Witches' Brew

As part of our Halloween activities on Friday, the children will be having the opportunity to participate in making  and tasting "Witches Brew"- aka pumpkin soup. If you have any concerns about this, please let us know.

Weekly Update- October 20- 24

News Items:

Check your child's note tote for songs in French that we have been singing in class!
Thursday: We will be away today for the first part of our 'Reaching In, Reaching Out' resiliency building training (we sent home a note about this earlier in the month).
Friday: Halloween! Your child is invited to come in costume but please no treats, 'weapons' or props with costumes that may get lost. Thanks!

**OPEN HOUSES:**
We would like to invite you to our first Room 20 Open House on Tuesday November 18th at 9:30. We would love for you to join us in the classroom and see what we are working on and how the day normally flows. In order to keep up our routines, we will have parents drop off the students in the kinder yard and give us a few minutes to come in and get settled. Then, parents are welcome to come in, browse, observe and participate!

We will have open houses once a month on the following dates:

Tuesday Dec. 2 afternoon

Tuesday January 13 morning

Thursday Feb 19 afternoon.

Hope to see many of you then!

Inquiries:

We are still interested in ocean life but this week we may have a strong focus on Halloween! The students were all starting to get excited this week for the upcoming holiday and asking to do Halloween crafts and activities. We will be turning the dramatic play center into a treak or treating and treat sorting and tallying center, equipped with a door and doorbell, "treats" (Halloween knick knacks), costumes, a mask making station and sorting and tallying equipment.

What We're Working On:

In math our focus this week will be on numeracy, more specifically on skip counting by 2s and 5s. If you would like to practice this at home that would be great! Our literacy focus will be on initial sounds of words in French.

Home Connection:
Please note that we will be putting a temporary pause on our sharing times. While we love having the kids share items of great importance to them or that have a connection with the inquiries we are exploring in class, there is an overwhelming amount of items sent in and unfortunately, this is causing conflict between the students and there are often disappointed and upset little monkeys who want to share that day and have to wait until the following days. We will be starting up show and tell in a more focused way in the coming months where we will send home a "script" to help guide the show and tell presentations. Sorry for any inconvenience and thank you for your support with this!

Some of you have been asking about the yoga videos the students are watching in class. Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/user/CosmicKidsYoga

 Our whole classroom has been turned into a yoga studio a couple times a week. The students have even made their own yoga mats! It is impressive to see!

Have a wonderful fall weekend with your kiddos!

A delayed update :)

News Items:

Check your child's note tote for songs in French that we have been singing in class!
Our library time may be changing due to immunizations in the library on Wednesday. Please return the books as usual and we will send home new library books Wednesday or Thursday depending on the change.

Inquiries:

We are still very interested in ocean life and under sea creatures. We have been watching interesting videos by Jonathan Bird while we eat lunch and the kiddos love them! If you would like to check it out, click on this link: www.blueworldtv.com .

What We're Working On:

In math our focus this week will be on reviewing what we have learned so far. We feel it is important to go back and review the various math concepts we have been working on to reinforce our learning and assess where the students are at. Our literacy focus will be on upper and lower case letters and the importance of using an upper case letter at the beginning of a name or start of a sentence and lower case letters everywhere else. Our outdoor centres will be include gardening, an outdoor kitchen center, an active game, reading center, making sound patterns with instruments and more!

Home Connection:
Please note that the system we created where three students a day share their items is working well but a few students seem to be sharing very frequently and others are unable to "sign up" in time to share their items. We are now keeping track of who shares when in order to give equal opportunity to all our students. If your child has a special item related to the inquiry we are exploring in class, they are still welcome to bring it in to share but please try to encourage them to think critically about which item they would like to share and help explain the importance of allowing others to share as well.

Also, if you have time, please work on having your child write their name and other peoples' names using lower case letters! Remember that name practice doesn't have to be done with a paper and pencil... Here are some fun ways to practice this even with less than willing young people ;)

Library

There was some confusion today regarding our library time stemming from the recent PD day and we missed out scheduled time. For this week only, we will go to the library on Friday. Our normal day of Wednesdays will resume next week.

Oceans Shared Reading

This past week in English literacy we did many literacy-based reading activities using the shared reading called Ocean. A shared reading is a large print song or poem in poster form read together and used to practice different reading skills. A copy of Oceans has been placed in your child's not wrote duo tang as well as an explanation of some of the activities we did so that you can recreate them at home. Enjoy your extra long weekend!

Reminder

Don't forget that today is spirit day! We encourage all of our students to wear red, black and white!

Spirit Day Thursday

We wanted to write a quick note to tell all of you that this Thursday, October 9, is a Broadview Spirit Day. For this day, student council is asking all students wear Broadview colours: black, red and white. Recognition will be awarded to classes with the highest participation rate.

Weekly Update #4

News Items:

This week is a four day school week. Friday is a PD Day and there is no school for students. Monday October 13th is also a holiday. 

Inquiries:

At the end of last week we started to be very interested in ocean life and under sea creatures. We will be following the students' lead this week coming up and learning about the ocean, ocean animals, and sea shells and coral. 

What We're Working On:

In math our focus this week will be on shapes and patterning. We will start by working on simple ABAB patterns and work our way up to more complicated ones. Our literacy focus will be on letter recognition and sounds of letters, as well as letter formation an writing simple words around the room. Our outdoor centres will be super fun and will include a pattern obstacle course, leaf patterning, pumpkins and gourds floating in our sensory bin, gardening and leaf collection.

Home Connection:

If your child wants to bring in some sea shells or other ocean related items to share, please encourage them to do so. Please note that we have created a system that three students a day will share their items and if we have more "sharings", we will ask some students to share the following day or we will ask them to leave their items at re science centre to be viewed and explored by their classmates. 

Some parents have been asking for the Rock Cookie recipe that Mrs. Steeves made with the kiddos last week. Here it is!

3/4 cup butter, softened

1cup powdered sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla 

1 tsp almond extract 

2 1/4 cups of flour 

1/4 tsp salt 

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375F. Mix all ingredients together until the dough is well incorporated. Form into rock shapes. (Makes about 8 3-4" cookies)

Bake on greased cookie sheet for 10 mins or until they begin to brown. Remove from the oven and cool completely. 

Combine 1 cup powdered sugar, 1 tbsp mill, 1drop black food coloring, and a tiny drop of green food coloring together until you have reached your desired consistency. Using a basting brush, paint glaze onto cookies until evenly spread. 

Enjoy eating rocks! :)

Have a wonderful week and enjoy the long weekend! Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate it!