Buddy Time!

Today started off with 2 kids wanting to paint.  Well, 2 turned into about 12!  This was a lovely way to start a Monday morning.  The painting kids were able to ease into the classroom environment, chatting and creating.  Which made the carpet area less crowded and allowed the building kids lots of materials and room to build.  Some moved between painting and building, while others spent time really exploring their activity of choice.  We didn't manage to get the finished masterpieces into home envelopes today, they should be coming home tomorrow.

 As part of our Terry Fox Run "campaign", it was decided that if we reached $500 Mrs McKay would have to dress up.  What a good sport she is!!  We also earned an extra recess that we enjoyed this afternoon in the sunshine!

After recess, we got together with our buddy class (Mrs. Mitchell's Grade 3s) and did an art activity together.  The Grade 3s taught us an activity that they had already done.  We worked with oil pastels and created some beautiful fall leaf pictures.  Half of the group worked in our classroom and the other half went to Mrs. Mitchell's classroom (unfortunately, I was only able to take photos of the kids who were here with me).  We plan to work with our buddy class every month.  

As we finished our art activity, we did some reading with our new friends.

I will be at a meeting again in the morning and back at lunch.  The kids will have a teacher on call until I am back.  

See you in the afternoon!

Happy Friday!

A glimpse into our day….some of the joys of Kindergarten

such focused concentration, working methodically to create a masterpiece

discussing where things should go, working collaboratively towards a common goal

Today's Special Helper was eager to get her duties underway!

great conversations about how to proceed with plans

imaginative play…building a wood pile and then chopping wood for the fire

working with a variety of different three dimensional shapes: balancing, building and sliding

a very stable tower build through trial and error…notice that the base of the tower is made of larger pieces (learning about structures)

building a beehive, talking about how the things that bees do

the finished creation, one last picture before breaking it apart and starting again

lots of sharing and conversation at the Lego centre this afternoon

We added shells to our light table today and made many comparisons to other objects.  The shells were sorted and ordered by size.  the light shining through showed us the structure of the shells clearly.  

Have a wonderful weekend!  We are going to work with our Grade 3 buddy class on Monday.  Stay tuned for some photos of our time together….

Photos, Cupcakes and Cleaner-Uppers!

The next two photos are not all that exciting, other than to remind you that the proofs of the individual photos came home today.  Any orders are due back to me by Oct. 9, which is next Friday.  

This photo is about retakes (I know you can't read it here, so I'll explain how it works…).  If you are not happy with your child's photo, they can have retakes.  Please bring the order package back to me and indicate (clearly please) that you wish for your child to have retakes and I will send the package with him/her to the photographer on retake day.  I do not yet know the date for retakes.  You can contact the school office for more information.  

We celebrated 2 birthdays today.  One student had his birthday today and another is going to be turning 5 tomorrow (but won't be at school to celebrate).  We had some cupcakes in the sun and then we had some outside play time.

Here's the birthday boy!

This might be a good time to let you know about birthdays.  The Primary Team of Teachers at Brooksbank decided that we would come up with a consistent plan concerning the delivery of birthday invitations.  If you are planning on inviting the whole class, you can bring the invitations in and you can put them into kids' home envelopes.  The same goes if you are planning on inviting all the girls or all the boys.  If, however, you are planning on inviting some of the kids in the class, please do so away from the school/classroom.  It can be hard for some kids to understand that sometimes some kids are invited and others are not, especially when you are amongst the latter group.  Thanks for your understanding with this.

Birthday treats are often something I get questions about too.  Birthday treats are lovely and the kids really enjoy and appreciate them.  I ask that they be small and easily eaten.  I am unable to cut cakes during the day, so cupcakes/rice krispee squares/cookies work the best.  Healthier choices are great too, but again, something that is easy to hand out to 22 students works best.  I will often leave the treats until the end of the day, or we may have them right before an outside break time.

Finally, I wanted to share these two photos.  At the end of the day, we play in centres and there is often quite a lot to clean up.  These two kids went above and beyond today.  One student tucked in all the chairs without being asked and the other cleaned the house centre up with such care.  I told them how proud I was of them and that I wanted everyone to know!