Introducing ...

Vivian Rose Francis Helferty.  Born August 2 at 8:48am, 7 pounds 9 oz, 18 1/2 inches long. 

 Vivi and Nia

I also wanted to thank the class for the great baby gifts and surprise cake at the end of the school year!!!  I hope everyone is having a GREAT summer....only a couple of weeks left until SK!  I am sure it felt like only yesterday that your little ones were coming home from the hospital and now they are getting ready to start their second year of school. 


All the best in this coming school year!

Year End Party

I meant to post this earlier, but I have had spotty, at best, Internet access at home (the joys of living in  the country)!

Our year end party will be on Wednesday June 27.  We are still looking for volunteers to send in veggies and dip, cupcakes, cookies and juice and cups.  If interested please email me (sarah.davies@ocdsb.ca) or send a note in your child's notetote.

Our field trip is rescheduled until Tuesday June 26 and the last day of school is Thursday June 28!!!! 

URGENT

Due to the extreme heat advisory for tomorrow, we have rescheduled our trip to the Kinburn Berry Farm.   We will now be visiting the Berry Farm on Tuesday, June 26.  Field trip forms have been sent home in your child's notetote, please return as soon as possible. Thanks for your understanding!!!

Calendar Not working

Thanks Jen for letting me know.  It worked great from school and not so well from home this afternoon.  I will keep trying over the next few days.  The only date for the calendar for May was library (next Thursday) which will also be our last day to take out books.  

Renovating the House Centre again!

Earlier this spring it was a post office and now we will magically turn it into a grocery store.  Connecting with our unit on farms students will get to experience environmental print (the print that surrounds them in their everyday lives, like the name of the favourite granola bar), write grocery lists, signs (for sale items, open/closed, etc.) and play and learn about money (names of coins).  However, we do need your help for this centre.  Please send in any clean, empty containers (e.g. boxes, produce containers, plastic juice jugs etc.)  for our grocery store to help us stock the shelves.  Thanks!

Calendar

Here is our new calendar.  I have created a separate page for the calendar which you can find at the top of the blog with a new tab with the same name.  As I mentioned before I am new at this and still working out the bugs. It took me about 20 minutes just to resize the calendar (Ah!!! technology).  Hopefully everyone will find this helpful. 

A new literacy centre

This week one of  our centres involves building words in various ways and reading the word.  The focus has been on number words.  Next I will add colour words to the selection.

Clouds

A follow-up, extension activity to a read-aloud, Spilt Milk, included creating our own clouds.  Using our keen eyesight and imagination we saw a world of wonder in our "clouds".

Updating some posts...

The important thing about blogs is that you hit the publish button when you are done a post!  I did not and the next two posts are quite late but will give you  some insight to what we have done this past month. 


Coming soon...
I am also experimenting with the google calendar app.  It will allow me to embed a calendar with significant dates for our classroom.  There may be some technical glitches as I get use to the app and figure out how best to use it.

Field trip tomorrow

I kept hoping if I waited the weather forecast would change and say sunshine tomorrow, but alas it has not.   When dressing your child rubber boots and a raincoat is a safer and easier option than umbrellas (nothing extra to carry and less eyes being poked). Please pack your child's regular snack.  Volunteers, see you tomorrow!!!

School Based May Newsletter

Birds

We have been working on many different activities.  Our theme based circle activity has included reading a book by Joanne Oppenheim and Barbara Reid. 

We have been listing the names of some of the birds from the book with a focus on the first sound in the bird's name and the distinguishing visual features of the bird.

We played a matching game using bird pictures. 

This week we are making our favourite birds.  Looking at the pictures of birds to discover their colours. 



Authentic Writing Opportunity

I received this note in the notetotes the other day and couldn't resist sharing.  It was such a great opportunity for authentic writing.  Other ideas to get your kinder kid writing would be adding things to the grocery list, making a to-do list, thank-you cards. Thanks Zack and family for allowing me to share.

Writing Centre

While cruising kindergarten blogs I discovered a great activity that has been added to our writing centre.  It is also an activity that can be done easily at home.  We have been looking through old magazines and cutting out pictures that catch our eye.  Next, we write a sentence to describe or tell about the picture.  Some students are even creating their own "stories" about the picture.  It is an activity that can tell you so much about your child's literacy development.   Some children are writing word wall words and using "stretchy the word snake" (ask your child about stretching out words).  Other children are writing random letters, and in doing so are demonstrating that they know that letters represent the meaning and the message and that we write left to right.  Oh, the little things kids do can show us so much!!

