Hi!

As the Gingerbread man says, “Run, Run as fast as you can…you can’t catch me I”m the gingerbread man”! We have read 3 traditional versions of the Gingerbreadman story and the children are very good at comparing similarities and differences. We talk about what is the SAME  and what is DIFFERENT! The traditional stories all have ended with the fox eating the gingerbread man, the children have become good at predicting the ending.

Today we read The Gingerbreadman baby, written by my favourite author, Jan Brett. This story was similar in some ways but the ending was much different! Ask your child how this story ended…I’ll give you a hint..it ends with a gingerbread house!

Speaking of Gingerbread houses…

Take a look at our finished Gingerbread house, it looks amazing! The children are enjoying making play-dough cookies in the house, using cookie cutters, rolling pin and cookies sheets!

We have been lacing/sewing gingerbreadmen together, thanks to Peter’s mom, Mara and for Forrest’s mom  for helping the children with this! We will decorate them with buttons, sparkles and ribbons! I like doing this lacing activity because it further develops fine motor skills as well as hand-eye co-ordination. The children are doing well with this!

We have been using the classroom IPAD and have been making gingerbreadmen as well. The children love using the IPAD and are becoming more independent. They are so technological advanced, aren’t they?

The children continue to enjoy the different centres including the colouring, blocks and carpet toys. They play so well together! We have wonderful children in our class!

Gingerbread House Making:

We are going to make our own gingerbread houses on Thursay morning. Thank-you to  everyone who has offered to volunteer to help! It is going to be so much fun. We will be using royal icing, peanut-free candies such as smarties, swedish berries, sprinkles, chocolate chips and candy canes. Your child may get sticky and bit messy but I can guarantee they will have so much fun!

Just a small thank-you to Sepideh, Syena’s mom for donating Advent candy canes for our children. We have been giving them out to the children when they are the Kinderstar! Everyone will get their candy cane before the holidays even if their Kinderstar is not before the holidays! 🙂

That’s all for now, thanks for reading!

Ms. Jo-Anne 🙂

Hi!

Just a friendly reminder that it is *very* important to send in your child’s library book back to school each week!

Today we had 10 little friends who could not choose a book because they have not returned their book. Please look high and low for these books and return the books on Monday please! 🙂

Thanks so much!!!

Ms. Jo-Anne and Mr. Kneebone and Madame Poirier! 🙂

Goodbye November…Hello December!

I love December and the magic this season brings!!!

Today we read  the story, The Gingerbread Man, the traditional story!

The children loved this story and made great predictions about what was going to happen when the gingerbread man sat on the fox’s nose…of course the fox ate the gingerbread man and we all had a great laugh!!! We discussed the gingerbread man’s personality and how he was a little bit mischevious or “cheeky” as he said,

“run run as fast as you can, you can’t catch me I’m the gingerbread man”! We read this part chorally (together) and ran on the spot as fast as we could!

We had a wonderful day transforming our house corner into Gingerbreadman house with the children.

Mr. Kneebone worked very hard wrapping our big, blue house in brown paper while the children and I made smarties, gum drops, peppermint candies and candycanes out of paint, paper and sparkles to decorate the house! Mr. Kneebone made wonderful icing out of paper and although we are not finished yet, the house is almost transformed into a gingerbread house! We are so happy and excited about this. Take a look at it…I’ll post pictures of it when it is finished tomorrow. We are hoping the children can bake and make play dough gingerbread men and follow pretend recipes while playing in the gingerbread corner.:) I am excited to see the kind of play this will ignite!

We also made patterned paper chains to decorate our classroom too! The boys and girls worked so independently on this and had fun when they noticed their chains were longer or “taller” than themselves. They also did exceptionally well making patterns with their chains! We have been linking the chains together and  now have our front bulletin board almost covered now!

We also opened an ALPHABET CENTRE this week. I bought this centre using my “bonus bucks” that I earned from all of the book orders that were placed this fall. Thank-you for your support!!

The children are enjoying sorting the pictures into corresponding alphabet pockets. For example, the pizza goes into the P pocket! The children are playing with letters and having fun, as they build their literacy and pre-reading skills!

A wonderful first day of December…

Tomorrow is Library Day, Computers and more Gingerbread fun!

 

Gingerbread houses? Any volunteers?

We would like to make individual gingerbread houses with the children, we would need volunteers to come in and help assemble the houses ahead of time, perhaps next Thursday Dec. 8th?

Just throwing the idea out there, let me know via Mr. Zippy if you are able to volunteer that morning!

Have a great night! …and of course, thanks for reading!

Ms. Jo-Anne 🙂

Hi!

We had a terrific teddy bear day today! The children were so happy to bring their teddy bears to school. We had extra bears for children who didn’t have their bears! Our bears helped take the attendance to the office first thing!

The day started in typical fashion: Morning songs, Morning message and introductions to everyone’s bear. We made beautiful bear hats this morning. This is one of the first times we did a “whole-group” craft where everyone was working on the same task. I was very impressed with how independent the children worked: they coloured the bear, cut it out and glued it on their own. I am so thrilled to see their fine motor skills developing so well! They looked so cute in their hats too! Tracy’s mom was with us and I think she would agree how well the children worked this morning!

The children enjoyed reading to their bears once they were finished their bear hats, take a look!

The children introduced their bears to Madame Scarfo! She incorporated some fun bear songs into her program, teaching the children how to say bear in French…ask your child how to say bear en Francais!!:)

Other highlights of our day were having quiet time and Calendar with our bears! Did you know our bears can count all the way to 30 and they know their days of the week??

We did a really fun math activity where we sorted the bears. The children decided to sort the bears first by size and then we sorted them by colour. It was a very hands-on learning experience. We then recorded our findings on a class graph. Each child coloured a small bear picture the same colour as their bear. We then glued each bear onto our graph and talked about which colour of bears we had the most of, least of etc.

Gym class was “beary” fun…we played “Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear turn around” and “Fuzzy, Fuzzy Bear”…The children loved this version of “duck duck goose”.

Our day ended with our picnic. Poor children, had to wait all day but it was just the way our schedule went today on Day 4.

We had orange juice, teddy grahams and cheesy bear paw crackers (thanks Gracie!) on the carpet on Katherine’s big blanket! Thanks for letting us use your “Winnie the Pooh” blanket Katherine! We enjoyed our picnic with our bears. One of our students said, “My bear doesn’t like the teddy grahams so I HAVE to eat them all” hahaha!

A great day and I think the children had a lot of fun too!

Thanks for reading,

Ms. Jo-Anne 🙂

 

….and now onto December and Gingerbread man stories!!! 🙂