Kindergarten Reporting – Growing Success: The Kindergarten Addendum

16 January  2017

Dear Parents/Guardians,

In the spring of 2016, the Ministry of Education introduced a new assessment, evaluation and reporting document Growing Success: The Kindergarten Addendum to replace the former report card and which aligns with The Kindergarten Program, 2016.  As part of the implementation process, teacher and Early Childhood Educator teams have been receiving background, training and supports and will be using the new report card Communication of Learning for Year 2 students this February, 2017.

Kindergarten educator teams will continue to provide ongoing and reciprocal communication with parents and guardians of students in Year 1 regarding their child’s progress. A Communication of Learning report card will be issued in June, 2017 as has been our past practice. Both Year 1 and Year 2 students will receive the new Communication of Learning report card in June, 2017.

Beginning in 2017-2018, all Year 1 and Year 2 students will receive a Communication of Learning: Initial Observation (new) in the fall and Communication of Learning report card in February and June. This will complete the full implementation of the new assessment, evaluation, and reporting process for Kindergarten going forward.

We look forward to our continued partnership in your child’s learning. Should you have any questions, please contact your child’s Kindergarten educator team.  

Hi!

Happy Sunday!

Just a reminder that tomorrow (Monday Jan. 30th) is a PA day! We (the staff) will be at school writing our report cards for the second year Kindergarten students (formerly known as Senior Kindergarten students.) Report cards (or now they are called “Kindergarten Communication of Learning”) will be sent home on Tuesday February 22. I hope the children enjoy their extra long weekend! We look forward to seeing them at school on Tuesday!

I hope the children enjoy their extra long weekend! We look forward to seeing them back at school on Tuesday! We will be celebrating Chinese New Year and our centres are planned around this holiday and the year of the Rooster! A big thank-you to Kaelyn and her family for sending in red envelopes for each of the children! 

Last Day of January is on Tuesday! Yay, good-bye January and hello February!!

Here is the February calendar if you want to print it off. A hard copy will go home on Tuesday, take a look, does it look right? 🙂

feb.17.cal

Valentine’s Day News

In Kindergarten, we love to celebrate being friends!!! We will be celebrating Valentine’s Day in the chickadee class on Valentine’s Day which is Tuesday February 14th.

We will be celebrating Valentine’s Day in the chickadee class on Valentine’s Day which is Tuesday February 14th.

If your child would like to send in Valentine’s cards (homemade or theme-store-bought cards) for his or her friends, they are welcome to do so. This is optional and if your child does not want to do this, that is absolutely fine.

All we ask. is that if your child does want to bring in Valentine’s cards, to please send in a valentine card for every child in the class. We have 29 students in our class.  I would suggest you start sooner than later, writing and signing his or her name 29 times is a big task for 4-6 year olds and starting early will avoid any frustration! Please do not worry about writing friends’ names on the valentine’s day card. Just your child’s name is perfect for this age!

 Our Valentine’s card exchange (as well as fun Valentine’s day crafts, songs and stories) will be on Tuesday February 14th. Also, just a reminder that if your child is bringing in Valentine cards, please send them with your child to school on Tuesday morning, not sooner, please. Putting them in “Mr. Zippy” is a great idea!

I think that is it for now about Valentine’s Day. 

Enjoy your Sunday night!

Love, Ms. Jo-Anne 🙂

(on behalf of the Chickadee team)

Hi again,

Just a friendly reminder to please, please take a moment to label all of your children’s clothing: mittens, boots, coats, neck warmers, sweaters etc. Everything  please!

We have had so many mix-ups with mittens and boots so far and although we do apologize and try our best to help the children keep their belongings organized, these mishaps occur, unfortunately. Labelling sure helps with getting items back to their owners.

Thank-you sooo much!

Love,

Ms. Jo-Anne 🙂

Hi Chickadee Dot Families!

I hope you are enjoying your weekend! It has been awhile since I’ve posted a blog entry! I hope you are enjoying this nice, mild weather!

I am “tweeting” a lot, please follow me on twitter (@jojopull) as I find it very quick and fun to send out pics of our fun here at school! Thank-you to the moms and dads who “like” my tweets each day…love to see that you are reading and hearing what we are doing daily at KHPS!

Just a few highlights from the last 2 weeks in January!

2017!!!!

We talked about the new year and the children learned how to say 2017 in both French and English, as they coloured and “sparkled” the numbers 2017. We made self-portraits which are displayed on our door.

In Literacy, we have been continuing with “Hot News” twice a week. The children are drawing and writing about their own experiences or reflecting on a read-aloud. We are now encouraging the children to write the beginning sounds of the words they are writing. For example, if their picture is about snow…we are encouraging them to print the letter “S”. The children are doing well with this and are progressing at their own rate! We continue to “Echo Read” a few times a week, where the children are learning to track the words as they read.

In French, Madame McCurry continues to work on developing French vocabulary through hands-on activities. She brings in a lot of “loose parts” (ie jewels, rocks, sequence, beads etc) and the children make neat things, working on risk-taking, problem solving and of course French vocab. They work in their red booklets, focussing on letter recognition in French. This week, the children were archelogists and had the chance to “pick” ice to try to get the toys (which were Paw Patrol figures) out of the ice! The children loved this! And…they were further developing their fine motor skills, learning about ice and problem solving how to make it melt faster! So fun!!!

