The Last Week of School

* Monday: Please return all Dovercourt Play Day forms and fees.

* Tuesday: Dovercourt Play Day! Please send a drink as well as the regular snack and please dress your child for the weather. If it is raining we will go Thursday.

* Wednesday: Kindergarten Leaving Ceremony: 10 am for morning class, 2pm for afternoon class.

* Thursday: Last day of School! Please pop in and have a look at the lost and found box in our room if you haven't had a chance.

* Friday: PD day. No school for the children. Teachers have meetings and clean up classroom before   SUMMER HOLIDAYS!!!

          Have a wonderful summer, everyone, and thank you all for a great year.

Silent Tribute to the Retiring Mr. Davies

Mr. Davies is retiring and does not want any fuss made over this. We would like to respect this, but still honour him, so the idea has been put forward to have the whole school wear a tie to mark the occasion of his retirement. The date for the Tie Wearing is Tuesday, June 26th, which is also Play Day. I suggest we all wear a tie and I will have the class parade silently (!) past Mr. Davies' office before we go over to Dovercourt. Then we can put our ties safely in our backpacks and go and jump on the bouncy castle without risking any necks. Thank you again for your help with our end of year projects.

Change of Plans

Well, after much effort, Mrs. D'Angelo has managed to arrange a Play Day for all the kindergartens at Dovercourt. The catch is that it is on Tuesday, when we had planned our Leaving Ceremony. So if we can again be flexible, we can have our cake and eat it too. We can go to Dovercourt on Tuesday and have our Leaving Ceremony on Wednesday, June 27th. I apologize for the adjustments you will have to make and hope no one will miss out because of this. The forms for the Dovercourt Play Day are coming home today or tomorrow. Thank you again for all your help making the end of the year so special and exciting.

Volunteers for Gallery Trip

It might be a bit complicated, but we can include everyone who wishes to come with us. There may be some who drive and some who visit other parts of the gallery while the rest go on the guided tour, but with a little flexibility we can manage. The gallery guideline for parent volunteers on visits is a limit of five on the tour. This is because some rooms do not have enough space for large crowds without risking the safety of the paintings. There is no charge for admission for volunteers. If more than five parents would like to come on the trip they can still come, but won't be on the tour part of the visit. The morning class is sharing the bus with their reading buddy class, Mrs. Hill's class. In this case there will only be room on the bus for some volunteers. If you would like to volunteer in the morning and don't have access to a car that day, please let me know so I can give you priority on the bus. We can also organize some carpooling. In the afternoon we are the only class on the bus, so there will be room for everyone who comes. Thank you for your understanding!

Kindergarten Leaving Ceremony

Time is moving on and carrying our little Junior Kindergarteners downstream to their next class. Please come to celebrate their achievements so far at our Kindergarten Leaving Ceremony, Tuesday, June 26th. We will have the ceremony in our classroom, room 23. For the morning class we will begin at 10:15 am and for the afternoon class at 2:15 pm. Songs will be sung, a slide show may be shown and light refreshments will be served. Friends and relations welcome.

Send in your forms and fees NOW, please

Dear Parents;

   Please fill in the trip permission form and send in the fee ($8.00) now and send them in tomorrow. I need the form or I cannot take your child off school property. From my own experience it is easy to put the form aside for later and then forget. Please be extra-virtuous and send in those forms and fees right away! Thank you.

Field Trip!!!

Yes, we have buses and a guide booked and we are off to the National Gallery of Canada!! Forms will be coming home soon and need to be returned right away. We will also be looking for some volunteers, so here are the dates to plan for:

   Morning class:  Wednesday, June 20th
   Afternoon class: Friday, June 22nd.

It should be a great experience. We are doing a tour especially for Kindergarteners called My Gallery.

My Apologies!!!

Dear Parents of Afternoon Children;

  I apologize! I did not read the information about Yaki's visit carefully enough. He is only performing in the morning. If you are an afternoon parent and have sent in a loonie or twoonie, please send me a note and I will happily refund you your money. Thank you for your understanding. Sarah

Yaki is Coming!

Richard Bourbeau, aka Yaki, is coming to Broadview on Thursday, June 7th. He writes funny, educational songs in English and French that are easy for children to relate to. He will perform for the Kindergarten, Grade 1 and 2 classes. He does not charge a fee, but we are asking all students who are able to contribute a loonie or toonie to thank him for his performance. Kindly send in your donation by Wednesday, June 6th. Thank you!

