Newsletter 10/8/19

 Reminders and Upcoming Important Dates:

October 11th - Indigenous People's Day- NO SCHOOL October 12th- Teacher In-Service- NO SCHOOL for Students

COVID testing happened on Thursday. The results will be emailed to the email address you provided.

School PIctures- will be sent home as soon as we get them back. (And, I believe there will be a retake day for those who were absent on Picture Day.)

FIRE SAFETY

As part of fire safety in the month of October, the kindergartners met with two firefighters on Tuesday (and best of all, got to check out their fire truck!) Ask your child if it was a pumper or a ladder truck? (It was a pumper truck. The ladder truck is kept at the Elliott Street station.) 

 

The firefighters asked if you could please help your child learn and practice their address if they ever need to call 911 for an emergency and to decide upon a meeting place for your family in the event of a fire.  At school our class has practiced what to do when the fire alarm goes off- stop what you are doing, quietly line up, go outside to our meeting place on the playground and wait for the principals or fire fighters to give us directions. We have a primary exit and a secondary exit to leave our classroom.

APPLES

It's apple season! The kindergartners have been learning about the life cycle of an apple tree through the seasons of the year. Ask your kindergartner why bees are important (they pollinate the blossoms so that the baby apples can start to grow!) The kindergartners enjoyed making "apple cookies" - thanks to Shane's mom (you will find the recipe in your child's green folder) and they enjoyed eating "apple vampires" thanks to Bryson's mom!

LITERACY

This week we began our reading and spelling program called Fundations. Fundations is an explicit and systematic approach to teaching reading and spelling with phonics. We combine Fundations with reading of good literature, phonemic awareness instruction (the ability to understand that spoken words are made up of individual sounds called phonemes), and lots of opportunities for speaking and listening throughout the kindergarten day. There is a more detailed letter about Fundations enclosed in your child's green folder. If you hear about an owl visiting our classroom, that was "Echo" the snowy owl puppet who helps with the kindergartners' literacy learning!

MATH

In math, the kindergartners have been working on touching and counting groups of objects to find out how many there are and are there enough? You can support this work at home by giving your child a group of objects (for example, the plates on the table) and asking:

How many are there? 

How did you count them? 

Why did you count them that way? 

Is there enough for everyone in the house?

Ask your child, how they kept track of the items they have counted from the objects they still need to count. Did they line them up?  Did they move them over as they counted?