Happy Halloween!

We had an amazing, great, spooktacular day today in Kinderland at KHPS! Our day started with a progressive parade through the school, then a Halloween “dance off”, some playtime, lunch, outdoor play, Skeleton Hiccups story and craft (which are amazing and will come home tomorrow), Ghost bowling and songs with Madame McCurry, Madame Rashida and Madame Bourre and playtime in the Owl classroom! Our day ended with some Halloween songs and short videos to get us a bit “settled” and rested for their evening!

I hope you like our Halloween Jack-o-lanterns that the kiddos made for you! I think they turned out really nice!

Here are a “few” pics for you to enjoy!

Looking forward to hearing about the Halloween stories tomorrow morning!

Love, Ms. Jo-Anne (on behalf of Mrs. McCarthy, Mrs. Goyal and Madame McCurry

Harlequin doll

Mrs. McCarthy goes bananas!

Parade

Us…just missing Mrs. Goyal and Madame McCurry

Madame McCurry leading us in the “Monster Mash”

Go Bananas

dancing!

Nice eyes!!

Skeleton Hiccups

Boooo-ti-ful skeletons!

Mrs. Goyal helping friends

Woodpecker class…
dressed up as Minions! (Mrs. K, Madame Senuik, Mrs. Scheel and Mrs. Bennett

Ghost Bowling with Madame Rashida..

Hi again!

Last post tonight I promise!

This week we have been measuring pumpkins, from small, middle and large, using link cubes to see how tall each pumpkin is! We have been sorting “Halloween Items” by colour, object or shape!

Measuring our pumpkins

Sorting

We are continuing to work through our Alphabet Blitz, ask your child what the sounds A-H make? Each letter has an action, sound and story.  …and of course, we always need to look for Inky the mouse in each of our pictures! He is a silly, little mouse that the children love looking for! Your child is learning the sounds of each letter and we are providing fun activities to help with sound and letter formation!

Co-constructed alphabet so far…

Letter G…with ghosts made out of beans

Drawing Rainbows together

Selfie after measuring pumpkins…always time to talk about stuff and take a selfie! 🙂

Ms. Goyal reads us a story about counting pumpkin seeds

We have also been having children create “Halloween creatures” out of materials and the children are using their imaginations! We are practicing our cutting skills and learning to use glue sticks! You may have seen some of your child’s beautiful creations coming home this week in “Mr. Zippy”.

We are practicing our cutting skills and learning to use glue sticks! We continue to do our “Hot News”, working on printing our name, drawing pictures with colour and details! The progress is wonderful!You may have seen some of your child’s beautiful creations coming home this week in “Mr. Zippy”.

We have also been working on our “Halloween” lanterns! Our jars are looking great so far! They will come home on Halloween night for you!

Madame McCurry, Mrs. McCarthy and Mrs. Goyal are providing the children learning opportunities in French, such as letter recognition, number sense, counting, pumpkin lifecycle-all in French! They are really enjoying learning French words and are becoming more confident to speak, using French vocabulary.

We are having a blast with your child! Love this learning process! So many wonderful learning moments throughout our day!

Working together in French class…co-operation!

Thanks for reading!

Just a reminder…Monday is Halloween!!! Please send your child to school in his/her costume if he/she would like to dress up. This is not mandatory! We will be doing a parade, dance, crafts, songs and activities and providing a wee, healthy snack! Please remember that candy is to stay at home on Halloween and all week! Thank-you! 

November calendars will be sent home on Monday! I hope they are helping you keep track of our class activities!

Thank-you for the canned and box food for our “Scare Hunger Away” food drive!

Amazing donations so far!

Enjoy your night,

Stay warm!

Love, Ms. Jo-Anne

Oh…if you want to follow me on twitter, my address is @jojopull! I often post a picture of our class topics or awesome moments if you want to have a look! Follow me!

..cute story…one of our Chickadee friends thought yesterday was my birthday and brought me in a beautiful card the next day! It was not my birthday but I felt special just the same! It’s the small, thoughtfulness of our children that amazes me every day!

Happy NON birthday to me! haha

Hi Chickadee Families!!!

Just a wee reminder that it is PICTURE DAY on Friday! Have your child dressed in his/her “best” picture outfit! Be sure to send in a big smile as well! wink wink 🙂

Thanks in advance,

Ms. Jo-Anne 🙂

Hi Chickadee dot Families!

Today we had Officer Paul come to KHPS and talk to us about Halloween and being safe while trick or treating! He reminded the children to stay with an adult, hold hands, walk on the sidewalk, wear masks with big holes so vision isn’t blocked and to use a flashlight. Officer Paul talked to the children about going through all of the candy first with you and then only eating a little bit at a time. It was a quick but informative session! The children were very excited to tell him what they were dressing up as! Lots of princesses, batmans, firemen, spiderman, cats to name a few!

