Thank You

It seems the year has just flown by, but here we are entering the last day of school tomorrow.  I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your support throughout the school year. Each and every student has experienced such amazing accomplishments. You need to be so proud of their openness to learn and their determination-I certainly are!!!!!

Wishing you a safe and fun filled summer. This blog is now officially closed for the summer, hope it gave you some insight into the wonderful year we had in Kindergarten.  he blog will be up and running again after the first week of school. This will give me an opportunity to get the emails of the new children coming to Meadowvale. There will be a few new SK children in the morning and one or two in the afternoon.

Thanks again for everything!

Last Week of School

 

This had to be one of the quickest school years I have ever experienced. It is so hard to believe this will be the last week of school. This is a very busy week for the children and myself.

 

While doing some errands today, I visited a Kindergarten teacher's favourite stores, Dollarama. There in the store I found salad spinners and had to pick up two of them. No, the children will not be making salad with them. My idea is to place a piece of paper in the bottom of the spinner and then put a few dots of different coloured paints. The children can spin the salad maker and hopefully they will have some wonderful creations. I also picked up a few toothbrushes and thought they could paint with toothbrushes for a different experience.

 

 

Tuesday, June 25th

 

The afternoon children will have an opportunity to share some of their stories they have created with their parents. The afternoon parents are invited into the gym where your child will sit with you and read their stories to you. If your child is JK, you may have to read their story because they may have forgotten what their story was about. However, all the children have been told they are authors and wonderful writers.

 

It is only for the afternoon children because that is when the grade 1/2 and 2/3 classes booked the gym. Otherwise in the morning the gym was booked for some of the other classes. All the children, (both morning and afternoon) will be bringing home all their stories and writing samples in their special envelopes. Please be sure to celebrate their writing success and praise all his/her accomplishments.

 

 

Wednesday, June 26

 

SK Farewell to Kindergarten Celebration. The morning celebration is in the Library, where parents are asked to gather when the bell rings. The celebration will begin right after announcements, approximately 9:00 a.m. The afternoon SK celebration will also take place in the Library and parents are asked to gather there as soon as the bell rings.

 

The children will sing a song, do a small chant, and an exercise movement (this is their favourite). At some point Mr. Hawkey will read the children a story. Mrs. Foote will say something about each SK child (answers to interview questions). Then each child will come forward to receive their individual certificate. Then the children will have some a glass of water and fruit.

 

 

Thursday, June 27

 

 

This is the last day of school for the children. This will be a very happy time for the children and a sad time for me. I wish to take this opportunity to thank all the Kindergarten parents for trusting your child to me over the past ten months. This has been a wonderful experience for me and I have many special moments that I treasure. It has been wonderful to see how the children have grown physically, emotionally, and academically.

 

 



End of the Year Trip

 

 

Just a reminder, Tuesday, June 18 is the end of the year trip for both the morning and afternoon Kindergarten classes. I am recommending all parents please have your child to school this morning by 8:50 when the morning bell rings. I need to do attendance before we leave and I want all the children and volunteers to be on the bus by 9:00 a.m. sharp. Please remember this is an all day event. The children will be boarding the bus to return back to Meadowvale at 2:00 p.m.

 

 

Volunteers and children please dress appropriately for the weather conditions. I suggest all the children wear running shoes for this particular trip. The children will need to have a morning snack and a lunch, which can be placed inside their backpacks.

 

 

The children and I are really excited about the trip. The forecast is to be wonderful on that day (fingers crossed). That evening is the Grade 6 Graduation, so it is a very busy, but fun day.

Mathematics

 

 

Continuation with addition and subtraction. The addition is easier for the children, so I have a couple of new addition activities, which will be set out as centre activities.  Subtraction is more difficult so once again this will mainly be completed during large group activities as a finger play activity, where one or two of the children will leave the group and the rest of the children will tell how many are left. I mainly want the children to see with addition the answer becomes bigger and with subtraction the answer becomes smaller.

 

In order to assist the children to understand the concept of some numbers are bigger than others. I have purchased a couple of decks of playing cards. I removed all the Aces, Kings, Queens and Jacks. The cards are placed faced down and one child chooses a card and places it in front  of them and the partner chooses a card and does the same. The player with the higher number takes both cards. At the end of the game the player with the most cards wins the game. Next time the winner will be the player with the smallest number. This will assist to increase the children's understanding numbers that are bigger and smaller.

Language

 

The reading comprehension strategy continues to be Visualization. Due to being so busy for Father's Day ideas last week, the children did not have time to work on visualizations. However, this week the children will once again listen to a poem and draw the pictures they create in their head while listening to the poem.

 

 

Review of the jolly phonic sound "l". The action for this sound is the children pretend they are licking a lollipop or an ice cream cone.

 

 

I am amazed how many of the JK children are showing a keen interest in reading. Most of the books they are choosing are simple repeated text, but this is a huge step for them. The first goal to being a good reader is for a child to see himself/herself as a reader.

 

If your child is a JK and he/she does not know all the letters of the alphabet, I recommend playing some free app games on the ipad. If you do not have an ipad then here are a few suggestions:

 

Start with the uppercase letters,

 

Play a game of fish but make your own alphabet cards.

