Mother's Day Celebration

 

The student's continue to work hard preparing for the Mother's Day Celebration. If your child attends Kindergarten in the afternoon, if you could drop them off in the Kindergarten room at about 10:25 and then you can go to the gym and find the spot where you are to sit. Due to the fact that I am having both classes together this year your younger child may have to sit on your knee.

 

Mr. Hawkey will not be available this year to take your photo with your child. However, Mrs. M has graciously offered to do so.

 

The snack this year will consist of homemade chocolate chip cookies and lemonade.

 

 

All the students will leave at about 11:20 and then the afternoon students will return for their regular instruction at 12:50. This will give me time to tidy up the gym, get the classroom ready for the afternoon students and hopefully have a few minutes to have a bit of lunch.

 

The students are very excited about the Mother's Day Celebration. The songs and dance that they will be performing are their choice. Only the poem and another little secret is related to Mother's Day. The songs and dance are their very favourite and their requests.

Rankin Cancer Run

 

Once again this year I plan to do the Rankin Cancer Run and hope many of my Kindergarten students and their families will join me. There is a bus that will pick us up at Meadowvale School so you won't have to worry about parking. The date for the Rankin Cancer Run is set for Saturday, May 24, 2014.

 

The Rankin Run is clearly focused on funding immediate cancer care, for all cancers, and all for the Niagara Region. The community joins together to raise funds while we honour and continue to be inspired by those whose lives are touched by cancer.

I encouraged you to walk or run, 1 km or 5 km. Together, we are making a difference!

 

You have a number of registration options. You may register online. Pre-register from 1-9 pm on Thursday, May 22 at the Grantham Lions Club on the corner of Niagara St. and Parnell Rd. Register by sending your completed form into the school with your child, or you may register the morning of the run. The registration table will open at 8 am at the Grantham Lions Club, 732 Niagara Street, St. Catharines. Come early as traffic will be heavy in the area. Let's have a huge number of participants since it will be Meadowvale's last year of participation!



Structures

 

What can structures look like in Kindergarten? First you require a variety of sizes and shapes of wooden blocks.Then you need to have some determined five and six year old's who work well as a team, share the materials well and listen to each other's ideas and suggestions. Next you need some students who have been focused and shared their thinking about various structures, stability and supports. Finally the students need to be risk takers, eager to try a number of ideas, and patient when the result does not work out well. Lastly, the students must be able to think, plan, follow through with the plan and attempt new ideas when things don't work out as planned. When you have all these elements in place the results are overwhelming!

 

 

 

 

All these were created in one afternoon by four boys. As you can see these structures are evidence of learning about shapes, design, supports, stability and lots of team work and rich language communication. All the learning will prepare these boys for the other learning opportunities. All this learning took place in a play based Kindergarten program. 



Mathematics

 

The SK students will continue to be challenged in the area of problem solving. One of the problems for next week will be: At the farm there were 3 pigs and 2 chickens. How many legs were there altogether at the farm?

 

The SK and the JK will also be challenged to show what they know about the number 7 and the number 8. This is where they can show the number by drawing something to represent the number, show the number through addition or subtraction, or show the number on a rekenrek or a ten frame.

 

The students will also be introduced to some of the three dimensional figures. At one of the centres they will have an opportunity to make some of the figures and to use some of the figures in the construction area (block centre). 

Language

 

Most of the Kindergarten By Heart Words have been learned. Each day we review five of these words by playing the game "Find the Word". Volunteer students find the word stated by the teacher. They find the word, point to the word and tell the rest of the class the letters in the word. Sometimes I print the word on the whiteboard to help some of the students. Due to the fact that many of the students are showing a keen interest in reading and writing, I have decided to add words that they often come upon in their reading and writing. So this week the By Heart Words are, "this" and "her".

 

 

The Jolly Phonic sound for this week is the "e" sound. The students often experience difficulty with the short vowel sounds because they sound very similar.

Some of the words for the short e sound are: hen, pen, red, pest, pet, end, set, men, elf, fed, den, neck, met, test, get, leg, wet, well, yes, and hem. 

 

 



May Calendar

 

The May Kindergarten Calendar is ready for you to print out. On the calendar you will see Friday, May 9th there will be a Mother's Day Celebration. The children will be bringing a letter home explaining the celebration in more detail. I realize that many Mother's have to work but perhaps a grandmother or aunt could come in your place.

 

This year because there are only 15 students in the morning and 13 in the afternoon, I have decided to have the celebration in the morning, in the gym from 10:30 to 11:10. The afternoon students will still have the afternoon program. I have made this decision because I have learned the children will perform better in larger numbers, rather than smaller numbers. The letter explains things in more detail. If you have any questions after reading the l

Building in Kindergarten

 

The construction area of the Kindergarten room is always very busy. Both boys and girls enjoy working at this particular centre. The construction area (block area) assists to develop many of the student's social abilities because they learn to work as a team, they learn to listen to each other's design ideas, suggestions, it builds on their self-confidence, and they take what they know about the real world and implement it into their play situations.

I think we may have some future engineers or architects by looking at some of these designs and creations. This is a castle hotel in the background and you will notice there is a tunnel and roadway leading up to the castle hotel.

 

I placed a picture of Meadowvale School up on the rad, along with other buildings and bridges. The students took the photo of Meadowvale School and designed their building to look like it. They made the sign for the school and even included the parking lot and walkway up to the school. They explained there is no roof because they did not have enough of the longer blocks. More blocks will be ordered for the students to use next year.