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.

Despite the rush of December excitement, we are still working hard on our Alphabet letters. Our letter of the week is “J” and we created our sparkling “j jewel.” We will send home the J printing and jewels next week; ‘K” will be the last letter we will work on before the holidays.

Our last story for our mini “Bears in Literature” theme was “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.” It was very heartwarming to see and hear so much familiarity with this beloved Fairy Tale. Fairy Tales are an important genre in a child’s literary background. There are many references to Fairy Tales and Fairy Tale characters in other books, including idioms and parodies. The children need a solid knowledge base of these very special stories to help them understand literary patterns; to make connections between new text they are reading with Fairy Tale references; and literary archetypes. We will be teaching a big literature unit on Fairy Tales in the spring; but in the meantime, we encourage you to pull out your childhood Fairy Tale books to share with your child.

We had a delightful Cultural Presentation, “Anne Glover: A World of String Art,” put on for us on Wednesday. Anne is a wonderful storyteller and showed us how she uses string to make many fanciful shapes. She shared with us her inspiration for creating string art, a fictional story and one of the stories of the African folktale character, “Anansi.”

We had two Christmas Concert Rehearsals this week and we are definitely looking very cute in our Christmas crowns. Many thanks to our mom helpers for coming in to make and size the crowns for us. Please remember this is the last weekend to help your child organise their “Christmas Best” clothing to wear on Tuesday (dress rehearsal and school performance for students only) and Wednesday (morning show, afternoon show) next week. The children will come to school in their fancy clothes both days and we will work hard to keep them clean for two days. Please pack “neat” food for both days – no spaghetti sauce, soups or anything that falls easily off a fork or spoon.

Girls: party dress; or top and skirt/pants; party shoes (no princess costumes)
Boys: white shirt, black pants; bowtie or necktie is optional; dress shoes

Our classrooms are almost decorated for the holidays. Christmas trees are lighted and adorned, the Advent calendar is filled with sweet treats and Christmas stuffed animals are out and around the room. But Christmas isn’t Christmas without lots of handmade craft projects. So this week we got out our felt pens and Christmas stickers to make these beautiful Angel and Christmas hangers. The children will bring theirs home for the holidays.

We got to see our Buddies twice this week because we had to get started on a very special Christmas craft. We’re using pins, sequins and marshmallows…can you guess? Our Buddies also helped us to trace our feet and hands to make some baby reindeer.

Our annual tradition of making Christmas Crackers with your generous donations of Hallowe’en candy was a huge success! We got together with our Grade 7 Buddies and made many beautiful crackers. The children worked hard to stuff the paper rolls with candy and wrapped them with festive paper and ribbons.

Upcoming Events and Reminders

Monday, December 5 is a Professional Day. Students are not in session.

Tuesday, December 6 is a Dress Rehearsal and School Performance for students only. Students must wear their “Christmas Best” clothing. Crowns will remain at school.

Wednesday, December 7 is our Christmas Concert with two shows. If your child is in Mrs. Campbell’s and Mrs. Zambon’s class, parents will attend the 11am concert. If your child is in Mrs. Daudlin’s class parents will attend the 1:10pm show. The children will be performing in both shows but parents are invited for only one.

Thursday, December 8….we rest…and play.

Friday, December 9, first term report cards will be distributed. If your child will be away on holidays and not at school their report will be given to them when we return to school in January.

Gingerbread House Making Family event. Ridgeview’s Me to We Team’s Annual Gingerbread House Night will take place on Tuesday, December 13th from 6:00 – 7:00 pm, in the Ridgeview Gym! Each house kit (which includes some icing and candy) costs $10.00. Extra icing can be purchased for $1.00 and extra candy for $2.00. All profits go to the Me to We team’s efforts to support education in a developing country. Please purchase your house and extra supplies on our new School Cash Online purchasing site. Supplies are limited, so order soon! Ordering will close next Friday, December 9th.

