On Monday, we received a zany video message from a button-factory owner who needed our help with her broken button machine! Students had many ideas around how to help this eccentric lady sort her buttons. Students experimented with sorting the buttons in as many different ways as they could. We sorted by colour, shape, size, number of button holes, and by many other interesting

attributes students came up with (glittery/not-glittery, shiny/not-shiny, etc.). The following day, we explored sorting a variety of other interesting classroom trinkets. This was a breeze for some students and caused difficulty for others. Have your child do some sorting for you at home. Leaves or rocks may be a fun thing to sort! Also...blocks, lego, or any other interesting things you can think of :) 

We read the story "Ten Hungry Caterpillars" by Bill Martin Jr and were inspired to make some caterpillars of our own! Students were challenged to create 1 caterpillar that was longer than a crayon and 1 caterpillar that was shorter than a crayon. We had lots of fun decorating our caterpillars. For an added challenge, students were encouraged to try and make patterns on their caterpillars. These were so much fun to make and a great activity to practice our fine motor skills too!

This book also inspired a new fall center in our classroom! Kids are LOVING this. 

We used our new knowledge of drawing shapes to help us progress beyond drawing stick people! Students practiced creating people using many different shapes and learned how to add interesting details to personalize the individuals in their drawings. 

Students began working on our first class book. Over the course of the year, we will make many of these. They always follow simple pattern text and include student pictures, making them a classroom favourite during reading times. Our first book is all about colours. Students each chose a favourite colour and created a page for our colour book. 

We spent some time each day this week talking about where we see letters and numbers in our environment. We searched the classroom and the halls of the school for any letters or numbers we could find. As we learn to become readers, writers and mathematicians, it is important for students to see firsthand where they may use this new knowledge in their world. I encourage you to point out these things when you're out and about with your child. Do a letter hunt at the grocery store to see how many of a certain letter you can find. Talk about what the numbers on a sign are telling us. This will help students to understand that learning about letters and numbers is something that will help them to better understand and interact with their world, as opposed to being something we do just at school. Make it fun!

We continue to practice our observational drawing skills. On our Early Dismissal Friday we sketched beautiful fall leaves and painted them with magical watercolour pencil crayons. Ask your child to tell you how they work :)

Classroom Reminders and Requests:

1. We would really like some family photos for our classroom! I would love to give students an opportunity to share a bit about their families with each other. If possible, please send in a picture of your family for us to display in our classroom. I would like to include these pictures in your child's journal afterwards, so they will not be returned. 

2. Friday, October 7 is a Professional Day for teachers. There will be no school for morning OR afternoon kindergarten on this day.

Have a beautiful weekend! 

Miss Roberts 

Hello Parents,

It was wonderful meeting with each of you this week! Thank you so much for taking the time to engage in these important discussions about your child. I wholeheartedly enjoyed the conversations we shared.

This short and sweet week in kindergarten was all about drawing shapes! Learning to represent our ideas through drawing is an important part of being in kindergarten. To support children in their drawing skills, we practiced making circles, squares and triangles and learned that you can draw almost anything using these 3 basic shapes. Triangles were tricky for many of our young learners. Have your child show off their drawing skills for you at home. 

Students are quickly becoming more comfortable adding letters to their pictures, making their teacher very proud :) I call this beginning stage of writing "kid-writing." Students may add random letters to their drawings or begin to match some letters with their pictures on the page. If you see your child begin to experiment with letters at home, please be supportive of this huge developmental step. Encourage risk-taking and experimentation rather than perfection and fixing mistakes. 

We have a new center in our classroom! Kids are having fun using a variety of interesting materials to make a representation of their face. They’re enjoying using our classroom iPad to take pictures of their gorgeous creations. How cute are these?!?! 

Classroom Reminders:

1. Our school-wide Terry Fox Run will be taking place on Thursday Sept. 29 from 3:00-3:30. Parents, siblings and grandparents are welcome to participate too! As this is an afternoon event, morning students are welcome to come join us for the run as long as they come with a parent/guardian. Students are encouraged to bring a Toonie for Terry which will be donated to the Terry Fox Foundation for cancer research. Please ensure your child is dressed appropriately to be running outside for a portion of the afternoon. We need your help! I would really appreciate some afternoon volunteers to keep our little ones safe while running on the sidewalk. If you have completed your security clearance and are able to join us for the run, please email me to let me know. Thank you!!

2. Morning students will be going to the library for book-exchange on Wednesday. Afternoon students will be exchanging their books on Thursday. Please ensure your child has returned their library book on or before their library day so that they may sign-out a new one. I would encourage you to put your child’s book in their folder (if it fits) to ensure that I see them and they get returned.