Reminder about those T shirts (Sshhh!)

Please send in your dad's dark t shirt by Monday if you wish to make our secret surprise present. We have some nice black paper we can use if you prefer to receive a picture instead of wearable art. So far they are turning out really well. If it is a new shirt, please wash it first to make sure the paint will adhere well. I will wash the ones already sent in. Thank you for your help with our Father's Day present!

Library Books Due In

Our Library Technician, Mrs. Fruwirth, has asked that all library books be returned to the school by Friday, June 1st. This is so she can get them all sorted for the fall. If you have lost your book, you will receive a long, thin slip of paper with the name of the book and it's replacement cost. Please send in the money with a note or the slip.  You will then get a receipt, so that if you find the book later you can return it and be reimbursed. Thank you for your help with this process!
We will still visit the library each week to enjoy the books, but we will not be bringing any more library books home until the fall.

School in Hot Weather

The school is not air conditioned and our classroom faces south, so it can get very hot in here. Please send your child with a refillable water bottle so we can help them to stay hydrated. We are also learning about heat safety outside, so please give them a sunhat and put sunscreen on them before they come to school if you think they need that as well. Finally, we have found that some children trip and get injured wearing flip-flops, so please send them in shoes or more sturdy sandals with velcro straps so they can move freely and safely. Thank you for your help!

Last Day of our Book Celebrations

Friday is our last day of our Books and Authors unit, but of course we will continue to celebrate reading and books. Starting next week our theme is Camp Kindergarten.

 The children will have turns playing in a tent, using toy camping tools, playing at the camp nurse's station, playing rainy day board games and reading camp and nature stories. We will do some camp crafts and sing lots of silly songs.

 Our circle time is now held around our (tissue paper and papier mache) campfire. We are singing songs like Fire's Burning and Down by the Bay and others.

We are using our imaginations to pretend to be going on canoe trips and other wilderness adventures. If your camper would like to bring in a sleeping bag or flashlight or bug net, they are very welcome. At the end of the month we will invite you to visit us at our cabin and watch us sing our songs and celebrate the end of our first year at school. Date to follow soon.

Franklin, Frances and Bill and Pete

Yesterday we enjoyed a Franklin book, Franklin Fibs, by Paulette Bourgeois, illustrated by Brenda Clark. We learned that Franklin will soon be on a Canadian stamp! (Pretty funny to have a turtle on a snail mail stamp.)    http://www.canadapost.ca/cpo/mc/personal/collecting/stamps/2012/2012_april_franklin.jsf            Today we are having a great time with Frances, reading Best Friends for Frances,
by Russell Hoban


 illustrated by his wife, Lillian Hoban.





 She also wrote a great series of early readers about a monkey called Arthur.


Tomorrow the fun continues with Tomie de Paola's Bill and Pete.

  

Please Send in a Dad T-Shirt

Dear Moms;  (Dads, please stop reading this post and go to another site!) 

    We are making a secret surprise for Father's Day. We need a DARK COLOURED T-SHIRT of Dad's. It should be in very good shape. It should be one that can be changed a bit without Dad being upset. It should be PLAIN, not patterned. Finally, it should have Dad's and your child's name on it on the neck tag in permanent marker or pinned onto the shirt on a piece of paper. So that is:
Dark Coloured
Dad's Shirt
Plain, not patterned
OK to change this shirt
Labelled with Dad's and Child's names on it (so you will get the right shirt back again!)

   We promise it will be a really great surprise. If you haven't got a shirt or would prefer, a plain cloth bag would also work well. Or a blank canvas. Thank you for your help to make a wonderful gift for our wonderful dads!

The Twenty-Fourth of May

We learned a little poem today which the children will try to recite for you. Since they might not have it down cold yet, here it is:

   The twenty-fourth of May
   Is the queen's birthday.
   If you don't give us a holiday,
   We'll all run away.


We discovered that this goes very well with the tune for The Farmer In the Dell, so we can sing it too!
Happy Long Weekend!

More Fabulous Books

We have been meeting lots of great authors since the last blog post. We have read Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse, by Kevin Henkes: http://www.kevinhenkes.com/ 



Then we read Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak:   http://www.harpercollins.com/author/microsite/?authorid=12708




Then it was Dr. Seuss's Cat in the Hat: http://www.seussville.com/ 



Today it was plasticine artist and author Barbara Reid:  http://www.barbarareid.ca/home.html



Tomorrow will be another great Canadian author, Marie-Louise Gay: http://www.marielouisegay.com/

 As  you can imagine, we are having a WONDERFUL time!