We’ve been away from our website for a bit because we’ve been writing our report cards for Communicating Student Learning.  But we’re done now, so we’re back with more fun news about the activities in our classrooms this week.

We’ve kept a steady pace on our Alphabet Letters.  This week we learned about the correct formation for the letter “i” in upper and lowercase printing.  We’ve been working diligently on our letter recognition and sounds.  If you’re looking for more ideas about how to help at home, here are a few suggestions:

• we’ve worked on letters “a” through “i.”  When you’re reading a story, take a moment to ask your child to identify the letter of the week in different words on a page
• at the end of the story, go back and find words that begin with the letter of the week
• trace the words with your finger so your child sees that we read from left to right, top to bottom
• as you’re out and about, read the environmental print with your child and have them pick out one or two words and identify the letters

We saw our Grade 7 Buddies to write our Letters to Santa.  We’re very excited thinking about what Santa might bring us for Christmas this year!

We’ve been working on our mini-bear unit, with another familiar story, Corduroy by Don Freeman. Our focus in this story and next week’s “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” is story structure.  We’re looking at, and using the words, “beginning, middle, end” for what happens at the beginning of the story (introduction), in the middle (plot) and at the end (conclusion).  We’re asking the children directly “What happens in the beginning/middle/end?” and having them orally summarise what they remember and understand.  This knowledge of story structure will form a foundation for when we study Fairy Tales in the spring.  

We made cute Corduroy bears as our craft.

Buttons were a big focus as in the story, Corduroy has lost a button from his suspenders.  We sorted buttons according to several sorting rules and made many different patterns.  

Important Events and Reminders

Gingerbread House Event:  On Tuesday, December 14, 2016 is Ridgeview’s annual Gingerbread House Family Event.  All proceeds from the is event will go to the Me to We initiative.  Please check the weekly e-bulletin for information on how to purchase the houses.

Christmas Concert:  Our Christmas concert performances will take place on Wednesday, December 7 at 11am for odd divisions and 1:10pm for even divisions.  Please remember to start preparing your child’s costume.  Kindergarten children will wear their Christmas best.  

Girls: Party Dresses; Party Skirt or Pants and Top; Party Shoes

Boys: Dark Pants; White Shirt; Tie or Bowtie optional; Dress Shoes (preferably no runners)

We’re talking about daily and seasonal changes in class and reading some beloved books about Autumn:

In November by Cynthia Rylant (illustrated by Jill Kastner)

Fletcher and the Falling Leaves by Julia Rawlinson (illustrated by Tiphanie Beeke)

Time to Sleep by Denise Fleming

All of these books are beautifully written and illustrated, and provide excellent examples in literary form about one of the Big ideas for Kindergarten Science, “Daily and seasonal changes affect all living things.”

Our classes have noticed how the clothes they are wearing have changed (t-shirts, shorts and flip-flops in the summer; to pants and long sleeved shirts in the fall; to bringing warmer coats, hats and needing gloves with the cold weather burst we had this week).

The children have observed the leaves on the ground, wet puddles everywhere and how they can make their runners squeak on the hallway floors after playing outside on the wet soft surface of the playground.  They are collecting huge piles of leaves in beautiful reds and gold from the playground to save to play with when we return outside later in the day.

We’ve talked a lot about migration and this week, introduced the concept of hibernation.  We’re integrating our inquiry of seasonal changes with a mini literary unit on “Bears in Literature,” so Time to Sleep was a perfect segue.  Time to Sleep tells the delightful story of Bear and her friends, each one noticing the changes in their environment, and how they are clues to go to sleep, or hibernate.

• The smell of winter is in the air
• Leaves are changing colour and falling to the ground
• Birds begin their migration to warmer places
• The days are getting shorter
• Frost appears on the ground

The children were able to identify the patterns in the story (excellent application of their knowledge from creating, copying and extending patterns in Math) and then re-create it in their individual work.

