Rock Climbing!!

Dear parents,
Thanks for attending our assembly. I was very proud of our students. I barely had to do anything! Also a huge thank you to Rick for accompanying us again.

Today I am sending home the May calendar as well as the permission form for our last big trip of the year. Please read the information letter carefully. There are instructions for completing a waiver, not included in the package. The note is copied below, for your convenience and it includes a link to the website where you will find the child waiver to be completed. Please note that your child will not be permitted to participate in rock climbing without this extra form. If you have any questions at all, or can't access or print the completed form, please get in touch with me. It promises to be a VERY exciting outing!!
To be extra clear, by May 11th, you should be returning to me 3 things:
1) Signed TDSB permission form
2) Completed Boulderz Child Waiver
3) $7.00


Here is a copy of the information letter that accompanied the field trip form today:

Dear Kindergarten Parents,

We are so excited to announce that this month, all kindergarten classes will have an
opportunity to go rock climbing!

We will be visiting Boulderz Climbing Centre for a morning of climbing instruction and fun.
We are excited that this trip provides to our students, an opportunity to try an activity that
they may not have had a chance to try outside of school.

While we are confident that our students will be safely supervised while at Boulderz,
this activity does present an element of risk. In order for your child to participate,
you will need to fill out a waiver, available online only at http://www.boulderzclimbing.com.
If you need any assistance filling in the online form, please speak to your teacher.

Once you have completed the waiver and have received an electronic copy of it,
please either forward the PDF file, or provide a hard-copy to your teacher. We will be
bringing the waivers with us on the trip.

Room 202’s trip will take place the morning of May 31st.

The cost for this outing is $7.00 per student. Payment and forms are due by

Friday May 11th. Each class will require a minimum of 4 parent volunteers.
We welcome additional volunteers who wish to provide their own TTC fare.
Please indicate on the permission form whether you are able to volunteer.

Thank you,

The Kindergarten Team

Our Garden

Hello families,
Last Sunday was Earth Day, and we've been celebrating all week! We've been planting for 3 days in a row, reading books about nature and being responsible citizens, cleaning up our yard and even getting right up close and personal with earth worms!
Our first planting experience included filling our own little pots with soil, planting bean seeds and watering them. Each gardener is responsible for taking care of their little bean babies each day. A few students stuck around to help plant some seeds that Mirabel gifted us last fall. We will all help care for those pots. For our next two planting jobs, we used prepared peat pellets. First, we each planted some sunflower seeds, our gift from le Père Noël. Today, we planted tomato seeds. But not just any tomato seeds. SPACE tomatoes!
In this experiment, we plant one group of control tomato seeds that have always lived here on Earth. We also plant a group of seeds that lived for 5 weeks on the International Space Station! We made some predictions about what might happen. Some ideas were...
- The space tomatoes will grow higher and bigger.
- The space tomatoes will grow into outer space.
- The space seeds will float around because they are used to zero gravity.
- The Earth tomatoes will bend over faster.
We will keep track of any differences in how the 2 groups of seeds grow and eventually report our findings to Tomatosphere. Thanks Lori, for this great idea!

Between all our different planting projects this week, we have created quite a garden. Check it out!

Outside, I also put an eager group (who weren't sure what to do with their shovels) to work landscaping. They were excited to help fill in a few of the holes that are notorious for becoming mud puddles after rain. They stuck with it for a while and took their landscaping job very seriously!

This week is safety week at Dewson. We have had a practice fire drill, and today we had a practice lockdown. I was proud of our students for moving quickly and quietly to our safe spot and staying quiet throughout the drill. 

(FYI, Dewson's safety week was planned long before Monday's events. We have not and are not planning to discuss this in our classroom.)

Ask you know, this Friday morning, we are hosting the April assembly and performing our concert song. Please remind your student to wear their pink or red or hearts or whatever they've decided will contribute to our message. Note: I know that many students are planning to wear nice clothes (great!), but do keep in mind that a gym period has been rescheduled to Friday, and the kids will be going outside. Clothing will need to work for that too. Also, please ensure that they are on time for school. We will be going straight in at drop-off and then it's show time!

