Students had so much fun making holiday cards for their families. There's a little bit of magic that happens when you give a 5 year old yarn, paper, glue and scissors. "This is the BEST DAY EVER!" Please know how much love went into those cards made just for you.

We learned a new number game using Power of Ten cards. These cards help students to develop their number sense and visualize number relationships to 10. With time and practice, students learn to recognize the number of colored squares on each card without having to count them. For example, if you look at one of the cards that has every square colored-in except for one, students quickly identify that as a 9, because they know that 9 is one less than 10. A card that has one side fully colored-in can be recognized as 5, because 5 is half of 10. 7 can be seen as 5 and 2 more, etc. We will use these cards for a variety of games throughout the year. 

On our last day before the break, we watched How the Grinch Stole Christmas (the cartoon version) and talked about the important message behind this classic story. Students loved creating their very own Grinch to take home and worked hard to master staying inside the lines when using a paintbrush. 

I wish you all a very merry holiday season filled with special family memories. 

See you back at school on Tuesday, January 3!

Miss Roberts 

Our kindergarteners drew some fabulous self-portraits this week. They practiced drawing themselves using shapes (no stick people), drawing realistic eyes (no black dots) and drawing hair without scribbling. These turned out great! 

Students worked through another math challenge: Santa was feeding his 2 favourite reindeer, Rudolf and Dancer. He had 7 carrots to give to out. How many carrots can he give to each reindeer?  Students are becoming much more confident using pictures to solve number problems. Many students even challenged themselves to find more than one solution! As always when working through math problems, students are working towards creating pictures that are simple and organized. They rocked this one! Ask your child to solve a slightly different version of this for you at home (sharing cookies, toys, etc.). 

We talked about many different ways that families celebrate at this time of the year. Students were very excited to share about their favourite holiday traditions and learned that each and every family has their own unique way of enjoying the season. We drew pictures in our journals and many students attempted writing sentences for the very first time...yippeee!!!! It was a proud teacher moment. 

We had a blast on our first field-trip adventure! Students loved the bus ride, eating lunch at the theatre, and seeing an exciting, funny, modern-day version of Cinderella. We got to sit in the front row! They were very well-behaved and totally engaged throughout the entire show. It was a fantastic trip. Thank you SO MUCH to our amazing volunteers for braving the cold to come along with us on our adventure. We could not have done it without you. 

We've turned our house center into a food store! I love seeing all the writing taking place to make signs, menus and receipts. They're also practicing their number skills by recording how much each item costs, calculating bills and providing change to their customers. So much (hidden) learning going on!

Classroom Reminders:

1. Students are invited to enjoy some carol-singing next week. Each morning from 8:25-8:40 there will be caroling taking place in the gym. Come join us! 

2. Leadership Club is collecting donations for the Drop In Center again this holiday season by supporting Fill-A-Sock.  This program provides presents on Christmas morning of practical items for our neighbors in need.  Your generous donations can be left under the Christmas tree in the Briar Hill School lobby, and will be picked up on the 15th of December - that’s next Thursday!  For a complete list of donation item suggestions, you can visit: http://www.thedi.ca/fill-a-sock-fill-a-need/.  Thank you for your kind support!

3. Next Friday, Dec. 16th will be an Early Dismissal day for the afternoon students. This will be the last day of class before our winter break! Classes will resume on Tuesday, January 3. 

Stay warm this weekend!

Miss Roberts

This week in kindergarten, we focused on the letter G. Most students think that this letter makes a /j/ sound, and although it occasionally does, I encourage students to remember the hard G sound, as in grass or gorilla. We read the story, The Giving Tree and reflected on how this story made us feel. Many students interpreted the story as a happy one about giving and friendship. Others thought it was a sad story. We learned that it's ok to have different opinions than our friends and embraced everyone's thoughtful ideas. 

Students were excited to create their own giving trees with watercolour paints. We learned a new painting technique that allowed the different colours of paint to flow together for our backgrounds. On the following day, we drew our trees with watercolour pencil crayons and added the leaves to our trees as a finishing touch. We learned how to draw super simple realistic trees using the letter Y. Ask your child to show you how to draw a Y tree! Our finished artwork is absolutely beautiful! Students were quite impressed with themselves. 

Our pumpkin plants have continued to flourish! We drew a second sketch of how our plants are progressing and compared it to our previous sketch. Students are becoming much more comfortable sounding out words on their own and are developing greater independence in their writing. 