We completed our study on Time to Sleep by making these cutie hibernating bears with our Big Buddies.

Upcoming Events and Reminders

Library Book Exchange on Tuesday.  Please have your child return their library book on Mondays as part of developing good habits to complete assignments early.  We’ve had quite a number of children forget their book on Tuesday and it’s so disappointing for them.  By returning library books earlier, it gives everybody one day’s grace to bring it in on Tuesday.

Sharing and Special Helper.  The children are delighted to have their Special Helper and Sharing turn each month.  It’s important to note this is a Special Helper and Sharing turn.  Most children are able to perform the Special Helper responsibilities independently, or with minimal support.  But at 5 years old, it’s difficult for them to organise their Sharing on their own.  Please check the Sharing and Special Heper calendar and make note of when your child has his or her turn, help them to gather their Sharing items and have a little practise at home.  Feel free to send some information on a piece of paper so we can prompt your child when he or she is presenting.

Christmas Cracker Project. Our Christmas cracker project is fast approaching.  We are collecting paper free toilet paper rolls, new Christmas wrap and ribbon for this project.  Please send in these supplies if you have some at home this week.  We will be making the crackers with our Big Buddies the week of November 28-December 2.  

We honoured Remembrance Day with a Remembrance Day Assembly at our school on Thursday. Led by our Grade 7 Assembly Committee, many classes gave presentations, including singing, reading poetry and explaining the history of the poppy. We learned about the Highway of Heroes, which was established to remember the Canadian servicemen and servicewomen from CFB Trenton who died while serving their country.

Sometimes people might think our Kindergarten children are too young to participate in a Remembrance Day Assembly. But actually, we believe they are at the right age. They take from the Assembly what they are able to understand, and for some of them, it’s a great deal. Many children have older brothers and sisters who were participating in the class presentations, we’ve been reading stories to give a context for learning; and we have made our focus on what peace means to each one of us.

We started off by brainstorming what peace means. We liked these ideas which were shared by a couple of students:

Peace is all peoples’ different ways of doing things.
Everybody is different and has different ways.

Then inspired by The Peace Book by Todd Parr, we’ve created this poem for you by your children, as they remember Remembrance Day.

Peace Is….
Peace is singing O Canada.
Peace is looking at a rainbow.
Peace is a Hawaii sunset.
Peace is giving flowers to my mom.
Peace is looking into Barsa’s eyes.
Peace is hugging my whole family.
Peace is looking at the stars.
Peace is relaxing with my family.
Peace is my mom and dad are different.
Peace is being on a boat.
Peace is being calm.
Peace is listening to quiet music.
Peace is my mom taking care of me.
Peace is running for Terry Fox.
Peace is playing kindly and sharing.
Peace is playing the piano.
Peace is helping others.
Peace is loving your pets.
Peace is hugging your family.
Peace is cuddling with a blanket.
Peace is enjoying nature.

Upcoming Events and Reminders

Friday, November 11 is Remembrance Day and School is not in session.

Monday, November 14 is a District-wide Professional Development Day and school is not in session.

The card project samples went home this week. If you are interested in purchasing cards orders are due by Sunday, November 13 for delivery November 28. Later orders will be delivered by December 13.

We are still collecting Hallowe’en candy for our Christmas Cracker Project. We are also now collecting toilet paper rolls (the rolls must be clear of paper and paper debris) and rolls of new wrapping paper and ribbon for the project. A sample of what is needed will be posted on the classroom parent boards.

The Scholastic Book Fair is coming to Ridgeview from Monday, November 28, 2016 – Thursday, December 1, 2016. The book fair will be open daily from 8:30 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. There will be lots of wonderful books for purchase. It’s a great way to start your Christmas shopping all while supporting Ridgeview and helping build up our school library collection!

Our sharing ends next week. Our next sharing focus will be “Christmas”. More info will follow via Remind.

