This past week we continued to build our friendships, tweak our routines, and explore the forest areas. We have such an amazing group of kids and they make our days fly by with so much learning and fun!
We quietly listened to nature's music, picking our the blue jays, chickadees, crows, tree frogs, and so much more. We used our scientist's eyes and noticed the different colours of birds and trees, compared evergreen trees with deciduous trees, spotted some minnows in the stream, talked about how shadows are formed depending on the position of the sun, and also about milkweed and cattails. We discovered that cattails grow near and in water, nature's way of telling us to be careful around these areas. Why not practice letter printing in the sand while we are out!
Quite often, we will take our lunches with us on our forest explorations and sit down for a picnic! Thank you so much for providing nutritious and litter free lunches. Part of the kindergarten curriculum is to teach the children about healthy foods and how to determine what makes them healthy. We have been teaching the children that the closer a food is to its source, the healthy it is for them and the less processed it is. During our day, we have three big eating times and the children are aware that we start with healthy foods first. They are keen to pick out and demonstrate their knowledge by showing us their healthy start!
Our students are top in creating the least amount of packaged food waste in the school too! Bravo, les amis !!!
Inside the classroom, the children are engaged in all sorts of activities and have begun drawing self-portraits in the journal. We have a Etoile de la semaine (Star of the Week) who is responsible for creating a poster about all the things that they enjoy doing, along with bringing in items that start with the weekly letter.
We have started practicing our letter printing with both the JK's and SK's. Their printing page will be sent home and on the back of the SK page you will find the sentences and some words that we have been learning. You may also wish to practice with your child and if you would like have them demonstrate their printing skills.
Under the "Blog" tab, I have put the letters that we are learning along with the poem and some of the words that begin with that letter. This week we will be focussing on the letter "T".
As you can see, our learning is greatly extended with outdoor forest play! Please dress your child in layers, as we will continue to spend much of our day outside. And we do all year long! It is also so much fun to play in the rain, so please send in rain gear (e.g., boots, splash pants, and a rain jacket) on those rainy days, along with extra socks! Merci !
What will this week bring?
Housekeeping
Please label all of your child's articles. It is so much easier to find the rightful owner, if we can quickly identify their things.
Please refrain from allowing your child to bring in home toys. It can be quite upsetting to them if they get lost. We have a lot of toys and learning manipulatives in the classroom and it is easy to get them confused. Lastly, it prevents children from wanting to run back and forth to their knapsacks or bring them to the carpet during instructional time.
A big thank you for always sending in an email to let us know when your child will be away, late, or needs to be picked up early. Merci !
Yes, we had a wasp infestation in our classroom and had to evacuate this past week. The problem has since been rectified!
Have a wonderful day!