We practice our number skills each and every day when we add a new number to our calendar. I usually mix-up a few of the numbers, put some upside-down or take some of the numbers off. Students search for and fix the mistakes they see. I also challenge students to try and think of different number combinations that add up to the date. For example,  6 can be made with 5 and 1, 4 and 2, 3 and 3, etc. These are early addition skills that we will continue to build upon throughout the year. 

Thank you all for making time to come and discuss your child's learning this week. I thoroughly enjoyed chatting with each and every one of you. 

Classroom Reminders:

1. FIELD TRIP! Please be aware that kindergarten school hours on the day of our field trip, Thursday December 8th, will be modified. BOTH morning and afternoon students need to be dropped off at school at 10:00am and picked up from school at 2:30pm. For the field trip day only, we will need afternoon students to line-up at their dismissal doors so that both classes can enter into the school together. Your child will need to bring a full lunch. Please pick up your child from the classroom between 2:25 and 2:30.

2. Students are loving gymnastics! We have one more week to explore the gymnastics equipment in the gym. 

Have a beautiful weekend!

Miss Roberts

We talked a lot about stories this week. We discussed what makes a good story, explored real vs. imaginary stories, and read multiple versions of the same story to explore different perspectives and alternate story endings. We read 3 different versions of The Three Little Pigs and reflected on which version we liked the best. By far, the class favourite was The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig. This story put a great twist on the traditional version.  Ask your child about the fantastic ending to this story! 

On Wednesday, students drew about a real story of something that has happened in their life. On the following day, students created imaginary stories and giggled their way through drawing these in their journals. We had so much fun coming up with these. Ask your child what their imaginary story was about. 

We have a new story-building center in our classroom where students can practice retelling one of our Three Little Pigs stories or create a unique version of their own. Oral language development is so important for students at this age. Students who are able to tell detailed stories orally will be much more successful when they begin to explore story concepts through writing later on. You can practice this skill with your child by having them retell some of their favourite stories at home. 

Our letter focus this week was the letter T. Students loved using plasticine to create their very own turtles and enjoyed making little background scenes for their turtles to hang-out in. 

Classroom Reminders:

1. Class Photos will take place on Monday, Nov. 28th.

2. Report cards will be sent home on Monday, Nov. 28th. 

3. Online booking for interview times will open on Monday at 4:00pm. You can access this link from our school website (http://schools.cbe.ab.ca/b205/). Click on the blue My CBE Account image on the left hand side of the page. Kindergarten interviews will take place on Thursday, Dec. 1 from 8:45am - 7:45pm, as well as Friday Dec. 2, from 8:00am to 1:00pm. Please note, there WILL be school for both morning and afternoon students on Thursday. I will bring in a substitute for the day and our interviews will take place at another location in the school. There will be no school for students on Friday. Students are more than welcome to attend these interviews with you. If at all possible, I would encourage you to book your interview time when your child is not at school, so that they may come with you and show you some of their work. 

4. Although it doesn't happen often, kindergarten students do occasionally have bathroom accidents at school. It is a good idea to have an extra set of pants in your child's backpack just in case. In addition, if you happen to have an extra set of pants at home that you would be willing to donate to our classroom, we would love to have a few extra pairs hanging around for when this happens. Thank you for your help!  

5. Lastly, if you happen to have any baby food jars around the house, we would love to use them for painting at school! Thank you!

Exciting news...our pumpkin seeds have started to sprout! Students were absolutely thrilled to watch their seeds developing roots and were eager to check-in on their pumpkin plants each day. We recorded our observations in our journals and labelled the parts of the plant we could see.

We talked about the letter C this week. We have now spent time focusing on 5 letters (P, M, H, A and C). Your child should be very comfortable with the sounds that these letters make and be able to label pictures that begin with these letters. I encourage you to check-in with your child to see how they are progressing with these letters and sounds. We learn a short little song to help us remember the sounds that each letter makes. Ask your child to share some of these with you. Next week, we will focus on the letter T.

We worked through another math problem. Using what we know about numbers that come before and after other given numbers, students were asked to draw a picture to represent how many candles they will need on their next birthday cake. We are learning that organization, attention to detail and checking our work are important skills when working through math problems.

Classroom Reminders:

1. Thank you to those of you who have returned your child's field trip forms so promptly! If you have not already done so, please return field trip forms ASAP. Please note that this field trip costs $17 per student. Cash or cheque are accepted. Cheques can be made out to Briar Hill School. Field trips are never mandatory. If your child will not be coming with us, please email me to let me know. Please take note of the changes to your child's school hours for the day of the field trip.

