We Scare Hunger Food Drive

Our annual food drive begins Monday, October 30th and ends Friday, November 3rd.

Items Most Needed

• Powdered laundry soap
• Instant Coffee
• Cereal (hot/cold)
• Pancake Mix/Syrup
• Cookies/Crackers
• Cake Mixes/Icing
• Side Dishes (Rice, Pasta, Potato)
• Dry Soup
• Diapers Size #4, #5, #6 only

Canned Items

• Ham
• Salmon/Fruit/Potatoes
• Chunky Stew/Tomatoes
• Luncheon Meats/Peas
• Pasta i.e. Ravioli
• Soup (Med. & Large)
• Soda Crackers (4 sleeves)

Kids Snacks

• Raisins (small box)
• Rice Krispy Squares

Baby Foods

• Baby Cereal
• Powdered Baby Formula Similac, Good Start, Enfamil +
• Junior/Infant Jars (Fruit/Veg./Meat)
• Biscuits, Cereal

Not Needed Now

• Protein Beans
• Tuna/Soup (small)
• Cranberry Sauce
• Pumpkin Purree

o

Happy Halloween!

Our little ones are super-excited, preparing for the big day. Please join us for the BOO-gie-a-thon on Tuesday morning. The kindergarten classes will be dancing in the gym at 9:00 am.  Students are encouraged to dress up in costume. Please, however, no masks or weapons! If you are planning to send treats for your child's classmates, do send non-perishable items like pencils, erasers or rings. Candy and food are not acceptable and will be sent home.

Dismissal 

If you are picking up your child at the end of the day, please note that children will only be dismissed by their teacher at our class' specified gate only. 

Phonemic Awareness Time (PAT)

Each day before mid-day outdoor play, we have Phonemic Awareness Time, or PAT. Our students have done a great job sounding out items that began with "s" and "a". This week we will focus on items that begin with "t". PAT time provides a number of positive learning opportunities tied to Ontario's Kindergarten Curriculum:

1.1 explores sounds, rhythms, and language structures. with guidance and on their own
1.2 listen and respond to others, both verbally and on-verbally
1.8 ask questions for a variety of purposes
1.9 describe personal experiences, using vocabulary and details appropriate to the situation
1.11 demonstrate an awareness that words can rhyme, begin or end with the same sound, and are composed of phonemes that can be manipulated to create new words

Read-Alouds (October 16-27)

Joey the Jack-O'-Lantern, Janet Craig
The Biggest Pumpkin Ever, Steven Kroll
Bear Feels Scared, Karma Wilson
Llama Llama Mad at Mama, Anna DewdneyThe Rainbow Fish, Marcus Pfister
Franklin's Halloween, Paulette Bourgeois
Pete the Cat I Love My White Shoes, Eric Litwin
Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons, Eric Litwin

Chime In

The 13 Nights of Halloween

by Rebecca Dickinson

(to the tune of The Twelve Days of Christmas)

On the first night of Halloween, my goblin gave to me: a spooky owl in a gnarled tree.

On the second night of Halloween, my goblin gave to me: two hairy toads, 

and a spooky owl in a gnarled tree.

On the third night of Halloween, my goblin gave to me: three jack-o'-lanterns, two hairy toads,

 and a spooky owl in a gnarled tree.

On the fourth night of Halloween, my goblin gave to me: four cackling witches, 

three jack-o'-lanterns, two hairy toads, and a spooky owl in a gnarled tree.

On the fifth night of Halloween, my goblin gave to me: five pounds of worms, four cackling witches, three jack-o'-lanterns, two hairy toads, and a spooky owl in a gnarled tree.

On the sixth night of Halloween, my goblin gave to me: six spiders spinning ....

On the seventh night of Halloween, my goblin gave to me: seven lizards creeping ...

On the eighth night of Halloween, my goblin gave to me: eight werewolves howling ...

On the ninth night of Halloween, my goblin gave to me: nine bats a-flying....

On the tenth night of Halloween, my goblin gave to me: ten skeletons rattling ...

On the eleventh night of Halloween, my goblin gave to me: eleven black cats hissing ...

On the twelfth night of Halloween, my goblin gave to me: twelve vampires nibbling ...

On the thirteenth night of Halloween, my goblin gave to me: thirteen ghosts a-booing ... 

A Short But Busy Week In Room 103! 

Following our long Thanksgiving Weekend, we got back to work!!! And for kindergarten, work=play! Lego, blocks, gears, train tracks, letter construction, cutting, writing, painting, drawing, dinosaurs ... Add to that, fire drills and pizza lunch and we had a perfect week!

Our Classroom Educational Assistants

We are lucky to have support from two amazing educational assistants in our classroom:Mrs. Straka joins us each morning and Mrs. Bucik joins us each afternoon.

