It’s been a power packed week of activity in the Kindergarten.

So it’s pretty clear we’re having a great time finding new ideas for our alphabet crafts. The children were so happy with their “o is an octopus” last week and were tickled pink with their “p is a pig” this week. As we head into the latter half of the Alphabet, the children are using familiar strokes to print the letters so we’ve noticed a nice uptick in the consistency of correct formation of lowercase letters. We’re continuing to focus on size and spacing of letters, and an uppercase letter followed by lowercase letters for names.

Monday was a joyous celebration for the Year of the Rooster. The children came dressed in red (for good luck) with several students wearing traditional Chinese clothing. We started our day by welcoming each child with “Gung Hay Fat Choy” (I grew up with Cantonese speaking parents but I regret my own Chinese is very, very limited) during the daily attendance and were delighted at how every child tried to repeat the greeting back to the teachers, and so warmed our hearts.

Over the years we’ve amassed some very fun crafts and Centres for our children, including banners with beautiful Chinese symbols, tangram puzzles, a colourful dragon and lucky money envelopes.

A homemade dragon constructed by Jacob and Benjamin

We read a traditional favourite of ours, Ed Yeung’s Lon Po Po, a Chinese version of “Little Red Riding Hood” which fascinated the children with its twists and turns. The children gloried in representing the story in pastels with a watercolour wash. We’ve cut the watercolour paintings into panels, a Chinese art form. We’re beginning to use pastels more often as we recently learned at a webinar by Patty Palmer of Deep Space Sparkle, that pastels and crayons are actually better colouring tools than felt pens for young hands as they give the range of depth of colour and texture the children are trying to achieve.

Finally, we ate a delicious Chinese “banquet” provided by our classroom parents. The children enjoyed the Chinese noodles (they emptied a huge pan) and fried rice; many tried the dumplings, eggrolls and meatballs and everyone ate the oranges and fortune cookies. Juice and fresh fruit rounded out our meal. All the children took home a “lucky money” red envelope filled with candy. We wish everyone a happy, healthy and prosperous new year!

As many of you know, we had our lockdown drill this week. This is an important procedure for the school, particularly the Kindergarten if it’s the first time they’ve been through a lockdown. We’re practising for what we would do if there was an intruder in our building. Our classroom doors are locked from the hallway side and the lights are turned off. The children sit against a designated wall and are asked to stay quiet until we are released when the West Vancouver Police Officers open our classroom door to find us.

We are proud to say the Kindergarten was very self-regulated and extremely calm during the entire lockdown. We explained to the children what to expect (listen carefully to the teacher; stay quiet in your spot and breathe deeply to keep your body relaxed; there will be a loud knock at the door and the police will come in; the teacher is here to look after you and will let you know when you can talk). And they followed our instructions perfectly. The police officers were so pleased with how quiet we were and said so several times. This reminds us again the importance of pre-loading our children with the information or knowledge they need to know before they try something new. When we are clear and make explicit our expectations our children are able to respond appropriately.

As if all this wasn’t enough, we still had Library, Music, PE and met with our Buddies to continue researching for our digital literacy projects. Your Kindergarten child has been been playing and learning very hard this week so time to rest this weekend is very much in order.

Upcoming Events and Reminders
Save the Date: We’re going to have a small Valentine’s Day Party in class. The children will make Valentine cardholders with their Buddies next Wednesday. They can bring their Valentine cards for their classmates on Thursday, Friday and the following Tuesday. We will help them put the cards in the cardholders, which the children will bring home and open with you afterschool.

So there are no hurt feelings, when you are printing the cards with your child please remember to give Valentine’s to all the boys or all the girls or everyone. We will send home a class list of first names next week.

Children will need their running shoes for PE and Library Book Exchange is Tuesday. Please help your child by reminding them to bring the Library Books into the classroom; do not leave them in their backpacks. We have a book bin in the classroom to collect the books.

It’s Reading Break on Friday, February 10 and school is not in session. School is also closed on Monday, February 13 as it’s BC’s Family Day. Enjoy your long weekend!

The February Scholastic order forms went home this week. Please return any orders by Thursday, February 9th.

We had a full week of activity as we near the half way point of Kindergarten…we know!  And we’re just as amazed to find ourselves in the middle of the school year with our sweethearts.  Where has the time gone?  We’ve already started the January birthdays, another indicator that the children are growing up quickly.