That’s all for this week! Have a wonderful weekend!

Miss Roberts

It’s amazing to see how quickly students are becoming comfortable with our classroom routines. We have a wonderful group of 4 and 5 year olds who are learning to be independent thinkers! Each day when they arrive, students change their shoes, sign their name, take out their folders, and use the SMARTboard to move their apple onto the tree…all by themselves! What quick learners they are!

Students were very excited about drawing in their fancy artist sketchbooks this week. We reflected about our summer adventures and chose a favourite memory to draw. On the following day, students watched me colouring MY drawing and gave me all kinds of tips about what I was doing wrong:

“Miss Roberts, you’re scribbling!”

“Why did you use the same pencil crayon to colour everything? That doesn’t look good.”

“You definitely need more colours.”

They were thrilled to show off their colouring skills and were very proud of the pictures they created.

On Wednesday, we talked about letters and tried adding some to our drawings. I was SO impressed with the risk-taking I saw. Every student attempted to add some letters to their work. Labeling our drawings is a great first step at learning to become writers.

We practiced using scissors this week to cut out a variety of shapes. This was a bit tricky for some of our kindergarten friends, but with a bit of support, everyone was able to cut out their shapes.

We are beginning to learn about the difference between drawing from our imagination and drawing from something that we can look at, like a photograph. Students were each given a photo of themselves to observe and sketch and worked hard to make their drawings match the photos. I can’t wait for you to come in and see these!

Today for our Early Dismissal day, the afternoon students had a chance to go for a little nature walk in our school field and practice numbers with sidewalk chalk. They were particularly excited about the “worm” (millipede) they discovered.

Our favourite story that we read this week was Pete the Cat, I Love My White Shoes. Students loved singing along with the story. We read it on Monday and they were still singing it today. Pete teaches us that no matter what happens, you just keep walkin’ along and singing your song…because it’s all good. (I encourage you to check it out on YouTube if you don’t have a copy of this book https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiO-xIZxmJE )

Classroom Reminders:

(Sorry, there are a lot this week)

1. We went to the library this week! Students will have the opportunity to sign-out one book per week. Morning students will go to the library every Wednesday. Afternoon students will go on Thursdays. You are welcome to keep your child’s library book for the entire week or return it whenever you feel you are done with it. We will not have an opportunity to go to the library next week due to the school book fair, so you may send them back in your child’s folder any time. We found the back pocket of our folders to be a great place to keep our books safe and sound in our backpacks.

2. If you are interested in ordering anything from the September Scholastic Book Order, please return order forms on Monday.

3. I am looking very forward to meeting with each of you during our interview days next week! Interview appointments are booked online. You can access the link from our school webpage (http://schools.cbe.ab.ca/b205/). Click the blue My CBE Account button on the left hand side of the page. You will need to create an account before you are able to sign-up for an appointment time. I encourage you to do this before booking begins. Please contact the office if you have any difficulty with this. Booking begins on Sept. 19.  It is up to you whether or not you would like to bring your child to our interview time. Students are certainly welcome to attend, however if you have information about your child that you would like to share with me in private, it is perfectly fine to come on your own. Your choice :)

4. To accommodate the many, many interview time slots we will need to meet with everyone, Kindergarten students will not have school on Thursday, Sept. 22 or Friday, Sept. 23. 

Thanks for reading! My apologies for the lengthy post…I promise they won’t all be this long! 

Enjoy the sunshine this weekend!

Miss Roberts

Hello Parents!

We had a wonderful first week of kindergarten! Our first few days together were spent developing routines and exploring our new classroom environment. Students are learning about how to show respect towards others by sharing, taking turns and listening when someone else is communicating their ideas. We spent time learning how to take care of our classroom materials and put things away where they belong.

When we came to school on Thursday, our pet lions, Harry and Larry, had mysteriously gone missing! Luckily, they left us sneaky clues that sent us on an exciting adventure to help us find them. Their clues led us to the office, library, music room, washrooms and the gym. Those tricky lions…what a fun way to explore our new school ;)

On our Early Dismissal Friday, the morning class went outside to learn about how to play safely on our school playground. While we were outside, we practiced writing numbers and drawing pictures with sidewalk chalk.

Thank you for a great first week! We’re going to have a wonderful and exciting year together.

Classroom Reminders:

1. Please return the Kindergarten Contact Info sheet if you have not already done so.

2. Please remember to send your child’s folder to school every day, even if there is nothing inside it. Taking out our folders is one of our important morning routines.

Here are a few fun photos from our first week together...