2. We had SO much fun exploring mat activities during our gymnastics time in the gym. Setting up the mats each day was a great exercise in teamwork! Please ensure your child is dressed appropriately for these activities as we will be starting to explore the gymnastics equipment next week (you can refer to last week's blog post for guidelines).

3. Miss Roberts is going to Disneyland!!! I will be leaving town Friday evening and returning to school on Wednesday next week. Janelle Harvey (my previous teaching partner and world's greatest substitute) will be covering for me on Monday and Tuesday. If you have any important information that Mrs. Harvey should know (pick-up arrangements, student appointments, etc.) please communicate this through a note in your child's folder as I will not be checking my email while away. 

4. Next Friday, Nov. 25 is a Professional Day for teachers. There will be no school for morning or afternoon students.

Have a wonderful weekend! I'll see you next week!

Miss Roberts

This week in kindergarten, we read some great stories about developing self-confidence and self-appreciation. Students shared and reflected upon what they like most about themselves. 

"I like my arms because they give good hugs."

"I like my heart because it shares love with the world."

"I like my hands because they help me eat cookies."

"I like my legs because they help me run and play and jump."

Students were extremely excited to engage in our first science experiment of the year! In a discussion about what to do with my leftover pumpkin seeds, most students suggested I bake them. A few others thought it might be a good idea to put them into some dirt and see what happens. Students each planted their own pumpkin seeds and had fun making scientist predictions about what might happen to them. Some students predicted that our classroom would fill up with pumpkins overnight. Some wondered if an apple or a lemon tree may grow from one of our seeds. Stay tuned for our results!

We have continued to practice our number skills with dice games over the past couple of weeks. One of the things we do to warm-up our brains before a math activity is to roll a die a bunch of times and say the number that we see. When everyone is comfortable with that, students then say the number that comes after the number rolled on the die. For a super tricky challenge, we then say the number that comes before the number rolled. These warm-ups help to develop our number sense and build automaticity with number concepts. If your child enjoys a challenge, try asking them to say the number that is 2 more/less than the number rolled! 

In honour of Remembrance Day, students created beautiful poppies inspired by the artist, Georgia O'Keefe.  We created our poppies using black paper, chalk pastels and a little bit of paint. Students learned how to use shading and highlighting to give greater depth to their artwork. 

Thank you so much to those of you who were able to join us for the beautiful assembly today. 

Classroom Reminders:

1. Our first field trip is coming! Our entire school will be going to the theatre to see Cinderella! Please return forms and payment as soon as possible if you would like your child to participate in this exciting event. Thank you so much to those of you who quickly volunteered to come along with us. We have 3 volunteers who would like to come, but do not yet have their volunteer clearance. If their clearance does not come back in time, we will require 3 more volunteers. If you would like to be one of our back-up volunteers, please email me to let me know (taroberts@cbe.ab.ca). 

2. If you would like to order anything from Scholastic, order forms are due back on Monday.

3. Next week, we will be starting our gymnastics unit in gym. During our first week, we will be exploring different ways of moving our bodies on the floor mats. The second week will involve gymnastics equipment and the third week will be Mission Impossible (a fun obstacle course to work through on the gymnastics equipment). There are some important safety rules we must follow to ensure we have fun and keep everyone injury-free! Please be advised of the following safety rules we must follow in terms of student clothing:

*No dresses/skirts/tights. Students must be able to move freely in their bare feet. 

*Long hair must be pulled back (girls may want to bring a hair elastic if they don't want to have their hair up all day)

*No jewellery on ears, throat or wrists

We will go to the gym every day except for Tuesday next week. Please ensure your child is dressed appropriately to participate in gymnastics!

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to get to know your wonderful children. I feel so very fortunate to work with such an amazing group of little ones. 

Miss Roberts

 

Classroom Reminders:

1. Order forms for school photos are due back by Monday, November 7.

2. Picture retakes are happening on Tuesday. If you would like your child to have their picture taken again, please email me (taroberts@cbe.ab.ca) to let me know so I can ensure they don't get missed. 

3. In honour of Remembrance Day, there will be no school next Friday, November 11.

4. Information about our school Remembrance Day assembly will be coming home in your child's folder on Monday. It will take place on Thursday, November 10, at 10:45. The morning class will be reciting a short poem. Parents of morning and afternoon students are welcome to attend. 

Have an amazing weekend!

Miss Roberts :)