We’ve been busy with our Alphabet, and we finished “o is an octopus” on Friday.  We’re working hard on learning and practising the letter names and sounds.  During your nightly read alouds, you can focus on the letter of the week by looking for words beginning with that letter on each page; point out words you see in the environment or make a small collection of 5-10 items you have at home to grow your child’s vocabulary.

One of the most important things we can all do as adults is model our own love of reading, literature and the written language.  Something fun for your children would be to read aloud your childhood books to them, if you have not already done so.  We have brought many of our own children’s books to read aloud to our classes.  They love to hear the dedications and know how old our kids were at the time they received the book.  It’s fun for us, too, to revisit well-loved favourites

In the Library, Mrs. Kennedy read aloud the beautiful, My Heart Fills with the Happiness, by Monique Gray Smith and illustrated by Julie Flett, and then the children shared some of their ideas of happiness…

One of things we’ve noticed about lunch this term is that pizza is a very, very popular choice for our little eaters!  Lots of children are bringing pizza from home and we’ve also had thumbs up for the Hot Lunch Pizza which is from the Rocky Mountain Flatbread Company.  So if you’re looking for an idea for a special once a week treat, this might be something worth considering.

In Social Studies, we finished our last lesson on Personal Identity with talking about our feelings.  We chose the book Wemberly Worried by Kevin Henkes to share with the class.  Poor Wemberly worries about EVERYTHING and Mom, Dad and Grandma try to encourage her “take it as it comes.”  We know our Kindergarten share the same concerns…who will they play with today?  Will they like their lunch?  Will they be the last one to be picked up at home time?  These are very real concerns for our children.  We talked about other words for worried, such as anxious and nervous and what might be the opposite feeling we can find in ourselves by taking a few deep breaths to calm down the amygdala and clear our mind…confident, brave, peaceful.  

At the end of the lesson, when we talked about how they were feeling today, almost all the children felt “happy.”  We think we probably have the most fabulous professional ever…who else gets to be in their workplace surrounded by “happy” all day long?  Our next unit in Social Studies is “Family.”  Thank you for sending in your gorgeous family photos for Sharing.

Chinese New Year officially began on Saturday, January 28, but we will have a small celebration on Monday this week with some fun Centres and Chinese food “tasting,” thanks to classroom parents.  We got a head start by working on our dragon masks to decorate our rooms.  We sent home a Remind last week that if you have something red to wear, please do so.  We can never have too much good luck!

Upcoming Events and Reminders

Monday – Chinese New Year Celebration in class

                   PE in Division 15 and 16 so please wear runners to school

Tuesday – Library Book Exchange and Music for both classes

Wednesday – School-wide Lockdown drill

                          PE in Division 16

Thursday – PE in Division 15

Valentine’s Day is fast approaching… we will be sending out information about our class celebrations in the next week or two. Stay tuned….

We’re continuing to update our weekly Alphabet Crafts and this week’s cutie is “N is the Night Sky.”  We love it and the children love it as well.  Thanks again to Pinterest and Christy for modifying this project to make it perfect for those sweet Kindergarten hands.  Stayed tuned for our adorable letter “O” craft!

The children found “n” an easy letter to print, having just completed “m” last week.  We’re really nudging the children along to print their names starting with an uppercase letter followed by the lowercase letters we’ve taught so far (a-n).  It’s really exciting to watch them printing their names so carefully.  When you’re printing at home, please watch your child’s letter formation – we typically go from top to bottom, left to right, when printing our letters.  We’re trying to discourage them from printing from the bottom to the top – to gain speed while printing, and staying neat, is going to require some mindfulness to form letters correctly.

Our big excitement this week was the introduction of the Mystery Box Inquiry.  We’re teaching the children to ask questions.  What better way than by hiding an object connected to our theme or Big Idea in the Mystery Box, and having the children ask us questions so they can make a logical guess about what’s inside?  Although they do make many guesses, we’re re-framing those guesses into questions (eg., is it a blue jay? Reframed to “What kind of bird is inside?”) to teach them the 5W question words (Who, What, When, Where, Why, How).  For more on our teaching of Mystery Box Inquiry, click here.

All of this mystery leads to our Digital Literacy project this year, which is the creation of iMovies with our Grade 7 Buddies.  Led by District Innovation Teacher (Elementary), Cari Wilson, and our Buddy teacher, Mr. Patterson, we will be researching penguins to collect data and images.  Ms. Wilson will visit our classrooms in about a month’s time to build the movies with us.

