JK with Ms. Jo-Anne & Mr. KneeBone Kindergarten News 

Hi!

Here are a few pictures from our magical Kindergarten Concert, which in our opinion was a HUGE success!! We are so proud of our children, they performed wonderfully!! Thank you so much for all of your support with practicing and encouraging your children! I thought they looked absolutely adorable too!

Waiting with excitement

"Shaking all around, shake it to the ground" do the milk shake

We look great

Madame Scarfo!!!

Farmer Kneebone and Farmer Jo-Anne

Today we reflected on the concert and what we liked most about the “Magical” night! Here are some responses from the children!

I like the Mooosical

I like the vegetable song

I like outside!

I thought it would be fun to have a “popcorn party” on Friday afternoon to celebrate our hard work! We are so very proud of our students and I know you are too! Thank-you for your positive feedback!!

Mother’s Day special gifts are coming home tomorrow, keep an eye out for your child’s special gift for you in “Mr. Zippy”!! and to all our moms…Happy Mother’s Day!!! I hope you have a happy day with your family!

Thanks for reading!

Next week we will be reading “The Little Red Hen” and focusing on cooperation and the sense of community that we feel when we work together on a common goal. Stay tuned for more information and learning activities!

Love, Ms. Jo-Anne

PS…speaking of hens…our classroom is a lot more quiet this week without our little chicks cheep-cheeping. I took the chicks back to Farmer Wayne last Sunday and our chicks are happy and with their mommy now! Yay! A great Mother’s day gift for mommy Hen!

Here is a picture of Farmer Wayne, our chicks are in this box  as well as 2 ducklings! cute!!!

Farmer Wayne

Tuesday, May 8^th, 2012

Dear WEJ Parents.

I am writing to bring you all up to date on the upcoming construction project at our school and what it will mean for you and your child.

There will be no parent vehicle traffic on the W. Erskine property as of Monday, May 14^th.

In case you have not heard, our school is receiving a four classroom addition that will be built on the backside of our gym, in our existing parking lot. This means a significant disruption to the parking lot access and flow for parents and WEJ employees.  This disruption will begin on Monday, May 14^th.

The most important thing for parents to remember is that there will be no parent vehicle traffic on the school property for the duration of the construction project.  This means that our morning Kiss N Ride program will not operate.  There will be no short term parking at all. If parents wish to drop off their children, they will need to park on the nearby side streets and walk their child onto our school property. Where possible, students are encouraged to walk to school and / or ride their bikes.

Bus Changes

Our morning bus drop off routine at WEJ will not be disrupted.  The children will continue to unload on the lay-by on Varley drive – just as they do now.

However, there will be a change to our PM bus routine.  I’m pleased to announce a partnership with our neighbor, Georges Vanier Catholic School.  The Ottawa Student Transportation Authority has assisted us in drafting a plan to utilize Georges Vanier’s bus lanes during the construction project.  For parents at home, it means the possibility of a few minutes delay in the time your child normally returns home from school.  For our students here, we will be changing the location where we stage the students in lining up for their buses.  We’ll be staging the students on the Primary Yard on the W. Erskine property. From there, the WEJ staff will be loading the children on the Georges Vanier bus lanes.

We are asking parents to be patient and cooperative as we implement this change.  We realize that it is an inconvenience and a disruption.  We also want to reiterate that this change is a temporary one while the building & property are being renovated.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Jennifer Shirley

Principal

W. Erskine Johnston

Hi!

Just a wee reminder that our concert is tomorrow night at Earl of March High School.(4 Parkway)

We are asking that you arrive between 6:00-6:15 Pm, we will meet you in the foyer. We will keep the children with us and your family can head into the auditorium and find your seats!

Please make sure your child has his/her white shirt with cow spots please and dark blue or black pants or a skirt. We will hand out their cow hats as they arrive!

Can’t wait!

Thanks so much for all of your support, its going to be “udderly” amazing!

Love, Ms. Jo-Anne

Hi!

It has been so “egg-citing” around school these last few days! I can’t begin to tell you how much fun the children are having with our chicks! Not just our children here in Kindergarten but all of students here at WEJ. Many classes have been visiting in person as well as watching our chicks through the live stream either in their classrooms or at home. It has been wonderful to see some of you as well, thanks for popping in these last few days!!!

Mrs. Smith casually mentioned that we should try “live streaming” the hatching of the chicks and we are both so unbelievably amazed at the sense of community the live stream has created. Not only have we connected the students and teachers from JK-8 here at WEJ but many families as well. I let me family and friends know on my facebook page and I have had my family and friends from all over Ontario and Canada and even internationally watching these little chicks hatch. I even had my sons’ teachers showing her class here in Arnprior!

How incredible!!!!!!!!!!!!!!I have goose bumps thinking about it. It is truly amazing to think how live streaming can really become a powerful tool in education. What an incredible way to bridge what is going on in the classroom to home.

Our little chicks made the Kanata Courier North…here is the link that you can check  out!!!

http://www.yourottawaregion.com/news/local/article/1348130–chick-it-out

Thanks for reading, now I hope I can get back to sleep!!!

Ms. Jo-Anne

seeing the chicks for the first time...watching the second egg hatch

showing the chicks their welcome signs

Hi,

we are doing a live broadcasting of our hatching chicks. Take a look, I hope it works.

