Hi! Due to freezing rain, all student transportation is cancelled today, Friday, January 27th, 2012. This means that buses and taxis will not run in the morning or the afternoon. The school remains open. Please note: If your child normally takes a bus, you may drop him or her off, starting at 9:00 am. If you do so, you must make arrangements to pick him or her up at the end of the day — 3:45 pm — at the back of the school near the portables. We appreciate your assistance in keeping the front of the school and the office clear for urgent matters. Also, if your child normally takes the school bus or taxi and he or she will not be attending, you do not need to notify the office. We only require notification for those students who normally walk to school.

[ http://www.ottawaschoolbus.ca/ ]You may check school bus cancellations and delays here.

Thanks so much!

If you have to drive today, please be safe! Ms. Jo-Anne 🙂

 Hi!

There are some informative parent sessions coming up at Stephen Leacock P.S. They are being hosted by the School Council of Stephen Leacock and Roland Mitchner.  Parents from W.E.J are also welcome to attend.  If you are interested, I encourage you to take part.

Click the link to find out more details (pdf).

Leacock parent sessions

Thanks so much!

Ms. Jo-Anne 🙂

Hi!

Today was a rainy, snowy, messy January day! Lots of slush and rain makes big puddles on our yard! If your child came home with wet boots and snow pants today, this is why! But nonetheless, they had a lot of fun playing on the yard for both outside play times today.

Our day began with another story about Chinese New year, entitled, D is for Dragon. The author cleverly used the alphabet to present the various symbols, colours and traditions that are commonly seen in Chinese New year celebrations. For example, D is for dragon, O is for oranges that bring good fortune and R is for red envelopes. The children enjoyed listening and afterwards we discussed what we learned about Chinese New Year and did some drawings in our “Journals”.

 

Our day went along wonderfully as usual and I’d say the highlight of the day was during our play-based learning time, the children made a mural, using  paint rollers and stencils (that Mr. Kneebone carefully and skillfully made) in Chinese characters, “The Year of the Dragon”.  The children loved this! One of the children exclaimed, “this is like magic” as Mr. Kneebone lifted the stencil off! Sooooo cute!

We will hang our mural as soon as it is finished!!!

Another amazing activity that the children came up with, was to make red envelopes at the cut and paste centre! The children used white paper, red crayons and the stapler and gave each other their creations with pretend money!  This is a wonderful example of inquiry based learning…the children are introduced to an idea or concept and they take this knowledge and apply it during play time! Love it!

We will be doing our “Good luck” oranges tomorrow afternoon, we ran out of time today. We will hang these on our class tree. We will have oranges for a snack on Friday!

A terrific day in JK!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Other stuff:

Mr. Kneebone and I will be at a Kindergarten workshop in the morning tomorrow (Wednesday) but we will be back at school at lunch time! The children will be in good hands!

The Green shared-reading books went home tonight, I hope you will enjoy taking a look at these with your child over the next week!

Scholastic books were ordered today so hopefully they will be in by the end of the week or early next week! Thanks for your orders!

The Marvelous Mitten award is working…MARVELOUSLY!!!!!!!!!!!!! Our children are getting ready a lot quicker! Many students have earned a marvelous mitten award and a few have earned more than 1 already! Yay!

..and thanks for sending in bottles and baby jars, please continue to do so if you get your hands on any!

…and thanks to Katherine’s mom, Yvonne for all of your help today! 🙂

Thank-you!!

Night night!

Ms. Jo-Anne 🙂

 

 

 

新年快樂

Hi!

We have been celebrating Chinese New Year here at school! Our day started with a read aloud, Lion Dancer which is about a little boy named Ernie Wan, who explains many of his family’s traditions, such as eating yummy food, dressing in special new clothing and receiving special red envelopes with money inside. Ernie is so happy and thinks this is the best dayof his life because in gets to perform his first Lion dance on the streets of New York City.  We all agreed that would be pretty special!

We talked about the year 2012 and it being the year of the Dragon.We took a look at the Chinese Lunar Calendar and we discovered most of us were born in the year of the pig, including me!! Mr. Kneebone was born in the year of the monkey!

