September Calendar

Week 1: My Friends & I

Books We Read
First Day Jitters
Who Will Go To Kindergarten Today?
The Kissing Hand
Fill-A-Bucket

Song of the Week

Kindergarten, Here We Come!

(Sung to "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star")

Kindergarten here we come.

We know we'll have lots of fun!

Lots of things to make and do.

Reading, writing, counting too.

Kindergarten here we come.

We know we'll have lots of fun!

Things We Did

Everybody drew a picture of themselves in our "This is me!" activity, and some of us were able to write our names on our pictures as well!

We practiced signing in to the room, so everybody would know that we're here, and to help us learn how to write our names!

We learned each other's names by playing games with our Feel-Good Freinds (stuffies), who helped show us how to take turns.

We met our gym teacher, Mr. Baker, and our librarian, Mme. Degroot.

We danced to the "Popcorn" song, a fun way to move that allows everybody to be a leader in the dance at different times!

We practiced playing at our different centres, including our drama centre, our blocks centre, and our art centre!  More to come soon!

Our first "Drop Everything And Read" session happened, where we all grabbed a book and a place in the room and read!  Well, we didn't know the words, but we practiced using the books!

Everybody learned about the "Invisible Bucket" that floats above our head.  It fills up when we do nice things for other people, or when other people do nice things for us, and empties when bad things are done.  We then all took a happy thought, put it in our bucket, and got ready to use it next week!

Welcome to Room 207 - Important Notes

Timetable & Calendar

Please remember that it is important for the children to be on time throughout the school year and to attend regularly.  If for any reason, your child will be late or absent from school, please contact the Safe Arrival Line (416) 393-9715.

Jackman follows a five-day schedule.  I will send home a calendar with the children each month listing library and gym days, field trips, special events, and any other important information.  For the time being, the calendar is as follows.

Monday - Library

Tuesday - Gym

Wednesday - Library 

Thursday - Music

Friday - Gym

Entry and Dismissal

Our class will be lining up at the doors just outside the Kindergarten playground.  Please say your good-byes outside and allow your child to enter the school with his/her classmates.  We will help each student to hang up his/her belongings and get ready for the day.  By allowing your child to do this on their own, you are increasing their independence and self-confidence. 

When school is over, please wait outside kindergarten gate. For your child’s safety, I will be calling each child in turn, and dismissing them individually.  I thank you in advance for your patience.  If someone other than the individual(s) stated on the departure list will be picking them up, please send me a note or notify the office ahead of time.

Backpacks

Please send your child to school each day with a name-labeled backpack.  This will help your child to become more responsible for his/her belongings, further ensuring that their work and other important messages arrive at home. 

Clothing

Please send your child to school in clothes suitable for a day of active learning.  Clothing that children can manage on their own is recommended (e.g., Velcro or slip-on running shoes).  Please print your child’s name on the inside label of all outdoor clothing.  Outdoor play is an important part of the Kindergarten program.  We do play outdoors on most days (weather permitting). 

It is a good idea to have an extra set of clothes on “stand-by” in case of any bathroom accidents that may occur.  You can have an extra pair in the backpack or bring a “spare” that we can keep for the year.

It’s going to be a great year in 207 and I look forward to meeting all of you and getting to know your kids!

Week 40: Kindergarten, There We Go

Books We Read
Pink
Oh, The Places You'll Go

Things We Did
Year In Review
We did a "Year In Review" activity with our class blog!  We looked at our very first Sign-In Sheet, self-portraits that we drew, and our first printing activities!  We saw old pictures of the classroom, sang songs from the whole year, and got to see how far we've come in just 40 weeks.


Learning the difference between

roll and slide, and which moves

things farther.



Scientists in the Schools: Marvelous Machines

Scientists in the Schools came into the class to talk about Simple Machines!  We used wheels, gears, levers, zippers, buttons... things we never thought were really machines!  It was an amazing afternoon and thanks to the parents and students who came to help us out! 



This Is Me Now!

To compare how much better our drawing has become, we created "This Is Me Now" pictures, trying to draw as realistic a picture of ourself as possible.  We then compared it to our "This Is Me" picture from the start of the year.



Paper Teeter-Totter



Jackman's Got Talent



Scientist Karin explains the afternoon.

We went to see Jackman's amazing talent show, Jackman's Got Talent!  We saw singers, piano players, dancers, and Mr. McCullough and Mme Rankin were called up on stage to do a Bollywood dance! 



Week 39: We're Proud Of Our Year!

Weekly Centres

Commemorative Reading Buddy Plates

Instead of doing something like "Thank You Cards", we decided we'd make something super personalized for our Reading Buddies to remember us by!  So, we're creating Commemorative Reading Buddy Plates.  We took black & white photographs, coloured them in with crayons and pencil crayons (they did NOT need to be realistic), cut them out, glued them to paper plates and added stickers, shapes and colours!  Our Reading Buddies are going to get a nice gift!

June Portfolio

This is our LAST chance to add something to our Writing Portfolio!  It will be really neat seeing how different our drawing and writing is since September.

Report Card, Page 2

Everybody will be getting a report card next week!  The second page asks us what we're most proud of from this year.  We drew pictures and tried to write something that we did, learned, made or tried this year in kindergarten that made us feel proud.