Today' Special Author

Today we learned about Jann Brett, who has hundreds of  millions of books in print. Some of her books are The Mitten, Hedgie's Surprise, Daisy Comes Home, Gingerbread Baby and a lovely version of Beauty and the Beast. She travels the world to get ideas for her books and illustrations, accompanying her husband, who plays for the Boston Symphony orchestra. So we learned that writing books can be a wonderful adventure. We talked about the idea of detail today and looked at some of her illustrations to see all the things she puts into each page. She has a fabulous website with many, many games, reading readiness activities, cards, colouring pages and mazes. You can find it here: http://www.janbrett.com/index.html. The children are really enjoying the books and are reading more excitedly each day.


Jan Brett at Stanley Camp in Botswana, Africa

Book Bonanza

The Book Bonanza is a very ancient tradition at Broadview PS and a wonderful celebration of literacy and books. Your child will be visiting the book sale on Thursday, May 10th. Each children's book costs 50 cents during the day. They can also come after school hours with you if you like. Children are allowed to spend up to $5 each at the sale. If you would like your child to participate, please send in some money in a baggie for that day. Please tell them how many books that money will buy and write it on the side of the baggie for them. If they don't know numbers yet, please put the right number of dots and they can count. We are all very excited about going book shopping right at school. It's wonderful to see the children choosing and buying their very own books.

There is also a contest between the classes to see who brings in the most used books. Here are the guidelines for that:
Bring in your book donations up until tomorrow, May 9th. This is the Book Drop part of the Bonanza. They are also looking for clean boxes large enough to hold 15 books. The boxes should not be flattened. Music cds but NOT computer game cds are also requested. DVDs but NOT VHS are also needed, as are Wii games, PSP games, Nintendo DS and Xbox games. Books earn 1 point each, boxes 2 points, cds  and dvds 5 points and games 10 points. The class with the most points can win some great prizes that involve things like popsicles and free books. The points are averaged out by dividing by the number of students, so even a small class can win.
*PLEASE BRING YOUR DONATIONS IN TO THE INTAKE COUNTER NEAR THE LARGE GYM.*   Precounting the number of books is also very helpful.
The book sale begins for the public after school on Thursday, May 10th. It is open again on Friday evening and on Saturday in the morning. Thank you for your donations and participation and happy reading!!!

Another new face

We have just heard that Hiba is not returning to the morning class and we hope we will see her next year. In her place we have a new student, Hudson, who has come from Burlington. Welcome, Hudson!

Mercer Mayer and Little Critter

We began our celebration of books with a look at Mercer Mayer, who has written and illustrated 300 books! We also learned from his life that you have to keep trying if you really want something, because Mercer eventually had to throw away all of his art portfolio and start drawing some new, better pictures before anyone would publish his work. We listened to his song Alligator Under the Bed, which you can find at http://www.littlecritter.com/, along with lots of colouring and game pages. Then we read three of his books and laughed and laughed at his funny stories and pictures. Some of us like to find the mouse or the spider hiding in the picture. We love Little Critter.

Book Celebrations

In the coming weeks we will be celebrating different children's authors and illustrators. I will also be presenting my book-in-progress and showing the children how to get ideas for stories and pictures. We will then be making our own little books, with the help of our Reading Buddies. Please send in your child's favourite book for them to share with the class. The girls will do their sharing times May 7th to 11th and the boys from May 14th to 21st.
Also, please remember that the Broadview Book Bonanza is coming up. We need donations of books and volunteers to help make everything run smoothly. Thank you for all your help!

Junkyard Symphony

The concerts today were a blast and the kids were mesmerized the whole time. We teachers learned that using a whistle and a few signals is just as effective as talking and giving a lot of instructions. We might try that in our classrooms next week! The performers talked about recycling and about rhythm. Their website is here: http://www.junkyardsymphony.com/bios.html for those of you who want to see them and let the children do some follow up activities such as making rhythm instruments from recycled materials. They were a LOT of fun and we all thank the parent committee for setting up this great activity.

Healthy Eating

We are visiting a healthy food display with the public health nurse today in the school library! Ask your child what he or she saw and which food they might like to try after seeing the display. Please help them to plan what he or she would like to say to the class when it is his or her turn to talk about healthy foods. The girls are having their turn to speak this week and the boys will have theirs next week. Thank you to the committee who organized this healthy week!

