We don't very often give our students a prescribed task - they usually have many many choices, even within our highly routined day! However, I couldn't send them home for Thanksgiving weekend without a decoration, so we made turkeys! We did have the choice between hand print feathers, or leaf feathers (using leaves that we gathered earlier this week). I think both versions look fantastic!
October Scholastic forms are also coming home and any orders are due by the 19th. Here are some recommendations from the Club de Lecture catalogue:
- 20F2 "Si tu veux dire merci..." - We are all about saying merci in our class, so students can help out when reading this book!
- 10F2 "Les émotions" - At this age, we are learning to deal with our feelings in a healthy way, so this book is fitting.
- 24F2 & 25F2 - These books are all English Robert Munsch books translated into French. Many students already know the stories in English, which means they easily understand and enjoy the story when read to them in French.
Naturally, I learned about one school event the 5 minutes after I sent the October calendar home. Tuesday the 17th is picture day. It's not a gym day, so we can wear whatever we wish and we'll do our best not to get dirty before the big moment.
Many students wore orange touches for Orange Day last Friday. Dominique and I decided to use the occasion as a way to talk about friendly behaviours that our class could use some practice with. We asked lots of students to role play situations that have come up at school, and demonstrate kind behaviour and problem solving. Some situations that we acted out were
- wanting to play with a new friend, using words not hands to get attention
- asking a partner to go to the washroom, and the partner saying YES!
- helping a friend who's sad or hurt, not simply walking by
- asking to be included in a game, and the group saying YES!
All of the kindergarten teachers and ECEs are currently spending a good portion of the day resolving small problems between peers, where often one person did something the other didn't like, and one or both students hit or pushed the other. We're confident that our students don't wish to hurt each other, but pushing or hitting seems to be an instinctive reaction. We always listen to what happened, have students apologize, and discuss what to do next time. We hope that students will begin solving problems with words, or come to a teacher right away, before the problem escalates. If you can reinforce the idea of keeping our hands and feet to ourselves, that would be great. It's a message that bears repeating.
You may soon receive an email from the administration about changes to our drop-off and pick-up procedures. We're trying to simplify, and make sure that all classes are doing the same thing. There isn't a big change for our class. We will still dismiss at our bench and "home kids" (as I call them) will wait with me or the teacher on duty until we see their picker-upper. Daycare kids will no longer come outside straight away, but will say with Mme Dominique upstairs to meet their daycare teachers. The main change that will affect you is in the morning. We are asking that parents say goodbye just outside the gate and we will have a staff member monitoring the gate to welcome students and make sure that no students are leaving the yard while the gate is unlocked. We hope that this will help with student safety at a time when we have all classes in the yard. We also wish to help students develop their independence by entering the school yard and coming to their teacher on their own. Now that we're into the second month of the school year, hopefully you feel comfortable with this too!
This week we observed students making some great designs at our math centre, some lovely drawings - some that illustrated our 3 to 3 poems - there was some masterful cutting of playdough going on and some very thoughtful make believe in the little house. We have updated our self-portraits for October and have added some new poems to our repertoire, including a much longer one that some kids learned in English last year and one that is very helpful in setting us up for quiet time. We LOVE hearing the kids speak French to us, whether it be a word, or a whole song. More students have earned their first prize, and many others are almost there!
Words of the Week
"J'ai fini" has quickly become the most popular phrase in our classroom, but we're glad to hear students using it in the right context. When we do poems, we often ask student leaders to select the next leader, but we specify garçon or fille, so that it's fair. They know what those words mean! We might need a little more practice on s'il te plaît (please). We know merci so well that it's kind of taken on both meanings... working on it!
s’il te plaît
j’ai fini
un garçon
une fille
Have a lovely long weekend!