Portfolio Review

We got to look back at all the activities we did through the year, picked favourites, decided which ones we were really proud of and why, and we also redecorated our portfolio holders.

Books We Read

I Can Be Creative

I Can Try New Things

Song of the Week

Tingalayo

Other Things We Did

We talked about what it means to be PROUD of something and came up with this definition; Being proud means you are happy or feel good about something you made, did, learned or tried.  We talked about some of the things we were proud of from the year and what we should feel proud of (Learning how to read) and what it means to feel happy about something (You don't feel proud when you eat a chocolate cake.)

Our sunflower received its final measurement this week!  It grew 7 CUBES last week for a grand total of 33 CUBES!!!  Most of us think it will bloom by next Thursday - we'll have to see!

In preparation for our visit from Scientists in the School next week, we started making some Marvelous Machines of our own!  On Wednesday, we created machines with working parts like wheels, hinges and gears.  On Thursday, we worked with simple catapults!  We made them using two parts, a flat arm and a block of our choosing as a fulcrum.  We figured out that, to get the best launch, we need a flat arm that is long enough to get good leverage and a strong fulcrum that isn't too tall, maybe with a bit of a point or a rounded edge.  Let's see if what we learned helps us with our Scientists next week!

Week 38: Summer Trees & Books In The Park

Weekly Centres
Inuksuk Balancing
Using a collection of found rocks, we tried creating Inuksuks, remembering balance rules we talked about during an experiment in the carpet.  It was tough to get them tall but those who stuck with it were able to build Inuksuks with four or five levels!

Summer Trees

Finishing off our Seasonal Trees, we started work on our summer trees.  We kept the trunks brown, but used three different types of green to create big, leafy tops and lots of grass around our trees.

Upper-Case & Lower-Case Match

At our Printing Centre, we worked on attempting lower case letters, practicing them alongside the upper-case letters.  We then matched upper and lower-case letters, trying to figure out which ones were the same, even if they didn't look it.

Books We Read

A Busy Year

Should I Share My Ice Cream?
Harriet Has Enough!
 

Song of the Week

Five Little Ducks

Five little ducks went out one day,
Over the hills and far away.
Mother duck said "Quack, quack, quack, quack, But only four little ducks came back.
(Song continues until no little ducks come back)

Sad mother duck went out one day,
Over the hills and far away.
Mother duck said "Quack, quack, quack, quack,
And all of the five little ducks came back.

Other Things We Did

On Friday, we went to Withrow Park with our Reading Buddies for our Books In The Park day!  We took along some of our favourite books, had our parent volunteers and teachers act out 5 Little Ducks, got to hear our Reading Buddies perform "Bananaphone", and we also got to play in the Withrow playground!  It was a beautiful day and thank you to all the adults who came to help us out!

We talked about balance while making our Inuksuk and tested whether it was easier to balance flat rocks or heavy rocks (flat won!) and whether we should put heavier rocks on top or lighter rocks on the top (lighter worked better) to create a tall, tall structure.

We kept talking about some of the differences we saw in summer compared to spring.

After learning "5 Little Ducks", we asked an important questions - what did those five little ducks do all alone on the other side of the hill?  We drew pictur 5 ducks in them, and then tried to write some of their ideas as well!

During Show & Share, we saw a Lego Power Ranger, a starfish and shell, a walking, dalking, dancing robot, and some street chalk!

We continued counting up the cubes for our class sunflower and counting down the days to the end of school!

Week 37: Self-Portraits and Junk Creations

Due to the short week, we're doing more whole-class activities as opposed to individual centres.  The activities we've done this week are;

Todd Parr Portraits
On Monday, we created self-portraits using the Todd Parr rules.  They are;

1) Dots for eyes

2) Lines for smiles and eyebrows.

3) No noses

4) Simple hair

5) Silly looking!

Using a picture of ourselves, we created our Parr-style portrait with crayons on beige construction paper.  Then, on Tuesday, we painted our portraits using food colouring!  The results were quite colourful!

Garden Planting

The Gardening Committee paid a visit to the Kindergarten playground.  We talked some more about what plants need to grow and helped them plant Snapdragons and Lamb's Ear in the garden!  Everybody planted with a partner on a beautiful, sunny day!

We also got to dig through a giant bucket of dirt with helpful insects like pill bugs and worms! 

Junk Creations

After using our recycled material to build, sort, learn about being "green" and to create several class projects, Mr. McCullough gave us a chance to get rid of it all by making ANYTHING we wanted!  There were boats, race cars, monsters, towers, presents, necklaces, mittens - we got SUPER creative!  Thanks to our parent volunteers and to our Reading Buddies for helping out!

Books We Read

What Animals Really Like

Too Much Stuff

Other Things We Did

We talked about the difference between upper-case letters and lower case letters, practed matching them up, and added them to our printing centre!

Our "leftover" butterfly parts from our foam butterfly activity last week have been a big hit!  We've been using them to create things like flowers, fireworks and even The Riddler from Batman!

Show and Share was a hit once again, with the theme seeming to be dolls and lego this week.