We have our Art favourite projects we like to do every year and our “Snowmen at Night” is really fun.  This project takes us 4-5 art classes to finish; it’s rewarding to observe the children’s patience as they finish each step yet anticipate the next one…excellent self-regulation.

We start by reading the delightful Snowmen at Night by Caralyn and Mark Buehner as an inspiration before drawing our own snowmen with pastels on light blue construction paper.  We love to use pastels with the Kindergarten.  The children are easily able to get bright, vibrant colour from pastels without having to press as hard as with crayons.

Once the children finish the drawing, they use one of our favourite craft supplies, Sparkle Mod Podge, to complete their snowman.  The children find Sparkle Mod Podge intriguing as they are painting with a glue that dries clear leaving a beautiful, sparkling finish.

Next, they paint a snowy background on a dark blue background. While it dries, they cut out their snowmen and we support any child who has difficulty negotiating around the stick arms.  Finally, snowmen and snowy backgrounds are glued together — another wonderful example of an Art and Literature integration, perfect for Kindergarten.

Upcoming Events and Reminders

We hope the rainy season is done for now.  We’re wondering if the snow, sunshine and cold weather was a better option than the rain?  Regardless, we’ve gone from snow boots to rain boots, swapped ski jackets for rain coats and many children are continuing to wear gloves and mittens.  It’s still quite chilly when they are outside during the morning recess.  We mentioned last week in our Remind texts to please send along extra socks.  We’re not sure how they do it, but puddle water seems to just jump into those playful little boots and we all know how uncomfortable wet socks can be!

Please ensure the indoor shoes you’re sending to school are runners.  We need those for PE and children are not allowed to wear shoes that may mark our gym floor.

We’re back to our schedule and LIbrary will be on Tuesday this week so please remember to return your Library books on Monday or Tuesday.

We had so much fun this week making our “m is a mouse” alphabet craft. Aren’t they cute? Thanks to Pinterest for this great idea and Christy for modifying it so our Kindergarten could make them. While these may look simple, our aim for the alphabet crafts is to create activities that have multi-step instructions (putting our listening skills to work), specific art skills and processes (using a template to cut out the ears), a variety of art materials (paper, googly eyes, pompoms) and tools (scissors, gluestick). People who know us well know that Christy and I love crafting and creating and have been doing so for many years. What a pleasure it is to be able to share our passion with our students! Creating by hand, whether it be crafts, cooking and baking, carpentry or woodwork, brings an immense sense of satisfaction, and feelings of accomplishment and self-confidence in knowing that you can do it yourself. What better grade than Kindergarten to start developing a positive self-image?

At Monday’s cultural event, hoop dancer Teddy Anderson performed for our school. Teddy talked about the importance of seeing all people as a family as part of one world. We can appreciate one another as individuals and each of us bring our own unique gifts to our collective group. That understanding is part of our own classroom culture, where we have really tried to emphasise with our students that we, and the children, are a family. We love one another, we work together; we might not always agree, but as a family, we expect ourselves to be willing to work through issues and come out stronger on the other side.

We’re beginning our next unit of instruction on number sense, including counting and one-to-one correspondence, subitizing (recognising quantities of 6 or less without counting eg., dice and domino patterns) and number conservation (eg., 2 and 4 is 6; 3 and 3 is 6; 6 is 6 no matter what the arrangement). We’ve organised the children into small groups and are moving them through a centre rotation so they have a variety of math experiences focusing on a specific number.

We started our Winter theme with a true classic, The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. We’ve done some brainstorming on What is Winter? and made our sparkling snowglobes to decorate our classroom and hallway.

We’re just loving the family photos the children have been bringing in for their Special Helper and Sharing Day. Thank you so much for supporting your child by helping them to get organised. Everyone loves to hear about the three favourite activities in each family. So far, most of us all love to go to the park, swimming and out to eat or get hot chocolate with our family. We’re posting the family pictures in our classrooms for now and we will return them at the end of the term.

Upcoming Events and Reminders
Please remember to have runners at school for PE days. We must wear runners in the gym.

Our Grade 2 students have initiated a Battery Recycling program here at Ridgeview. We want to remind everyone that you can send your old batteries and small electronics to school. We have a special collection box for them (in the hallway for Mrs. Daudlin; for Mrs. Campbell inside the classroom). Grade 2 students will come by regularly to empty the box. Special thanks to Colin and Colten who will be collecting for Division 16 and Emma and Elika who are collecting for Division 15.