Thank-you to Mrs. McCarthy for organizing this for the children!

Here are some pictures for you to enjoy!

Love, Ms. Jo-Anne 🙂

Hi Chickadee Dot Families!! We are having a school-wide Food Drive. Any donations are welcome and appreciated.

Much appreciated!

Ms. Jo-Anne 🙂

Did you know that hundreds of thousands of kids in Canada go hungry every day?  This Halloween, the students at KHPS are scaring hunger away!  Please help by sending in a non-perishable item (canned goods/boxed goods/toilet paper/etc) that will be donated to the Kanata Food Bank.   Watch this for more information and help the kids at Kanata Highlands Public School make a difference in our community. 

Hi Chickadee dot families!
Today was a very good, no…amazing day here at KHPS!

beautiful! We are so fortunate to see this every day!

Our morning view! How could it not be anything but fantastic!

This morning, we started both our Kinderstar program with Zaid, as well as our Alphabet Blitz Program. We are introducing the names of the letters and the sounds of each of the letters one/day for the next 26 days. I use parts of the “Jolly Phonics Program” in my introduction of letters in Kindergarten. It is a multi-sensory approach which appeals to all of the different kinds of learners (such as Tactile, Visual etc). For example, each letter is taught with a picture, song, story and an action. After the introduction of each letter, the children have an opportunity to explore the letter in a variety of ways. Today the children made “Aa” books, practiced letter formation and sound using buttons to trace and drawing/colouring/printing on our BIG paper. We also had 2 students co-construct our A for our classroom alphabet! I will post our alphabet on Friday once we have gotten to E.

co-constructing our alphabet with buttons and glue! I wonder what we should build the letter B with?

We will vary the activities to keep things fun for each letter! Tomorrow we will explore the letter B. Along with our literacy activities, the children had a chance to explore sorting and classifying by colour and shape, as well as showing us what they know about numbers. They had a chance to show us the matching amount on the number card…using fun Halloween objects! We also acted out a pumpkin poem about 5 Little Pumpkins sitting on a gate! Ask your child to tell you this! Did they mention that the third pumpkin was a bit..sassy? 🙂

In the afternoon, Madame McCurry had loads of fun teaching the children Halloween, pumpkin vocabulary as well as introducing them to number sense in French! The children have been learning basic vocabulary such as colours, shapes, names of letters and sounds in French each day! Madame McCurry is very animated and keeps the children engaged in their French learning through fun poems, songs and stories! Here are a few pictures of our kiddos for you to enjoy! Learning French is so much fun!

Alphabet fun

Green? 🙂

counting, using a “ten-frame”

Also, in case you want to contact Madame McCurry, here email is Lesley-Anne.McCurry@ocdsb.ca. She has also asked me to pass along some French song links if you would like to listen and support your child’s French learning at home.

Ms. Jo-Anne (on behalf of your child’s amazing Kinder team of teachers!)

Hi!

We will be starting our Kinderstar program this Monday, October 17th.

This program is quite magical yet simple! The children love it! Each day one child is the KINDERSTAR for that day! That means he/she get to do bring the attendance to the office, be the leader of the line for the day, do special jobs for the teachers and just feel special! In time, we will begin to add show and tell onto our Kinderstar days but not until each student has a turn to be Kinderstar once. 🙂

Slow and steady! 🙂

The order of the Kinderstar is in alphabetical order of our class list. So on Monday, Zaid will be our first Kinderstar! Next will be Arsalan on Tuesday!

So, on Monday October 17th, Zaid will be our first Kinderstar!

Zaid, you are going to be terrific!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*October calendar will be sent home on Monday! I am just finalizing a few birthday dates and when picture day is and I will send it to you both in hard copy and as a pdf on our blog! Any mistakes that I make (which usually there is one…I do that on purpose :), please let me know and I will correct!) Keep an eye out for the calendar on our blog as well as in Mr. Zippy!

*If your child is going to be away on his/her Kinderstar day, please let us know. We can either do a switch or we can share a day with another student! or we can just add his/her day at the end of the month when we have gone through the class.

Thanks so much for reading!

Ms. Jo-Anne 🙂

Hi Chickadee Dot families!

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…today sure got cold quickly didn’t it? Thank-you for sending your child to school dressed for the weather. With the cold weather approaching, mittens, fleeces, warm jackets, rain boots or winter boots are encouraged and necessary as we go outside for over an hour each day!