 

Cut out letters from sandpaper and have your child state the letter and trace around the formation of the specific letter.

 

Have your child trace the letters in rice or sand that is placed inside a small pencil box.

 

 

Have your child match uppercase letters with the lowercase letters.

 

 

Doing some of these activities during the summer will prepare them for Senior Kindergarten.

Heartland Forest Trip

 

 

It seems so long ago that I booked our end of the year trip and now it is quickly approaching. On Monday, your child will be bringing home a permission form. The school has agreed to pay the cost of the bus and the trip for all the Kindergarten children. Heartland Forest does not limit the number of parent volunteers, however, there is a cost of $2.00 per parent, which is up to each volunteer to pay. Due to the number of seats on the bus we are limited to a total of 18 parents. So unfortunately I will have to have a lottery if we have more than 18 parents who wish to volunteer. Just a reminder this is an all day trip and both the morning and afternoon classes will be participating. The bus will be leaving Meadowvale at 9:00 a.m. sharp and then we will be leaving Heartland Forest at 2:00 p.m. I remind all parents to be sure to have your child dress appropriately for the weather conditions. If it rains we will still go because the coordinator of the trip advised me they would change up the activities and we would do everything under the pavilion. We must think positive and believe it will be a wonderful day!

Language

 

All the By Heart Words are on the chart now. Many of the children know the words and are able to find the word to assist them when they are writing. I have tested the SK children on the words and there are only a few children who continue to experience difficulty with the words. These children continue to attempt to sound these words out. I urge all parents to make sure you continue to practise these words during the summer in order to further building upon your child's reading and writing. Practising these words once a week will assist to foster your SK child's confidence as he/she transitions into a more rigorous grade one program this fall.

 

 

The jolly phonic sound is the "f" sound. The following are some of the words we will be learning:

fat, for, fan, fin, fill, fit, flip, fun, fog, flag, flap, from, flat, frog, fork, fish.

 

 

Reading Comprehension Strategy

 

We will continue with the strategy visualization. The children did an amazing job on the illustrations for their visualizations of the Poem Ding-A-Ling poem.

This week the children will be using another poem to create their visualizations, which they will illustrate.  

Discovery (Science) Centre

 

This week I have created some smelly containers that have various things inside. The children will open the lid of the container and decide if it is a good smell or a bad smell and sort the containers into the appropriate group. I will be asking the children to try to guess what is in the containers. Please do not be alarmed, there is nothing in the containers that will harm the children nor is anything a revolting smell.  

Mathematics

 

 

This week the children will finish up with a few activities with addition and subtraction. The JK will be doing with no more than the number 5 and SK for no more than 10.

 

After this we will be going back and doing some patterning since we have not done that for awhile. The children love patterning and really enjoy challenging themselves to create and continue harder and harder patterns. For example, AABBC  AABBC

 

In Kindergarten the emphasis is mostly on repeating patterns. In grade one the children will review repeating patterns and then go into growing patterns. These are a little more challenging and that is why they do not occur until grade one.

Creativity

 

One of the most important gifts that teachers and parents can learn from young children is that time has no limits. As adults we are overpowered by rushing here and there and getting one task completed quickly so we can move onto the next. However, if you step by and truly watch your young child you will be amazed at what they can accomplish if there are not rushed. Whether it be working with Lego, large building blocks, a 60 piece puzzle or creatively designing a painting or some other kind of picture. A young child who takes their time will create something that is unique and very creatively and thoughtfully completed. I was sent a youtube video about Creativity Requires Time and had to share it with all the Kindergarten Parents. I hope you enjoy the message as much as I did and it reafirms my beliefs about creativity and children!

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPbjSnZnWP0

Language

 

The reading strategy we will focus on for the next two weeks is Visualization. As adults, when we are reading we are constantly making pictures in our head regarding what the characters look like and the setting and other pictures. Young children need to learn how to do this, so when they are older and there are no pictures in the books they are reading they will be successful at creating the visualizations by using the words described by the author.

 

 

When I taught grade one, I always found the children were more successful  and easier to make visualizations using a poem. The children have had some practise with this strategy by making pictures of what they visualized using some of the words from the poem. This will be a learning centre and the children will work with me or a volunteer in a very small group.

 

 

The By Heart Word for this week is:  by. The SK children who practise these words are the most successful in their reading and their writing. I encourage all the SK parents to continue to practise these words with your child once a week during the summer. Make it fun by playing fish.

 

The Jolly phonics sound will be the "g" sound. The children sometimes get the "g" and the "j" sound confused. So this is a good time to review this sound again.

Mathematics   Subtraction

 

The children will be introduced to subtraction. I plan to do this first through fingerplays and the choose children to act it out. A great song we will use is 10 in the bed. I want the children to notice when we subtract one number from another number the number becomes smaller. After a few days of acting it out during large group time, the children will have a subtraction station with a few different games between this week and next week. At this time I am looking for parents to donate egg cartons to me. I would love to have four or five of them and need them for this week.

 

I found this link on the internet for early counting, addition and subtraction. It appears to be something most of the children could do with some adult assistance.

 

http://www.smartygames.com/igre/math/preKMath.html