Tuesday, January 17: Library Book Exchange
Friday, January 20: Professional Day (students are not in session)

image from google

Happy New Year and welcome back to school! We hope you had a wonderful and relaxing holiday with friends and family. This past Christmas was certainly a transitional one for my family as my daughter had University exams for the first term in December, and my son performed in his last Christmas Concert as a high school student. Although there will be more exams and different musical performances in the future, it is bittersweet to see one’s own children so independent (yes, we do want them to become independent and spend most of childhood working towards it) and knowing we are in for years of change as they emerge as young adults. As parents we will forever be adjusting and changing as our children grow up. So we encourage you to treasure this very precious time while your children are still young, filled with wonder and curiosity and the magic we know as Kindergarten.

We started our return to school gently, taking some time to quietly review our classroom expectations and rules. After two weeks of spending time in our pyjamas, grazing rather than a regular meal schedule, and a lack of routines while in the holiday mode, it can be hard for students (and teachers) to readjust to the structure of their classroom. Talking about how we play together cooperatively, the volume of our collective voices in the classroom and following the group plan instead of our own plan are an essential part of getting along so harmony and peace can reign throughout the kingdom.

We’ve been a little tired, but still managed to accomplish a lot this week. We worked on the letter “L,” and made our “l is a letter” craft.

We were totally impressed with the children’s January self-portraits. The children did an amazing job drawing themselves in their winter outdoor clothes. When we look back to their self-portraits from September to where they are now, we can see the maturity as their fine motor skills have become more refined.

Mrs. Kennedy read these two fantastic books to us during Library Time.

Our big news has been the snow, of course. Many children have become very accomplished over the holidays with the speed at which they are able to independently get themselves ready. Our saying is “coat, boots, gloves” so they can still do up their coat zippers with their hands before putting on their gloves or mittens. We are expecting these cold temperatures to continue so consider getting a pair of waterproof snow gloves or mittens. The children really want to play in the snow, make snowballs and pick up pieces of ice. If your child is mostly playing on the play structure or on the swings, wool gloves are just fine. We’re reminding everyone to keep their gloves in their backpacks, although many enjoy drying their toques and gloves on the classroom heaters so they are warm and toasty for the next outing.
Upcoming Events and Reminders
We’ve started our new rotation for Sharing and Special Helper. Our theme this month is “Family.” We would like each child to bring a recent photo of their family on their Special Helper Day and a piece of paper with your family’s three favourite activities of what you like to do together. Please also note all family members’ names for us. Our focus in Social Studies this term is Family and we are launching our unit of instruction by getting to know all of our classroom families a little bit better.

Now that the gym is cleared of the stage, we can go back to having PE. Mrs. Campbell’s and Mrs. Zambon’s class have PE on Mondays and Thursdays; and Mrs. Daudlin’s class has PE on Mondays and Wednesdays. The children should have the runners at school on these days. They cannot really participate in running activities with boots or dress shoes.

Monday, January 9: Cultural Event with Teddy Anderson, Hoop Dancer
Tuesday, January 10: Library Book Exchange

Hot lunch for this term can now be purchased through Munch-a-Lunch.

We’re having a Professional Day on Friday, June 20. Students are not in session.

We finished up the letter “k is for kick” in our Alphabet work this week.  We made it almost halfway through the Alphabet so we are well on target to finish teaching all of the letter names, letter sounds and letter formation shortly after Spring Break in March.

All of the Kindergarten participated in the Reindeer Games on Wednesday this week.  For the first time, Mrs. Campbell and I put all the children together in one classroom, and we spread over into the hallway and English Language Learning room.  We worked in small groups with children from both classes.  We’re so used to the rotations from Math Centres that transitions between the five activities went very smoothly.  The children’s self-regulation was excellent, considering some of them had stayed up late the previous evening making gingerbread houses.  Your child will have brought home everything they made over the past few days.  Thank you so very much to all the parents who came in to help us with our Christmas Centres.

We made Reindeer Gift bags to hold all of our treasures, particularly the sequin marshmallow deocration we made a few weeks ago with our Big Buddies.  We followed the recipe for Reindeer Food to feed the reindeer on Christmas Even, made a Christmas Reindeer placemat, did our best colouring in our Christmas activity books and cut out shapes with Christmas playdough.