In Science, we planted an Amaryllis, “red lion” and are watching it grow and making observations and predictions about how tall it will grow! This week, we will be bringing in snow and ice and watching it alter states from a solid to a liquid! Maybe if the children see just all of the dirt that is in the snow, they won’t eat so much! Fingers crossed! 🙂

In Numeracy, we have been working on number sense and making number concept. For example, making lego towers of a certain number. We also explored the idea the idea of number conservation where 3 blocks in a row is the same as 3 blocks apart. We will continue to explore number concept and we will begin formally exploring making and identifying patterns.

In Physical Education, we have been enjoying the gym! It is beautiful and we have really great equipment! We go to the gym 4 times a week, every day except Tuesday! We have established routines and rules that will keep us safe! We warm-up each time by moving our bodies in different ways (ie. walking, running, marching etc) and the children are getting very good at knowing if their hearts are beating fast or not! Skills such as spatial awareness, balancing, throwing and catching are being developed! We continue to play cooperative games as well, ask your child about “Shark attack”!!!

In Art, we have been exploring chalk on paper to create snowy pictures. We have talked about perspective as we draw “wintery scenes” from our windows and we made some “melting” snowmen pictures after reading my favourite story by Lois Ehlert, Snowballs.

Peach!!!!! No not the fruit…

Lastly, if you haven’t heard, we have a class pet! A hamster named Peach! We made welcome signs for her on Monday! The children are enjoying watching her as she plays and sleeps in her cage. We have put her in the ball and she enjoys going around the classroom while we play! The children are very respectful and are enjoying learning about taking care of her! If you would like to take her for a weekend, please let me know! If you want to have her at your house, please write me a note in “Mr. Zippy”. I just ask that you pick her up on Friday after school and drop her back off on Monday morning! We can make arrangements privately should you want to have her for a weekend!

I think that is it for now!

One request:

Please send in a washed, plastic water bottle 500 mL this week. We are going to make “calming bottles” with water and sparkles. We have been learning different strategies around mindfulness and I would like to start implementing some of these ideas with our class, starting with “calming bottles” to have if needed. Thank-you!

Have a happy week!

Love, Ms. Jo-Anne:)

Hi,

Here is January calendar! It is correct with the right dates on the right days! I apologize for the errors, one of these months I will get it right! I should just say that I make the mistakes on purpose, right? haha! 🙂

jan. cal17.1

Just a note that there is also a PA Day on Monday, January 30th, which is a report card writing day for us! We just found out today that we, your child’s Kindergarten teachers, will be writing report cards only for our Senior Kindergarten students (or second-year students) in February. All Junior and Senior Kindergarten students receive a report card in June.

All Junior and Senior Kindergarten students will receive a report card in June.

Thanks for reading!

I also sent an email as well! Hope you get a chance to reprint the calendar at home!

Thanks!

Ms. Jo-Anne 🙂

Hi!!!

Just a quick reminder to all the families who ordered pizza. The pizza lunches will start next Wednesday, January 18. Pizza will be provided during the second nutrition break. This Thursday, January 12 will be the last possible day we will be able to accept payments for Pizza orders. If you have any questions feel free to contact us.

Fiona and Anna school council lunch coordinators
anna_nick@rogers.com
fpingyin@gmail.com

Just a few pics from our fun in December!

Highlights include: Pajama Fridays, Making Gingerbread cookies, Yoga with Maddie’s mom, Tatianna, Scientists in the School, playing in the snow and our craft rotation day!

Enjoy the pictures!

gingerbreadman cookies

craft day!

Making crafts with mommy!

Say cheeeeeeeeeese reindeers!

Snow much fun!

Three muskateers…wait where’s Madame McCurry!?

Show and tell

Yoga!

Scientists in the school

Scientists in the school

Fun picture search!

Looking forward to making more memories this month!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hi Chickadee Fam-Jams! I have missed you!

Happy New Year!

We wish you all the happiness, good health and wonderful times for 2017!

I hope you had a wonderful holiday with your families! We are so looking forward to seeing the children tomorrow, with their big smiles and stories!

I bet they have grown!!! 🙂

Tomorrow is going to be a great first day back! Just to prepare your kiddos: we will start the day with our routines of coming into the school, putting Mr. Zippy in our basket, signing in and singing our morning songs! We will read our morning message together using “shared-reading”, talk about our holidays and reflect over the holidays using our “Hot News”, using pictures and writing! We will also be talking about our New Year goals and making a fun craft at the tables during centre time! Before lunch, we will be doing Victor‘s show and tell as he is our Kinderstar tomorrow!!!!

We will be going to the gym for the first time ever after our outside play!!!Our gym at KHPS is finally ready!!!!!!!! Yipeeeeeeeeeeeeee! We will establish routines and rules for the gym and play some cooperative games! Our gym equipment should be arriving soon!

Madame McCurry (along with Mrs. McCarthy) will be with the children in the afternoon and I know she has some fun, new French activities for the children! She will be speaking more French with the children and using less English!

*Special news:…. Mrs. Goyal will be returning to KHPS on Monday, January 23. In the meantime, we will have some guest ECE teachers fill in until she returns.

** Reminder: Please label all your child’s mittens, neck warmers, boots, jackets,snow pants etc! It is amazing just how many black mittens our kiddos are wearing! Thank-you for your cooperation!

January Calendar and scholastic book order forms will be sent home tomorrow in Mr. Zippy! Here is a soft copy if you want to print it, let me know if I’ve made some errors!

jan. cal.17

Looking forward to seeing your kiddos tomorrow! Back to routine we go! I honestly LOVE January in Kindergarten! So much fun and learning!

Wishing everyone a great night!

Love, Ms. Jo-Anne 🙂