Morning Meeting

Each day, following outdoor play, we have a morning meeting at the carpet. The children have assigned carpet spots and the student of the day leads the meeting with the assistance of the teacher.

We sing O Canada and pray (God made the sunshine ...). We then read the morning message. The student of the day is asked to point to each word of the message and read along. Here is a sample message:

Friday, October 13, 2017

Good morning friends!

Today is _______________________. We have pizza day today!  

Let's play with 1 new friend today and remember to show God's love.

Love,

Miss Coulson,

Mrs. Cuggy-Murphy and

Mrs. Straka

The student of the day is given the job of identifying  the day and then writes the day's name, sounding out letters. The message then provides with our class with an opportunity  to develop literacy and numeracy skills. For example we will find and circle all the letter Os in the message and then count them together. The student of the day will practice writing numbers. Following this 10 minute morning meeting our students have a chance to choose play-based table top activities!

Thank You God!

Reflecting on our Thanksgiving holiday, students had an opportunity to think about what they were most thankful for and draw pictures of these special reflective stories. The teachers scribe JKs' stories and encourage SKs to write their stories independently. Here are just some of their reflections:

Thank you for the flowers and the grass and crowns. - Aaniyah

Thank you for the sky, love, an iPad, grass. food, the sun, flowers, my dog, craters from the moon, 

Earth, the planets, Mercury. Olivia

Thank you for ninjas. Thank you for Pokémon. - Leticia

Thank you for the sea monsters that are on the T.V. -Audrey

Reading Connections

One of the most important gifts we can give a child is the love of reading. In Room 103, books are treasures and we encourage our children to treat all books with great care!

Each day after lunch, we have story time. A story is read aloud and children have a chance to make a meaningful connection to the story. The most basic response to a book is "Did you like it/dislike it and why".  We ask children to give a thumbs up or thumbs down and then to tell us what they thought with the prompt, "I liked it because..."

We can make deeper connections to a book. When making a text-to-self connection, children relate the story of their own lives and experiences. They are encouraged to respond with "This reminds me of when I..." In Jamie Lee Curtis' books, Today I Feel Silly and I'm Gonna Like Me, the stories end with questions explicitly inviting children to make a text-to-self connection, "How do you feel today?" and "But enough about me-How about YOU?"

Other stories lend themselves to other connections, text-to-text, text-to-world and text-to-faith. Text-to-text connections help students relate a story to other stories in various media forms (nursery rhymes, stories, movies, television shows) while text-to-world and text-to-faith relate stories to bigger world and spiritual issues.

When reading with your child at home, please take time to invite your child to connect to a book by talking about their response and experiences!

Classroom Read-Alouds (October 10-13)

I Am A Leaf, Jean Marzollo

Leaves, David Ezra Stein

Not a Stick, Antoinette Portis

Today I Feel Silly & Other Moods That Make My Day, Jamie Lee Curtis

I'm Gonna Like Me Letting Off a Little Self-Esteem, Jamie Lee Curtis

Images From Our Tree Inquiry

Our Tree Inquiry Continues ...

Our class voted to name our injured tree "Katie". This was the first democratic experience for some of our kindies and they learned to vote only once. We counted each vote using tallies, and Katie won with seven votes!

We learned how plants breath by conducting this simple experiment posted on kcedventures.com:

Learn how plants breathe with this easy outdoor science activity that makes the invisible visible!

I just realized that we haven't shared many Simple Science Experiments lately.

Our goal with Simple Science activities is to provide you with quick & easy ideas that help kids explore science! 

Most of these require very few items (many of which are found around your home) and can be set up in less than 5 minutes. If you'd like to introduce your child to science, these experiements are the perfect place to begin!

For today's Simple Science experiment, we're going to head outdoors and learn how leaves breathe!

All you'll need is a bowl of water and a leaf!

Exploring How Plants & Trees Breathe

Even though we chose to use a tree leaf, you can also conduct this experiment using a leaf from a plant -- the important step is including an ACTIVE leaf (meaning one that you remove from the tree or plant).

Step 1:  Fill a large bowl with lukewarm water

You can use a glass or plastic bowl (personally, I like glass bowls better as you'll be able to see the experiment from all angles however you will probably have the bowl outside so you may want to use plastic).

If you're replicating this experiment in the classroom, a large size beaker would also work -- in fact, you can extend the experiment by measuring the amount of water you use to cover the leaf to see if that has any impact on the results!

I have not tried this experiment with a metal bowl so if you do, leave me a note and let me know how it turns out!

Step 2:  Head outside and find a large leaf

You'll want to remove a leaf from a tree or plant and not just pick one up off the ground as we want an 'active' leaf for the project.

If you'd like to, have some fun with art & science by making a leaf rubbing before you go to the next step!

Step 3:  Place the leaf in the bowl of water and put a small rock on top of it so it is FULLY submerged under the water

Then put the bowl in a sunny spot.

