Week of December 2-6

Dear families,

As the holidays draw near the children are becoming more excited with all the festivities both at home and at school. I never tire of watching the holiday season through my students' eyes. The innocence and wonder of a four and five year old at this time of the year is truly a beautiful thing to behold. I feel very fortunate to be part of their world as we delve into holiday festivities here at school. The classroom decorations look wonderful! A special thank you to my wonderful Co-Op student Emma (who helps in the afternoon class 2-3 days/week) who helped decorate our classroom.

We will be doing a Santa countdown with patterned beads, including days of the week and weekends. Ask your child how many days until December 25! I am sure s/he will be able to tell you since we are counting by ones and twos and tens and every possible way we can until that magic number! This is an excellent way to reinforce number recognition and numerical order.

I am busy preparing for the Craft Party on December 19th and I am also setting up a "post office" so the children can write Christmas post cards to their friends and family. They love doing this and I simply use recycled cards from previous years which I have cut in half i.e. they write on the back of the picture, like a post card. Please save your old Christmas/holiday cards and kindly send them to our class so that we can "recycle" them in our class for next year's holiday season. They also make wonderful crafts. I welcome any kind of used cards - birthday, mother's day, father's day, etc. The children love to write/make cards and it is good writing and reading practice! The children also love opportunities to show how much they love their family and cards are perfect for this.

This week we finished our unit on Fairy Tales and a lot of reading, writing and learning came from the three stories we studied. The children also did a lot of retelling, sequencing and patterning activities based on the stories, which is good practice for Grade 1 and beyond. This week children learned about healthy ("real") foods from Little Red Riding Hood who you may recall was bringing food to her sick grandmother, and we talked about which foods would make grandma better by looking at simple grocery flyer. The children then each got a flyer of their own and cut healthy foods (and flowers too just like in the story) for Gramma, which they then put into paper baskets and in then their literature pockets along with all their other wonderful work. In their Literature Pocket for this story, along with a simple version of the story, is a little book with no words at all. This is excellent for re-telling, as are the little puppets they made; it is an important comprehension skill going forward as they learn now only how to read using their phonetic knowledge but are able to understand what they have read. Prediction, summarizing and retelling are important aspects of literacy. We also read two modern and funny versions of Little Red Riding Hood which the children enjoyed. Interestingly, the children liked the original Charles Perrault story the best! Maybe because it was a little bit scary but had a happy ending...

Our Word Wall is filling up with high frequency/sight words and I am impressed by how many the children know already! The children can refer to this wall when they are creating stories or need to know how to spell a word.

In the Little Red Hen literature pocket that went home on Friday, there was a sheet with story-related words to cut out, from which the SKs can make sentences based on the story (again, retelling and sentence structure).

We continued our numeracy lesson on patterns and sequencing this week; the JKs made patterns with two colours, the SKs with three.

Our Holiday Sharing Assembly will be on December 19. The children should wear a Santa or Elf hat please for this special assembly. I hope you will be able to join us!

Thank you to Lilia's mom and Megan's dad who were our wonderful Mystery Readers this week. Thank you to Lexa's mom who did the morning white bags and Brady's mom who did the afternoon white bags. Thank you also to our Grade Parents who prepare the volunteer calendars for each month. Thank you again for all your time.

JK homework this week is to complete the "Number Poem Book." The little rhymes help them learn how to form their numbers. Don't worry if your child's early number writing has some backwards numbers - this is normal as the children learn how to form them (always top to bottom, and left to right except for 6, 8 and 9!). It takes a lot of practice! SK homework is to practice their numbers 1-31 and beyond (lots of patterns!) and to continue work on their phonics duotang. We completed our November calendar in class and I am pleased with the children's neat number writing!

LKS parent volunteers have very kindly prepared donation baskets for needy families in the Stonegate community. The donation baskets will be in my classroom by the back door, along with a description of the items needed by our class's families.

Morning Class: Family #11
Single mother with 2 year old girl
Needs: Wipes, gift certificates to any store, food vouchers, household items such as dish soap, detergent, fabric softener, children's books, clothing size 3, socks, gloves, puzzles

Afternoon Class: Family #14
Single mother of 4 year old girl
Needs: Food vouchers, scarf and glove set for mother, household items, dish towels, detergent, non-perishable food items, child loves cats, clothing size 6.

Thank you for your generous support of a family in need this holiday season.

Please take a moment to read/sing the poetry/song sheets I send home with your child every week. The children love to perform them and this is a wonderful opportunity to sit and read together!

I would once again like to say how very much I enjoyed meeting you at the interviews. Thank you for coming. On Friday, December 6 I will be at a media literacy training session and there will be a supply teacher.

Enjoy this magical time with your children. It passes all too quickly and the next thing you know they are grown up! I know this from my own children and I remember very well when they were in Kindergarten...

Thank you for your continued support,

Mrs. Tyndall