Speaking of Gingerbread Houses, thank you to all the families who came out on Tuesday night to participate in our Second Annual Me to We Gingerbreadhouse Fundraiser.  As you know, our Grade 7 Me to We Team is fundraising to provide a Primary education (K-6) for a classroom of children in a developing country.  Families were able to purchase a gingerbread house kit, extra icing and candy.  The gingerbread house designs were fabulous, and no mess for you to clean up at home!  Our gym was filled with many happy children and families all working together.  We’re not just building gingerbread houses, we’re building a community.

Upcoming Events and Reminders

Today was the last day to return the Report Card Envelopes. If you have not returned yours yet, please hang on to it and your child can return it in January.  In an effort to reduce paper consumption, we want to recycle the envelopes for your child’s Second and Third Term Reports.

December Homework Calendars can be completed over the holidays and returned in January.  We sent home the January Homework Calendars on Friday.

Vancouver Coastal Health will be visiting the Kindergarten on Wednesday, January 4 for the children’s hearing and vision screening.  Please be on time for school as we start promptly at 9 am.

Our first day back to school following the Winter Break will be Tuesday, January 3, 2016.  There will be no Special Helper or Sharing for the first few days when we return.  Instead, we will all take turns until the new schedule is posted and we have finalised our theme.

We wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Enjoy this very special time with your child.  They are growing up very quickly and every day spent with them is precious.  We look forward to seeing you in January!

Our big focus this week was our school Christmas Concert.  Thank you to everyone for attending!  Our children worked very hard.  They had a lot of words to learn, actions to remember and how about all that fancy stepping up and down the stage?

As expected, our children felt the “post-performance” euphoria that accompanies performing on stage. But in addition of deep breathing, reading stories and listening to quiet music, we know that playing and crafting are two excellent activities to help channel all that energy in a positive way.

We brainstormed lots of Christmas vocabulary for our word wall.  We’re going to be colouring pictures and printing the labels in our Christmas word books.

We made these fun “k” kites for our letter of the week.

We had fun with our December self portraits…lots of cutting, lots of gluing, lots of colouring.

And our Reindeer feet…our beloved Grade 7 Buddies had helped us to trace our feet and trace and cut out our hands at previous Buddy times we so all we had to do was cut, make the features and glue.  

We’re still working hard on developing our repertoire of self-regulation strategies, and activities to help us self-regulate.  They might not all be as cute as these reindeer feet…they’ll probably be cuter.

Upcoming Events and Reminders

We reached another milestone this week as we are approaching independence as a class of Kindergarten children:  almost everybody can put on their own winter coats and snow boots by themselves.  Every time we go outside, or come back from playtime, it can take 10-15 minutes for us and the Grade 7 monitors to put on hoodie jackets, ski jackets, boots and gloves.  We go outside 2-3 times a day so you can imagine what the cloakroom looks like…”a clothing store,” was how one of the children so delicately put it.  When all the children can put on their coats, do up their zippers, get in and out of snow boots quickly and pull their gloves on, it shortens the amount of time to get ready.  Please encourage your child to get ready for school independently when you’re at home….practise makes perfect.

Temperatures will be very cold this week.  Please ensure your children have gloves or mittens and a hat if they will wear it.  A lot of children do not like to wear their jacket hoods as it blocks their peripheral vision.  You can support us by checking with your child and being sure they are prepared with the necessary winter clothes.

If your child does not have an extra change of clothes at school, we can’t think of a better time than now to send a bag of clothes along.  Many children get soaking wet when they are playing, coming down the slide or simply have a fall.  We want them to be comfortable and dry when they are in class.  It’s hard to concentrate on learning if your pants and socks are wet.

Our Second Annual Gingerbread House Event is on Tuesday evening, December 13 from 6-7 pm, in the gym  We hope to see you there!  We will be helping out in the kitchen filling icing cups for gingerbread house construction.  If you want to join in the fun, but have not yet signed up, please see Mrs. Lytle in the office.  This fundraising event is sponsored by the Me to We Team, to provide the necessary school fees for a Primary Education (K-6) for children in a developing country.

Please return your report card envelopes before the end of the week.

Friday, December 16, is the last day of school for the holidays.  Our school will be dismissing students at 2 pm.  School re-opens on Tuesday, January 3, 2017.