Update from Ms. R

This week, the students learned the poem "Pancakes!". A copy of this poem was send home with your child on Friday. Please have your child read this poem with you.

Starting next week, both classes will start a project that requires parent support. Each day, the star student will bring home a bag that has a book, a stuffed toy and a journal. The students will be instructed to read the book with an adult and do something with the toy. Next, draw and write about what you did with the toy in the journal. Please know, that students are all at different levels of writing abilility in kindergarten, and you may have to scribe the words of your child. Have your child draw in the journal, and then, together decide what to write in the journal. Finally, put the book, toy and journal back in the bag and return it to school. It is very important to return the bag the next day as we will read the journal to the class each day. Remember, the bag has to go through all the children in the class and that will take about a month (20 school days)!

Thank you, in advance, for your support of this class project.

News for February 25

News for February 25

It was another 4-day week in Room 101, but there were many special activities.

On Wednesday, we celebrated Pancake Day by mixing, cooking and eating pancakes. It was like we had a pancake restaurant in our classroom! We talked about the celebrations around the world at this time of year, Mardi Gras and Shrove Tuesday as the time before the Christian observation of Lent. We read Pancakes, Pancakes! by Eric Carle and learned about how a boy and his mom made pancakes in the days before electricity and compared it to how we made pancakes. The children also learned a poem about making pancakes (a copy of this poem was sent home on Friday).

Now that the students know all the letter-sounds, we started to learn the new sounds that two letters make together. This week they learned the sounds of the letter combinations "th" and "sh". A game we play at school is, "What words do you know that have the ___ sound?" This is a fun game to play at home with your child.

The students made snowman pins this week. They wore these pins on Thursday when our whole school celebrated the winter "Carnivale", a celebration that is popular in Quebec. The morning class went to an assembly were we listened to a music group that plays Latin American music.
Both classes had the chance to go to another classroom to solve winter-themed puzzles. We also saw the snowman mascot, Bonhomme Carnivale!

The students explored a discovery bin filled with different kinds of mirrors and clear, colour pieces. They looked at flat mirrors, convex (rounded out) and concave (rounded in). The children looked through coloured plastic pieces and reviewed how mixing two colours together make a new colour.

The class learned about the blues musician B. B. King. We read a book that features him in a story where he has lost his shoe and some sock puppet characters help him along as he tries to find it. Along with this book is a DVD movie of the story. As always, more information on the books we read can be found at http://planet5books.blogspot.com/.

Here is the B. B. King movie:

Update from Ms. R

Thanks to all the families for coming in to meet with me this week. It's important for teachers to talk to parents about their child's progress and the things they can do at home to support their learning.

I would like to wish all the families a happy, healthy Family Day holiday!

News for February 17

News for February 17

It was a short week, but as usual, the students packed in a lot of learning!
On Monday, we celebrated Valentine's Day. The students made Valentine greetings for their families and shared Valentine cards and treats in the decorated bags they created last week. The students in the afternoon had a chance to go to the school-wide Valentine Dance in the gym. We read the book Guess How Much I Love You (for more information on this book and the others we read this week, visit http://planet5books.blogspot.com/) and we had a good discussion about what love is. I asked the children, "Can you hold love in your hand? Can you draw love? Can you buy love at a store?". Of course, they said "no"! So we talked about how love is a feeling and you have to show love with your words and actions.
February 15 is Flag Day in Canada and we sang "Happy Birthday" to the flag in our classroom. It is 46 years old this year. The class talked about the colours of the flag and that the maple leaf was chosen because maple trees grow all across Canada. We also discussed how the flag says "Canada" without using any words.
The children learned the sounds and shapes of QU and S this week. The students now know all the letter sounds and capital letter shapes of all 26 letters of the alphabet. In English, there are 44 sounds, so now we focus on letter combination sounds.

In math, we continued to explore the number 10. It is important for children to deeply understand the concept of 10, as the 10 stragtegy is a common method to solve math problems. The class now counts the days of school by skip-counting by 10 and can use their fingers to count to 100 by 10's. We also counted to 100 using various objects (e.g., buttons).

The students drew pictures and wrote words for our February class bulletin boards displays. They also wrote in their individual journals.
The class will now be learning sight words every week. A sight word is a word that seen often when reading. Some of these words are also "irregular". That means these words are not easily decoded by sounding out. This week the sight word was "the". The students read a little book called "Find It!" . This little book was sent home with the children on Thursday.
We read books about a popular character called Corduroy the bear. These books have been around for over 40 years. To learn more about the books that we read this week, check out our sister blog at http://planet5books.blogspot.com/.