Let me know if you can see this!

Thank-you to Mrs. Smith, you are the best!

Good morning!!

Our first chick was hatching this morning as I arrived to school (around 7)!!!!!! He is so tired from all that work! I can’t wait to show the boys and girls this morning! Take a look!

Its going to be an exciting day here in JK!!:)

Ms. Jo-Anne

Hi!

Today is day 20 in our chick hatching process…and GUESS WHAT??? We have 6 eggs with cracks on them. I noticed the cracks this morning while the children were working quietly (and of course we all got excited after my “enthusiastic reaction” ). All day we watched the eggs so carefully!  We were even cheeping and peeping in hopes of helping them hatch quicker. We  had many classes come and visit today! We noticed that the cracks are slowly getting bigger and even some of the eggs moving. As of now (5:20 pm), we have not had one chick hatch BUT the peeping and cheeping is getting louder! I think when we arrive to school tomorrow morning we should see some chicks in our incubator!

Until tomorrow!… I hope I can sleep tonight! I’ll just stay a *little* longer!

Ms. Jo-Anne

PS… feel free to stop by the school tomorrow, sign in at the office and come and see the chicks!

Show and Tell

Estimation Jar Activity 

Dear Family, 

Our Mystery bag will now become Estimation Jar…starting with Forrest on Wed. May 9. Your child will bring home an empty container to fill as part of our Math and Numeracy Curriculum. Your child’s job is to choose a number of the same objects from home and place them in the empty container. Please ensure they are all part of the same collection and same size. Some examples are cotton balls, marbles, foam shapes, sugar cubes, Lego blocks or crayons. Be as imaginative as you’d like!

Help your child practice counting the objects independently in order to lead the class during Show and Tell. I recommend your child places no more than 30 items in the jar. 

Next please have your child complete the activity sheet. Fill in the number of objects followed by the name of the object (ie. 14 marbles). Please have your child print the number that is one less than and one more than the actual number.( For example: 13 and 15). As much as possible, have your child complete the worksheet in his or her own printing. Lastly, your child will draw one (or more) objects and colour the objects onto the picture of the jar. All work will be displayed on our Math Wall. 

Please return the filled container and competed activity sheet with your child. During Sow and Tell, the class will take turns guessing how many objects are in the jar, use math language of estimate, more and less and of course using our counting skills as we count them aloud together. We will use our 100’s chart as a reference. 

Thank-you for your support as always!

Sincerely, 

Ms. Jo-Anne and Mr. Kneebone

Hi everyone,

here is a copy of May calendar for you in case you would like to print it off.

A hard copy will be going home tomorrow as well.

Take care,

Ms. Jo-Anne

may.pub.12

Hi!

I hope you are having a great weekend! It was so nice to see the sun shining today and although it was cool today, it was nice to spend some time outside with my family! Fresh air makes us feel so good!

Friday was a very good day!Here are a few things to tell you about!

Morning Message

Our day started with our morning message. For those parents who haven’t had a chance to come in and see our morning message, this is an interactive reading and writing activity where I focus on letter recognition, sounds, reading skills such as always reading from left to right, introducing punctuation, sight words (which we call popcorn words). We are working on identifying beginning, middle and ending sounds. I also have the children help me write out words which models the writing process, stretching out the sounds in a word as we write. Lots of learning happens with this activity each morning.

Cow Puppets

We are making cow puppets to decorate the stage for our mooscial. I had a very hard time finding white paper bags so we have only just painted our bags white. We will continue with this activity on Monday.

Chick News

Friday was DAY 16 for our chick eggs…we have been counting down and we only have 4 more days to go!

Wednesday May 2 is the hatching day! I can’t wait to see the chicks begin to hatch and more importantly I can’t wait to see the children’s faces as the chicks hatch. It is truly an amazing thing to see. We will  keep the chicks in our classroom for the week and then I will return the chicks to farmer Wayne next weekend. It is going to be a very exciting week!

Computers

The children are exploring “Millie’s Math House” and had the opportunity to do some patterning and classifying with the concept of big, middle and small! The children are becoming so independent on the computer, they are able to log on and off with only some help from Mr. Kneebone and I.

Writing News

We have a new writing centre where the children independently write “notes” to each other and place the notes in their friends’ “mailboxes”. They are having so much fun with this. Some of the children took their notes home in their “Mr. Zippy” on Friday, I am sure you have seen them by now. The students are using their writing skills as well as the word wall to help them with this. There were quite a few “I LOVE YOU” notes, which were so precious. Our little friend Eric wrote this note to Trevor, soooo cute!

The children have also been making “Welcome signs” for our chicks. We have been putting them on our door to let our school community know that we are so excited for the arrival of our chicks!

Reminder

Please, please send in a white shirt (t shirt, collar shirt, long sleeve, short sleeve etc) for our cow costumes on Monday. Hopefully we will have these decorated by Friday and you can put them in a safe spot until the concert, which is coming up fast, Wednesday May 9!! Thanks so very much for your help with this! I also thought it would be great if the children could wear black pants or skirt too on that night as well.

Have a terrific rest of the weekend.

May calendars and our new Estimation “Show and Tell” program information will be sent home on Monday!!

Ms. J0-Anne