As you can see, this is really the benefit of using a glass bowl -- you can be sure your entire leaf is underwater.

If you have a place inside that's super sunny, you can also try keeping the bowl there.

Step 4:  WAIT!

Oh yea, did I mention that now we need to wait a few hours ;)

I know -- one of the hardest things for kids.  So go on with your day -- maybe set the experiment up before lunch or quiet time.  Or your kids can get it ready before they head off to school or the park and it will be waiting for them when they come back.

Step 5:  Take a peek a few hours later

What you should be seeing is small bubbles that form around the leaf and the edges of the bowl.  These are easy to see with the naked eye but having a large magnifying glass on hand always makes an experiment feel more scienc-y ;)

Ask your kids what would happen if they held their breath, went underwater in the pool and then let their breath out -- they would see bubbles coming up in the water.

That's what they are seeing here -- the leaf is still using the sunlight as part of the photosynthesis process (where leaves convert sunlight to energy). 

As a leaf creates that energy, it needs to get rid of the items it no longer needs so it will expel both the extra oxygen during  photosysthesis along with water (the release of water from a plant is called transpiration). 

The process of photosynthesis is what allows us to see the bubbles -- as the leaf releases its' extra oxygen while submerged, the oxygen can be seen as bubbles in the water.

And since oxygen is lighter than water, the bubbles will eventually rise to the surface.

We discovered that the leaf had bubbles on it in the sunny afternoons!

Classroom Read-Alouds (October 2-5)

Thank you God for Everything,  August Gold

More Pies, Robert Munsch

Thanks for Thanksgiving, Heather Patterson

Chime-In 

Classroom Poems, Songs and Chants

Five Little Turkeys

Five little turkeys, standing at the door,

One waddled off, and then there were four.

Four little turkeys sitting near a tree,

One waddled off, and then there were three.

Three little turkeys with nothing to do,

One waddled off, and then there were two.

Two little turkeys in the morning sun,

One waddled off, and then there was one.

One little turkey better run away,

For soon it will be Thanksgiving Day.

Scarecrow, Scarecrow

Scarecrow, scarecrow, turn around

Scarecrow, scarecrow, touch the ground.

Stand up tall and blink your eyes

Raise your hands to the sky.

Clap your hands, then tap your knees,

Turn around, and tap your feet.

Scarecrow, scarecrow, touch your toes

Scarecrow, scarecrow tap your nose.

Swing your arms so very slow,

Now real fast to scare the crows!

Turn your head, jump up and down,

Now sit down without a sound.

Tree Inquiry

This last week our class has launched a tree inquiry.
It began with a broken tree branch ...

How To Fix A Tree

The children in our class noticed a tree in the playground that had a broken branch.
They were concerned that the tree wouldn't be able to grow any bigger because the
branch was broken.

To further investigate we came up with the question "How can we fix a tree?".
The children came up with many great answers. They drew detailed pictures
with different ways in which to tree branch can be fixed.

The children made many great connections throughout our investigation.
"Guess what! Trees are just like people. They get broken branches just like
people. They get broken branches just like people get broken bones!" (Kai)

In order to continue the children's exploration, we are going to make homemade
casts. Through trial and error we will decide what works and what doesn't work to
fix the branch.

Here are some of ideas about how to fix the branch:
- Put on some glue. Let it dry. It will stick.
- We can tape it.
- We can make a pretend cast!
- Plant more trees (and then we can attach all the trees together)
-We can give it water to help it grow!
-We can make a longer branch.
-Get a piece of string and tie it to the branch.


This led to what we know about trees and what we would like to know ...

We Know

Trees give us paper. - Alexandria
Leaves change colour. - Kamryn
Trees grow from seeds and water. - Olivia
Trees have roots. - Aaniyah

We Wonder

How do you water a tree the right way? - Alexandria
Why did the tree branch break" - Kai
What kind of food do they need? - Audrey
Why do leaves change colours? - Evelyn
Why do trees need water? - Olivia

We Research

We research using a variety of tools ... books, websites, and hands-on experiments! Stay tuned to learn about our classroom findings and if we have been able to repair our playground tree!

Classroom Read-Alouds (September 26-29)

The Tree - Dana Lyons
When Stella Was Very, Very Small - Marie-Louise Gay
How to Mend a Heart - Sara Gillingham
Up Up Down - Robert Munsch

Upcoming Dates

October 5 - Scholastic Book Orders Due
October 6 - PA Day - No School for Students
October 9 - Happy Thanksgiving! No School
October 10 - Milk Program Begins (for those who have pre-ordered milk)
October 13 - Pizza Treat Lunch (for those who have pre-ordered pizza)
October 27 - Pizza Treat Lunch
October 31 - Halloween Boogie-a-Thon  - School Gymnasium  - 9:00 am to 2:45 pm