Here is a photo of Ms. Mantello with our afternoon class. Ms. Mantello is our school's librarian.

Update from Ms. R

The big event this week was our celebration, on Thursday, of 100 Days of School! We had a great day! To see photos of the activities we did together, please look for a video at the end of the main news posting. Thanks so much to Aidian and Etienne's mom and Scartlett's mom for their help in the morning. Also, thanks to Anagha's mom, Milos's mom and Tyler's mom (homemade cookies!) for their help in the afternoon.

A copy of the words to the Three Little Pigs Song was sent home with the children on Friday. Please have your child sing you this story and follow along with the words (don't forget to use your "pointer finger" as you point to the words as they are sung).

Important Dates:

February 14 - Report cards go home - JK only
Feb. 16 (after school), Feb. 17 (after school/evening), Feb. 18 (morning) - Parent interviews
February 18 - P.A. Day - no classes
February 21 - Family Day holiday - no classes
February 24 - Winter Carnival - whole school celebration
February 25 - Family Skate Night @ Hodgson SPS (6:30 - 8:30) - JK to gr.3 require helmets

News for February 11

News for February 11

We finished off the unit on fairy tales this week. The class watched a video of the story of Rumplestiltskin. The children know that a movie is another way to tell a story. This story illustrates another characteristic of some fairy tales, that of a "magic" character. In this case a little man that could spin straw into gold.

The students have now memorized the story of The Three Little Pigs, told in song. They know the words and actions and how to perform the song as "actors". A copy of this was sent home with the children on Friday.

The class worked hard each day to practise their blending of sounds to make word (decoding). This practise also helps them when they write in their journals (encoding). The students learned the songs, sounds and shapes of the capital letters I and J. We have also started playing with the first sounds in the children's names by assigning an adjective with the same beginning sound, for example, Cool Chris and Nice Natali.

On Friday, the class learned about Valentine's Day and made their "mailbags" for exchanging Valentine cards next Monday.

The students created a banner for our 100 Days party by coloring designs for the repeating pattern 1, 0, 0, heart.

At our 100 Days celebration, the students did many activities to help them learn about the concept of 100. The children strung 100 fruit loop cereals pieces, like beads, on string. They drew and stamped on a grid of 100 rectangles. They coloured on 100 themed colouring page and could have their faces painted. There were also bins of 100 different objects to play with, for example blocks and pennies. The students learned a new song to help celebrate the day (sung to the tune of "Farmer in the Dell"):

100 days of school,

100 days of school,

1...0...0.... days,

100 days of school!

A video of photos from our day can be found at the end of this posting.

Update from Ms. R

Well, the big news this week was the "snow day" on Wednesday (it was the first TDSB snow day since 1999!). But we still packed a lot of fun into the four days this week.

A little paper toy was sent home this week to help your child learn to read words ending in "at". Please work with your child to help them sound out and read these words. A video of a child reading the words using this device can be found in this weeks news posting.

We still need VOLUNTEERS for our 100 Days of School celebration on Thursday, Feb. 10. If you are able to help out, please email me at nrawlinson@rogers.com.

News for February 4

News for February 4

This short week, the students continued the unit on fairy tales. We read Goldilocks and the Three Bears, a traditional version and compared it with a version where the bears and their house looked very different. We also learned a different version of the Three Little Pigs, by telling the story in a song. The children also compared the traditional story to the book, The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, where the wolf tells the story and says the pigs got the story all wrong, that he was not a bad wolf at all! As always, more details about the books read aloud to the class can be found at our sister blog at http://planet5books.blogspot.com/.

The students learned the sounds, shapes and songs for the letters, A and T. We started to look at reading and writing word families. This week we looked at words ending in "at". Studying word families helps the children read easily decoded words and write them as well. When children can understand that when, for example, you remove the "h" sound from "hat" and add the "c" sound and get "cat", they are on their way to reading and writing independently. They learned how to use a paper device to help them learn the "at" family words. This was sent home with the children on Friday. A video of a child using this device and reading the words, can be found at the end of this posting.

The students worked on their rote counting and number recognition. Many students can count to 100! We count the days of school each morning as we work toward our 100th day of school, next Thursday.

The class learned about Chinese New Year. The students learned about red "lai see" or lucky envelopes that are given out on this holiday. It is also the Chinese Year of the Rabbit. Our morning education assistant, Annie, told us that these envelopes have money in them and are only given to children and unmarried adults. The children also had a drink with their snack using special little cups with Chinese writing on them.

The morning children went to an assembly in the gym. In the photo, try to find our assistant Annie.

There is also a photo of our afternoon class with our music teacher, Ms. McCool.