The children made beautiful dragon puppets in our class and chinese new year lanterns with Mrs. Heleno! The children worked hard to colour, cut and glue their puppets and lanterns! They look wonderful!

The children enjoyed eating the yummy snacks ( Japanese styled snack- purple yam paste pie, chocolate chip cookies and Haw soup treats) that were sent in with April, Forrest and Gracie. Thank-you so much! We enjoyed eating our yummy snacks after our lunch!

We ran out of time and did not get a chance to do our dragon parade but we did do a dragon dance after we completed our puppets! This was a lot of fun!

Thank-you to all of the families for sending in decorations and snacks for the class! We learned a lot!

Thanks for reading!

Ms. Jo-Anne 🙂

PS…Happy birthday to April!

Hi!

We have a special new award in our class…THE MARVELOUS MITTEN AWARD! This special award is designed to help motivate our children to dress and undress quickly and independently! We have had 6 different winners today! We will continue with this in hopes of keeping the children motivated! Please continue to foster this independence by having your child dress and undress independently at home. It takes more time, I know, but the end result is so worth it!

We have been reading Jan Brett’s The Mitten this week. We have been working on retelling, drawing and writing responses about what we liked in our journals and sequencing skills. The children worked on a colouring and cutting activity earlier this week and today they were able to put the animals in their mittens in the right sequence! We hung our mittens on our new class clothes line too! Don’t they look wonderful?

Yesterday we worked together to answer the question: “What colour of mittens do we have the most of?”…The children brought in their mittens and put themselves into “same mitten colour groups” and we then made a class bar graph! We found out that 10 of our friends wear pink mittens and only one friend wears red mittens and 7 friends wear black ones. We used numeracy words such as more, less and same.

 

This week in French the children made beautiful winter hats-or “chapeau” or “tuque”. Madame Scarfo had the children glue nice stickers and cotton balls on their hats. This was a very successful lesson and the children did well following instructions en Francais!

 

It has been a wonderful week! Tomorrow is Friday and it is a PA day!

There is no school for children tomorrow!

We look forward to seeing the children back to school on Monday!

On Monday, we will have library and computers in the morning and we will be celebrating Chinese New Year on Monday afternoon with Mrs. Heleno’s class! It is the year of the dragon and we will read stories, make 2 special crafts and hopefully go on a dragon parade. If you would like to send in a special nut free snack that your family eats during Chinese New Year celebrations, you are most welcome!!!!

Take care and thanks for reading!

Love, Ms. Jo-Anne 🙂

Hi!

Thank-you for helping your child with his or her snowman homework! They look “snow” awesome!! Take a look!

Ok, that’s all for today!!

Ms. Jo-Anne 🙂

Hi!

I have set up times for parents to volunteer for the months of January until the March break. I have sent the “blue” forms home in Mr. Zippy today. Please let me know if the date I have arranged works and if not, we can choose another date that best suits your schedule.

If I didn’t send a blue form home today and you would like to volunteer please let me know via Mr. Zippy and I will set up a volunteer time for you!

Thanks so much!!!

Ms. Jo-Anne 🙂

Hi!!!

It’s a snow day! Almost all of our friends are here today! I’d like to think its because they LOVE school so much that t hey don’t want to miss it!!!!  I remember as a young girl I used to cry when the buses were cancelled because I loved going to school so much!   Makes sense that I am a teacher because I still LOVE school so much! :):) So it is business as usual here at school! 🙂

I was just wondering if each family could send in 2  empty, clean plastic water bottles (500 mL I think ) and 1 small baby food jar with the label peeled off? I am just thinking ahead to a few activities I’d like to do at the end of January and early February. I would be forever grateful, I don’t think I could drink 48 bottles of water or eat 24 jars of pureed baby food! hahaha!!

 

 

 

Thank-you so much!!