Just a few things to tell you:

1. Birthday Celebrations.... The school policy has been established  and we have decided that with allergies and being mindful of healthy eating, we are asking that there will be no “treats” brought into the school. Stickers and pencils are welcome but to keep things safe and simple, we decided that food is unnecessary at school.  I promise, we will make your child feel special with a song, crown, pencil and lots of “TLC” on his/her special day.
2. School celebrations: (Christmas/Winter Holiday, Valentine’s and End of the year gatherings)… fruits and vegetables and healthy choices are welcomed and we will organize food closer to the date of the parties. Thank-you for your cooperation with this!

3. Halloween….Is fast approaching! We will be celebrating Halloween on Monday, October 31st.If you would like (This is Optional and not mandatory) please send your child to school in his/her Halloween costume. We are asking that accessories like swords, guns and or masks please stay at home.

Please also send in a plastic bag to put your child’s costume in. We will be doing a parade within the school, doing the “Monster Mash”  dance and having some craft/story/activity rotations amongst the Kindergarten team! It will be SPOOOOOOCTACULAR! :) We will be staying away from “scary” parts of Halloween, focussing on jack-o-lantern’s, dressing up in costumes etc! No witches, ghosts or….clowns!

We are also asking this:…. please do not send any candy in your child’s lunch after Halloween! We know this will be a challenge because let’s face it, everyone loves candy! However, we have decided as a school that healthy eating is important for our mind and body and good nutrition is needed! All candy is best to stay at home! Thank-you, thank-you!

One more thing: can you please send in a 250 mL mason jar for a special Halloween craft?

Please send them in as soon possible and are due for the activity by next Thursday, October 20th. Thank-you!!! Our special activity will take a few days to do so the earlier the better! Thank-you! If  you cannot send one in, please let me know and I can take care of bringing some in.

Thank-you so much for reading and all of your support as always!

Ms. Jo-Anne

PS..Kinderstar program news and calendar information coming very soon!

Happy Tuesday Chickadee dot family!

I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend with your children! Did you like their “turkey” handprint cards? Did they sing you our “Hello, Mr. Turkey, how are you?” song? Didn’t their pictures turn out lovely?

It was really good to see the kiddos back to school rested and smiling! I actually thought they looked like they had grown since last Thursday!

On Friday, while the students were at home from school, we came together as a staff for professional development to discuss Restorative Practices and Inquiry learning.

Restorative practices is a philosophy that helps us work with children in solving social issues that may arise on the playground or classroom. We have learned valuable questioning techniques that will guide us with the children in their social interactions. For example asking the question “What happened?” rather than why did you do that…is more positive and effective. If you would like to know more about this, I am happy to share more!

Although we have been using the Inquiry model for a few years now here in Kindergarten, the session was very informative. Basically, the Inquiry learning model is developing activities and learning opportunities that are driven by the children’s interests. There can be a few inquiries going on in the classroom. As educators, it is our primary objective to listen carefully to our students while they are at play and catch the spark of interest, so to speak. The other day, the children were wondering why the moon was still out in the morning… As our young learners get more comfortable with school, the routines, each other, the inquiry learning begins to unfold! Both sessions were very helpful and I feel very fortunate to have such a great learning opportunity.

Both sessions were very helpful and I feel very fortunate to have such a great learning opportunity. Have I mentioned, just how thankful I am for this wonderful learning opportunity here at Highlands!

This week we are learning about:

-Fall, Seasonal changes. We are reading wonderful, rich stories about leaves, pumpkins and harvest time. (both in French and  English). We will be reading one of my favourite stories tomorrow, “The Little Yellow Leaf” which is a book about empathy and taking risks!…feel free to send in a yellow leaf tomorrow in Mr. Zippy! We will add this to our writing piece!

-Discussing the lifecycle of a pumpkin (Both in French and English)

-Estimating and predicting how wide (circumference) and heavy our pumpkin is, how many lines it has on it and learning the strange fact about our class pumpkin…why is it pink???or a funny green-speckled colour?

Mrs. McCarthy is having the children measure the pumpkin with an estimated piece of yarn!

-Sorting and classifying class objects like buttons by colour and size.

-Number sense: what does 5 look like? what does 6 look like? Introducing “ten frames” in this process.

-Practicing writing our name (“Kindergarten style”: Capital only at the beginning, lower case for the remainder), drawings and “bumping up” our pictures in our “Hot News” responses to stories and from community discussions. Today we tried “Knees to Knees” which is an activity I like to use (called Think, Pair, Share) to develop listening and speaking skills. Each pair was asked to listen and retell their partner’s hot news from the weekend. The children did well, considering it was the first time! Each time we do this, the children get better and better! 🙂

Think, Pair, Share or “Knees to Knees”

I think that is it for now! I am enjoying our communication, please feel free to send me an email or jot me a note in Mr. Zippy if you have any comments, questions! We love to hear from you!

Monthly Calendars

Also, would you like a monthly calendar for topic dates for your fridge each month? I have always done one in the past but was not sure it was an effective tool for communication.