We started off with a bang this week as our Primary Grades participated in the annual Ridgeview Hallowe’en Parade.  Thank you to all the parents who supported us by braving the crowded hallways with your happy and excited smiles and waves for our littlest pumpkins.  

We had a fun Hallowe’en Centres Party following the Parade.  We use the Centres format frequently, for our morning playtime, math manipulative work and in the afternoon for our Centre focus activities.  The children are used to moving between Centres, sometimes in a rotation, and it creates a sense of predictability and smooth organisation which is self-regulatory by its very nature.  We finished our Hallowe’en bats, made spider cupcakes, coloured our Hallowe’en books and cut out Hallowe’en shapes with playdough and cookie cutters.  We had a lot of help from our wonderful classroom parents in the preparation of activities, and leading the children through their tasks.

We’ve spent the rest of this week recovering from a late school night and sweet treats.  

To get our ourselves back on schedule, we concentrated on our Alphabet work for the letter “F.”  We’ve been looking for a new craft for “F” and came up with “f is a flower.”  The children made these cute flowers using dot stickers for the centres and adding their own petals, stems and leaves in feltpen.  We’re pleased with the childrenès continued improvement in letter formation.  We’re encouraging the children to use the correct letter formation for the lowercase letters we’ve taught in class (a-f) when printing their names.  When your child is printing at home, please gently remind them to use the letters they know how to print in lowercase.  

There’s nothing like an Emergency Release Drill to snap you out of your sugar haze.  On Thursday, our children participated in a full student release following a simulated earthquake emergency.  A soundtrack of earthquake noises was played, and the children moved to “Drop, Cover, and Hold” under the classroom tables.  After counting to to 60, an alarm signalled us to evacuate the building.  Everyone gathered our coats and headed to the gravel field.  Once the building was deemed safe, the students returned to their classrooms and waited for their parents to go through the Parent Reception Centre before they were reunited.  

Some things we learned as a result of this emergency procedure:

• Sometimes children become upset when we practise these emergency drill procedures; you might consider talking about your family emergency plan so your child becomes familiar with the language we use and the school routines
• Our children should all be able to independently put on their own coats, including pulling out sleeves; please continue to practise with your child if necessary.
• Some children became very anxious and fretful when their parents did not come to pick them up beginning at 1:45 pm, asking us where you were and why hadn’t you arrived yet; we encourage you to tell us and your child ahead of time you will be picking later so we can support your child, or better still, ask your alternate pick-up to help out in this situation

The days following Hallowe’en are now a time for reflection as Remembrance Day is next week.  We’re talking about peace in our classes, and what that means for each of us.  We made peace doves with our Big Buddies on Wednesday, and some children also chose to make a Canadian flag as a choice activity.  Our children will attend their first serious school assembly next Thursday as we have our annual Remembrance Day Assembly for students.  Students enter and leave the assembly silently, and there is no talking or clapping by the student population.  We will front-end load our children with the school expectations, and you can also help us in talking with them as well.

Upcoming Events and Reminders

Hallowe’en Candy Donation is ongoing. This is a great way to get rid of any extra candy you still have or don’t want lying around the house tempting you! We will use the candy for our upcoming Christmas Cracker project.  Donated candy should not have any Hallowe’en themed words or pictures on the wrappers.

Monday, November 7 is Popcorn Day. Please send in $1 for your child to purchase a bag. We are hoping to enjoy it as our afternoon snack outside in the sunshine!

Wednesday, November 9 is Photo Retakes Day. Please let us know at drop off if your child is planning to have a retake.

Monday, November 28-Thursday, December 1 is the Scholastic Book Fair in our Ridgeview library.  Students and parents will be allowed to purchase some wonderful books and gifts there. If you are interested in volunteering at this event please speak to our teacher librarian, Mrs. Kennedy.

November Scholastic Book Orders due Tuesday, November 8, 2016