful eye of School and Faculty Advisors.  It’s part of our responsibilities as professional educators. It is only through this practical classroom work that student teachers really come to understand what is involved in being a teacher – and a Kindergarten teacher, at that. Our teaching positions are a bit trickier because not only do we have to have the same training in classroom management, lesson planning and preparation, lesson delivery, curricular subject areas, formative and summative assessment as other classroom teachers, but we have the added layer of Learning Through Play, and our specialty area of Self-Regulation.  

We have kept the classroom homefires burning with some very fun work in Fairy Tales.This week the children are learning more about Setting, one of the four elements of a story.  Our TC’s chose “Hansel and Gretel” and a very fun journey activity following glass pebbles from their classrooms, through the forest to a discovery of leaves (the woods), a gingerbread house (witch’s house) and water (crossing the river back to home).  The children are gaining an understanding how the setting of a story can affect the story characters’ actions and what happens (plot).

Our bean plants have begun sprouting and the warm weather has contributed to some super fast growth!  

Upcoming Events and Reminders

Monday: Library Book Exchange and Home Reading Book Exchange

Tuesday: PE for both Kindergarten classes – please wear runners as we will be in the gym

Thursday: Welcome to Kindergarten for the incoming Kindergarten children 2019-2020

Friday, June 7:  Sports Day

Division 15 (Mrs. Campbell)  is wearing red

Division 16 (Mrs. Daudlin)  is wearing blue

Just a few quick notes from last week and info for this upcoming week…

We hope all of the lovely Special Ladies in our Life enjoyed their gorgeous paintings and thoughtful cards.  We were so pleased with the children’s effort and thoughts of you as they prepared their specific gifts.

In Fairy Tales our children explored “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” and explored the sequence of events and retelling the story.

The children started Measurement this week.  They are learning about measuring length with non-standard units and the concept of longer and shorter.  They also discovered the importance of measuring from the same starting point for both objects when making a comparison.

We will be rehearsing “Simba’s Story” in the gym this week in preparation for next week’s Big Show!

We had fun seeing our Big Buddies on Friday to make bean markers for the bean plants we will plant.

The Grade Two students from Mrs. Bird’s class have started a Battery Recycling cycling program.  The box for the battery collection is outside Mrs. Daudlin’s classroom on the shelf to the left of the door.  For Mrs. Campbell’s class it’s in the classroom by the meeting area.

Upcoming Events and Reminders

A reminder from the Ridgeview office: if your child arrives after O Canada, it is likely that we have already taken attendance and your child is marked late.  You must sign-in at the office.

If you take your child out early for an appointment, please go to the office FIRST to sign-up out your child, and then come down to pick him or her up from the classroom.

PE will take place outside for the next two weeks as students are rehearsing for “The Lion King” and “Simba’s Story” in the gym.

Monday and Wednesday are Home Reading Book Exchange days next week.  We’ve been listening to our children read their books in class and making adjustments as necessary.

Please remember to send your children dressed in their dark bottoms for Thursday’s “Simba’s Story” dress rehearsal for the Intermediate students.  We will remind you on Wednesday.

Thursday, May 16:  “Simba’s Story” dress rehearsal – dark bottoms required!

Friday, May 17: Professional Development Day (school is not in session)

Monday, May 20:  Victoria Day holiday (school is not in session)

Wednesday, May 22:  “Simba’s Story” presentation – even Division parents form our audience

Thursday, May 23:  “Simba’s Story” presentation – odd Division parents form our audience

This week was very significant as we finished our Alphabet Book with the letter Z.  Imagine that our children have been working diligently on a page a week – they are real experts in where to print their name for written work, printing uppercase and lowercase letters on a line, finger spacing, following directed line drawings and labelling their pictures so the reader understands their meaning.  We’ll need a couple of weeks to complete pages that were missed due to absence; we will certainly try our best to finish everything but that may not be possible.  In this event, your child knows exactly the routine we use at school and can finish up at home.

We’re starting Fairy Tales during Literacy Time.  It’s one of our absolutely favourite integrated learning experiences for the children.  Under our watchful eye, our UBC Teacher Candidates will be teaching many different Fairy Tales, the structure of stories (beginning, middle, end) and the elements of a story (plot, character, setting, theme) with the Kindergarten.  The children will hear different versions of the same story to compare and contrast, complete a variety of written response activities, experience lots of oral storytelling and make some fun crafts so they can retell the stories themselves at school, and then at home.  The first story this week was “The Three Little Pigs.”  The literary focus was on beginning, middle and end; the children made Wolf puppets during Art and Piggie stick puppets with our Big Buddies.  

Our UBC Teacher Candidates (TCs) finished up their teaching of Geometry in Math.  The children learned about the basic two dimensional shapes (circle, square, rectangle and triangle) and their corresponding three dimensional figures.  The unit culminated this week with some fun shape pizzas!

We made our beautiful May self-portraits this week with a cute and colourful ruffle.  We’re so pleased to see how the children have improved in using line, shape and colour in their artwork.

Could Friday have been any busier?  It certainly stretched mine and Christy’s self-regulation but as always, the children go with the flow and were very flexible throughout the day as we needed to be.  

The day had no sooner begun with Centres then we were called outside for our class photos, and very cute and charming we were.

After recess on Friday is always busy with our Big Buddies, but the Grade Sevens got called to their classes photos in the middle of our Buddy Time!

Just when we thought we would settle in for a relaxing Friday afternoon, we were called to the playground one more time for the Ridgeview panorama photo.  We won’t try to explain what it’s like to organise approximately 390 students for a photo (with the Grade 7s at the top of the climbing net) but let’s just say…we can do it once a year.

The second part of the afternoon was great fun with a Forest Friday lesson.  Our TCs are observed weekly by their UBC Faculty Advisor (FA) and they proposed to show her a team teaching lesson where all the Kindergarten children were divided into three groups.  Each group completed a trio of forest activities – bark rubbings, nature colour matching and a drawing of a natural object.  The lesson was a huge success, the children were so happy to be moving and learning outdoors and it was all capped off with a Freezie (we took the gigantic Freezies from the Freezie sale and cut them in half and we will eat the other half this coming Friday–if nothing else, Christy and I are very thrifty).

The staging for the The Lion King” and “Simba’s Story” comes to the gym this week so PE classes will be moved outside for the time being.  We will be rehearsing in the gym during our Music classes, and for any additional rehearsals where are presence is requested.

We’ve had a re-think about our costumes for “Simba’s Story” and rather than our “best,” we’re thinking about dark bottoms and coloured t-shirts.  We’re going to leave it to you to locate the dark bottoms (no jeans, but navy or black) and girls may wear leggings instead of pants.

We are considering a lion cub headdress but we will get back to you on this later in the week.   Please check your Remind texts.  For the moment, you do not have to purchase anything.

Upcoming Events and Reminders

You have another week or so to get your Grade One School Supply order completed.

We’re still accepting April Homework Calendars for a sticker!

May Scholastic Orders are due this week on Friday, May 10.

Library Books should be returned tomorrow for our weekly Library Book Exchange.