Any comments in Mr. Zippy would be appreciated!

A few pictures to leave you with!

hot news

“bumping” up our pictures

Seriously, is this what I see when I leave school? Lucky girl!

We all showed up in purple today! Ummm…who sent out the wear purple memo? Mrs. McCarthy, Ms. Jo and Madame McCurry

Love, Ms. Jo-Anne 🙂

Hi Chickadee Dot Families!

Happy Monday!!!

I hope you are having a lovely evening with your family! Wasn’t today a beautiful Fall day?! We have been watching the leaves in the trees of our Forests turn colour.  They are turning red, orange and yellow now! Breathtaking!We are so fortunate to be surrounded by such beautiful nature here at Kanata Highlands.

beautiful Fall tree in the distance!

harvest!

Last week on Friday, we had a great Terry Fox Run! Wow! What a great community event! It was so fun to run around our field together as a Kinder community while the older students, teachers, and parents ran on the trails. Thank-you to the parents who were able to join us! and THANK YOU for your generous donations! What a wonderful, feel-good activity to raise money for cancer research.

having fun!!!!!!!!!!

Tired chickadees… reflecting on their run/walk and watching Terry Fox

Tired out kiddos

This week, we continue to explore the Seasonal changes of Fall. We have completed our first Art project of Fall Trees. The children drew trees and used paint and their fingertips to make Fall leaves. These turned out beautiful. Wouldn’t you agree? I am hoping to put these up tomorrow!

hard at work!

In Literacy, we continue to work on recognizing our names and the many letters in our name. We are doing this through play activities and some whole group instruction activities such as morning message, I Spy letter activities and daily routines. We are learning to draw pictures about things we like at school, responding to stories that we have just read “What is your favourite part”? with a variety of colours in our “HOT NEWS”. The students are progressing so quickly! It is amazing! If you would like to help your child practice writing your name, that would be wonderful.

Literacy Centres

In Numeracy, we will be learning to sort and classify items. Learning to sort by size, colour and shape. We will sort classrooms items such as math manipulatives such as buttons, gems, pattern blocks, link cubes etc.  I think it will be great to go and collect leaves next week and sort the leaves by colour and or kind of leaf.  Next we will move onto patterning!

Also, we are talking about the upcoming holiday… Thanksgiving…We all have so much that we are thankful for in our lives. We are teaching the children to be thankful for the wonderful things and opportunities you provide them with every day. We are reading stories and talking about our families and the discussion is so positive! I wish you could all be flies on the wall in our room! Our children have amazing stories and ideas! Keep an eye out for your special card on Thursday in “Mr. Zippy”! Be prepared for some serious cuteness! :0

Ms. Bennett has been coming in each day doing music with the children. She introduced rhythm sticks to the nursery rhyme “Hickory Dickory Dock”! It was incredible how well the children listened and followed her instructions!

Rhythm Sticks

We have a new “puppet friend”…Big Blue! Ask your child what kind of bird Big Blue is?

Big Blue

In French, …From Madame McCurry… (Email and information has been added and glued inside the front cover of Mr. Zippy for you if you would like to contact Madame McCurry)

Madame MCurry teaching the children about Falling leaves

…over the last couple of weeks Mme McCurry and the chickadees have been working on simple French vocabulary and getting comfortable hearing and using familiar phrases. Last week we sang the song “comment ca va” and practiced possible responses. The students love to be askd how they are doing! We have also been working on “je m’appelle” (my name is), colour vocabulary, commonly used school vocabulary and snack vocabulary. While the students are busy at play, Mme McCurry circulates the room and supports the students at play by asking questions in French and teaching them new words to identify their learning materials. The students are starting to feel confident hearing the language and using some simple words. They are repeating very well and they like to use big actions to imitate Madame. Can’t wait to learn more this week as we are focusing on the word “merci” and things that we are thankful for.

I think that is all for now! FAMILY PHOTOS STILL MISSING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Please send in for our “Family Wall”. You would be surprised just how many times the kiddos go and look at your family photo for comfort or a smile in their day! Thank you to the families for sending those in!

School-Home Connection: If you would like to help your child practice writing his/her name, that would be wonderful. We are encouraging the children to use only an upper-case letter for the first initial and only lower-case letters for the remaining letters. A few minutes here and there would be great practice! Using a family chalk board, writing with bubbles in the bathtub, using a white board etc. are a few ideas!

Any harvest items such as gourds, little pumpkins, acorns, pinecones, interesting nature, Fall items are welcomed and appreciated!

Love, Ms. Jo-Anne

PS…thanks for reading! 🙂

I am so thankful to be your,  one of your child’s teachers this year! I am so lucky to have this opportunity!