Just in case you were wondering, I was away yesterday as I took my son to the dr to check if his pneumonia was all clear and he is completely healthy! I am so happy and so relieved! Thank-you for all of your best wishes and concerns! 🙂 Mr. Kneebone and Mrs. Jazz said they had a terrific day with the children- they were in great hands!!!

Thanks for reading and please feel free to start sending in plastic water bottles and small baby jars as soon as possible!!

Take care, stay warm and please drive safely today!

Love, Ms. Jo-Anne 🙂

Hi!

Happy Friday! What a snowy day!!

 

 

Our day began with one of my favourite read-alouds, The Snowy Day written by Ezra Jack Keats. You probably remember this story from when you were younger! It is a wonderful story about a little boy named Peter who wakes up to a snowy day! He bundles himself up and tries a variety of different winter activities like making tracks in the snow using his feet and a stick, making a snowman, sliding down a hill and wanting to have a snowball fight with the big kids, but thinks he is too young yet. He has so much fun and loves the snow so much he puts a snowball in his pocket when he goes home. The children found this funny as they made good predictions what was going to happen to the snow!! 🙂

We did a reading response to the story. I asked the children what they thought Peter would do the next day when he headed outside…Here are a few responses! (…they were well-done!)

Library and Computers

Most of the children were able to choose a book to take home, please remember to send your child’s library book by the next library day(which will be Monday January 23).

The children began exploring the “Weather Machine” on Sammy’s Science House in the computer lab. The focus was on temperature and the colours that are associated with temperatures such as red=hot, yellow=warm, blue=cold. They were given instructions to make different kinds of weather, also including wind, rain and snow.

The rest of the day was filled with outside play, lunch, quiet time, calendar, play time, French and then table tops! The children enjoyed using the mobilo and lego to create cars and airplanes, geoboards and silly bands to make shapes, pattern blocks to explore shapes and make patterns, mosaic pegboards to make pictures and link chains to make chains and explore patterns as well as solve problems with puzzles. It was perfect way to end our day. The children enjoy table tops and are further developing numeracy skills and though processes such as problem solving.

Thanks for reading!!!

Next week we will begin reading, Jan Brett’s The Mitten and begin working on retelling, sequencing and lacing skills over the week! Can’t wait!!!

 

 

Happy Week-end!

Ms. Jo-Anne 🙂

 

 

Hi!

It was another great day here at school!  We were able to go out for all our outdoor play times despite the rainy/snowy/freezing rain day! Our students are really enjoying playing on the sleds,  pulling their friends and taking turns! The children are coming to school dressed for the weather which makes playing outside so much more enjoyable! Thank-you!!!!! 🙂

 

Self Portraits:

We completed our New Year Self Portraits and so I thought I’d post a picture to show you! The children did a fantastic job on these! Take a look! I love how creative the children are!

Gym:

The children had a really great time in gym today. We shared the gym with Mrs. Almeida’s class and we had the children rotating through a variety of centres such as the balance beam with Mrs. McCarthy, Scoops and Balls with Mr. Kneebone, Hoola hoops with Mrs. Almeida and Bean bag toss and balancing with me. We also had a rest station where the children could catch their breath and rest for a few minutes. We will be continuing to do “circuits” on day 5 and continue to explore the small gym equipment. These activities are excellent to further develop the children’s gross motor skills such as balancing, throwing, catching and eye/hand coordination!!

 

Play-Based learning:

We had 2 big long play times today! The children enjoyed painting winter scenes at the paint centre, counting and patterning at the Math centre, building train set-ups using the wooden tracks and blocks as well as enjoying the last few days at our Gingerbread house! We will be setting up the house corner as a _________________ once we decide as a class. We have had wonderful, creative ideas such as a train station, princess house, cupcake store to name a few of the children’s ideas. We are going to plan and vote on this tomorrow and begin setting up the dramatic play centre early next week!!!

 

Looking onto tomorrow:

We have library and computers in the morning! Please return any library books you may have! We will be starting to explore Sammy’s Science House in the computer lab, focusing on a seasonal and temperature game!!

Have a great night and keep warm! Brrrrrrrrrr…

Ms. Jo-Anne 🙂