Sharing Time

We are adding some more sharing time to our Circle time and inviting more children to come to the front of the class to speak. We will have different subjects for sharing and a simple schedule for who can have a turn to share. Weeks one and three of a month will be for the girls to share and weeks two and four of the month will be for the boys to share. When it is your child's week to speak, she or he can bring in something to show the class or simply tell us what sheor he would like to tell us about our subject. I will post our subjects on the blog so you know how to help them prepare. As this is the third week of the month, the girls will speak this week. Our subject will be Eating Healthy and they can tell us about their favourite healthy snack or show us what they brought in for snack. Next week the boys can have their turn with this topic. We look forward to hearing what they all have to say!

Seed Time

We are talking about seeds and gardens at school these days. We started with planting some bean seeds today. We will be observing them carefully as they grow. We would also like to learn more about seeds, so we are starting a seed centre here in the classroom. If your child finds any seeds in her or his apple, grapefruit or avocado, we would love to have them for our centre. We will even sprout a few and see what happens. Thank you for your help with this project.

Wear Pink for Anti-Bullying on Wednesday, April 11th

Wednesday is Pink Day across Canada, an Anti-Bullying project. We will be reading a few stories about the subject and having a short discussion. If the children have anything pink they would like to wear that is another way to participate in the day. Apologies for the short notice. I just received the memo now. Anything pink will do! We will also make a pink craft so that everyone can have some pink to wear in case some don't get this note in time.

Our Wax Sculptures

Here are some of the wax sculptures that the morning class created with our Artist in Residence, Deirdre. They turned out so well! They made an armature out of wire first and then covered it with softened wax. They are a bit fragile, so if your child usually goes on the bus we will keep them safe here until you can drop by to pick your child's sculpture up.
The afternoon class tried a different method and made an animal and a human pairing from a fairytale. For example, they made a princess and a dragon or a Goldilocks and a bear. Picture to follow soon! These are a little more stable and we will try wrapping them up and sending them home in tissue boxes. The walkers will simply carry theirs home. Feel free to sign in and drop by the classroom to get your child's art this week if you prefer.
If the sculptures need any repairs or revisions simply place them in a sink or bucket of boiling water and they will soften up and be malleable again. Congratulations to both classes for some great art work! 

Change of Plans

Since we are coming up to Easter and Passover and other Spring celebrations this week we will have Book Week later on and focus this week on these instead.

This week we will talk about the celebrations of Easter and Passover. We will be reading stories and painting eggs and tasting matzoh and making spring crafts. Hopefully the weather will warm up and make things extra spring-like for us. We will also try sprouting lentils as they do for Persian Norouz. Here is a link to show the steps from lentils to sprouts in case you would like to try to grow your own: http://mypersiankitchen.com/lentil-sabzeh/
As ever, please feel free to send in books or objects from your home about spring celebrations for the children to share. Thank you!

Some New Faces and Some New Toys

We have been getting some new students in our classes in the last while. The morning class welcomed Greta and now Iris and Amni. The afternoon class welcomed Jiwon. The children have been very good at helping the new students to find their way around. They have also been great at including them in their play. So now our numbers are 22 in the morning class and 23 in the afternoon class.





 We also have three lovely new dolls to play with tomorrow. Spring cleaning and some reorganizing the classroom are now underway.  All this lovely early sunshine and warmth are very inspiring. It's time to freshen up the room and enjoy the new season. If you would like to help, you are always welcome.

Tallies, tallies everywhere!

The whole school is learning about data management and we in the junior kindergarten room are doing this by using tallies. We did a tally together about our squishy paint monsters and decided if each was a scary or a happy monster. Then we graphed the results. Now the children are interviewing each other about whether they prefer apples or bananas, princesses or frogs. We will be doing many tallies and graphing many things to give the children many chances to practise this skill. If you hear them talking about this at home, now you know why there's a sudden tallying craze.

A Royal Ball

The children are most cordially invited to a Royal Masked Ball at the palace, to be held Friday, March 30th. Dress in costumes, princess gowns or formal wear. Masks and crowns will available at the ball. There will be dance classes held in preparation to this glittering event so that the children may brush up on their waltzes.  

Water Bottles Every Day

Since our classroom faces south, we are often quite warm on sunny days. Please send in some fresh water from home in a water bottle for your child. Please also dress her or him in layers so that she or he can be comfortable in any temperature. Thank you!