Kindergarten Concert

The kindergarten classes would like to invite you to an evening of song and dance Wednesday May 16th, at 6:30pm.  

Dinosaurs and Shapes

Friday afternoon I realised I had returned home without taking any pictures of our work for the week!!  So here it is.

We began reviewing what we know about shapes.  We have been making a class anchor chart (a chart made by the students, for the students to refer to) dealing with 2D shapes (names, # of lines, and # of angles).

We made shape dinosaurs as a follow up activity.  After Easter, we will, with our buddies, count and graph the shapes we used (and quantity) when making our dinosaurs.  As you can also see we have been patterning with shapes during Math Centre time as well.



We also made fossils using modelling clay and dinosaur toys.



Oops, forgot to...

send out a message that library was today.  Please send back any overdue library books.  After Easter Library day will be on Wednesdays...until the long weekend in May!

No Library this Monday

Due to events booked in the library, we will not be having library this week, Monday March 26, 2012.

Dinosaurs

This week we started a new unit on Dinosaurs.  I have found in the past this unit really encourages even the most reluctant of readers to take an interest in books.   To build excitement I presented the students with an egg and told them that we would be learning about whatever was in the egg.   Once placed in water it took about two days for the egg to "hatch". 

As scientists we asked the question, "What is in the egg?" and provided a number of different hypotheses. (We even learned that the word hypothesis was a fancy, or million dollar word for a guess made by a scientist.)

Several students drew pictures to either illustrate their hypothesis or to describe what they saw as the egg was "hatching".

In the  end there was in fact a dinosaur in the egg.  (Thank goodness for the dollar store!)

My Many Coloured Days

This book, by Dr. Seuss, gave us a chance to look at feelings.   We made our own pictures to illustrate our we were feeling on particular days. 

First we examined the feelings associated with particular colours.

 

Then we charted (4 students per day) how a child was feeling.

Finally we coloured in our own characters and selected an animal they felt best represented or reminded them of that feeling.  

Post Office

Our dramatic play centre (house centre) has been transformed into a Post Office.  The kindergartens have been busy creating signs for the post office including signs indicating the prices of stamps and envelopes and other things you might purchase in an post office.  During this time students have been actively exploring their knowledge of letters and sounds while using invented spelling on their signs.  The centre encourages students to visit the writing centre to write letters to friends and family. 

Invented spelling and dramatic play centres help students to develop as writers and readers as they are more willing to take the time to think about the letters they hear in a word to get their message across....they aren't doing it because a grown-up wants them to !!!!  I am strongly encouraging them to use their knowledge of sounds to do "kid" spelling rather than giving them the "grown-up" or conventional spelling.   Many students start with giving the beginning and sometimes the ending sounds of words.  That is perfect and on track for JK expectations.  The middle sounds will follow as students become more comfortable with writing.  Other students are still writing random letters or the letters in their name to represent all words...again this is also developmentally appropriate.

Also,  if you happen to have extra envelopes (e.g. from junk mail) we would happily take them for our post office centre.

Library

TOMORROW!!!

Lost and Found

Recognise any mittens, sweaters, water bottles.  If so please slip a note into your child's notetote and the items will be returned.

PJ Day Friday

To get us in vacation, relax mode, the Kindergartens (only) will be having a PJ Day on Friday March 9.  So, wear your favourite PJs and enjoy the last day before March Break!!!!

Math Graphing Activity

Another activity we finished up at the end of last week was analyzing our mitten glyph.   Students had to create a mitten according to the following parameters:

Blue mitten for boys and red for girls
Number of polka dots indicated their age
Cotton balls at the bottom of the mitten (or lack of) indicated whether or not they like to play in the snow. 

Then we sorted the finished mittens to find out different information about the students  in our class. 

Science Centre

My apologies for being so late in posting to the blog.


Over the past weeks we have been learning about magnets.  We have been exploring and observing using magnetic wands and various materials.   Part of our learning included recording our observations, because that is what scientists do, in order to share what they have learned.

Library is on Monday

Day 4 now falls on Monday (that is until Easter holidays) therefore, Library is on Monday.

School Newsletter-February

Please find attached as a PDF file the February Newsletter.  This version will replace the paper-based one that was sent home monthly. 

February Newsletter

OR...Stonecrest Elementary School Website-Newsletters


My apologies for the delay in posting this.  Adding files to my blog account has been quite the learning curve!  If you have trouble accessing the newletter let me know and I will email a copy to you.