Friday will also be Mme Diana's last day with us. Over the last 4 weeks, Diana has worked daily with our students to introduce them to the vocabulary surrounding animals and the farm. She has done so through daily hands-on craft activities, a beautiful farm display and mural, books and a felt story that she prepared. She has done all this while also supporting students with our daily routines, and working and playing with students individually. Oh, and did I mention she works before and after school for the Dewson Y, while finishing her training? We have been lucky to have her support, especially while Mme Dominique has been away. Please join me in thanking her and please wish her well if you see her on Friday!

Mme Dominique received our package of cards last evening and was quite touched. She misses us terribly and thankfully, her treatments are starting to help.
Also, I was thinking that I never shared with you the happy news about Ms. Toporowsky. This is old news now, so you've probably gotten it from another source. Anyway, Ms. T (the ECE in Mr. Evans' class last year) had her baby on March 4th. It's a boy, and his name is Niko! Mama and baby are doing well! Congrats Ms. T!

Mots de la Semaine

la Terre

le soleil

la lune

une étoile

l’espace

Counting Skills

Hi parents,
Thank you for bringing your students to the 'Clowns' musical. I hope you enjoyed it - I know the kids were so excited to see it again!

Last week, it happened to be my brother's birthday, and since the kids love hearing about my family, they agreed to help me record a singing of "Joyeux Anniversaire" to send to him (which he adored!). In it, we counted all the way up to his age, in the 30s. As a group, we can count pretty high!
This week, I had a little interview with each mathematician to see how our French counting is coming along. We used cubes to count at least to 10, and we worked through some of the harder numbers in the teens. The most common error is with 16 and 17. We will spend some time on this at school. If you're counting in French at home, please don't let this mistake go by uncorrected. Once our brains memorize things, they can be hard to unlearn! I also had students draw a number card (1-10) at random to see if they knew the number name in French. I want to make sure we are prepared for grade 1. We are doing well!

Each day, Mme Diana works with interested students at the animal centre to create more pieces for this magical display. Isn't it cute? So far, there are des vaches, des moutons, des canards, des poules et coqs et des chevaux. Probably more that I'm forgetting, and I think there are even some tractors in progress!

These students wanted to do a science experiment this morning. They mixed food colouring and water, and eventually moon sand. The mixture turned out basically like play dough.

Next Friday, the 27th, is when we host the April primary assembly and perform the song we learned for the concert. As you know, you are welcome to attend (9:15 am). We will be talking and singing about Pink Day, which has just past. Therefore, please remind your students to wear something PINK, if possible. Thanks!

Mots de la Semaine

Here are some insects that we have read or talked about.

une araignée (spider)

une abeille (bee)

la fourmi (ant)

un papillon (butterfly)

la coccinelle (ladybug)

Clowns!

Hello families,
Just want to remind you that many of Dewson's junior students (many of my former students) have been working hard to prepare the musical "Clowns". It will be presented at Dewson tomorrow (Tuesday) and Wednesday evenings at 7pm. It is less than an hour long. Please do support Mr. Greene and the entire cast and team by attending, if you are able. We were lucky to attend the dress rehearsal this afternoon, and can confirm that it's an outstanding show!! I also need to post a group Bravo for our entire class. We were an amazing audience during the performance today - better even than many older classes, and this can't have been easy considering we were cooped up inside all day. Merci mes amis!

We also have just under 2 weeks left until we perform at the April assembly. Please feel free to join us April 27th @ 9:15 in the gym.
Our April library trip is in 2 weeks. The note was sent home today. Please let me know if you can come.

Over the last few rainy days, we have kept busy inside working at Mme Diana's animal centre, building (shown below is a cleverly designed racing ramp for vehicles), playing games such as dominoes and snakes & ladders, and making cards to mail to Mme Dominique.

If you've been wondering, unfortunately Mme Dominique has badly injured her back and has not yet been able to safely return to work. She is missing us terribly, and we are missing her equally, however she needs to take care of herself first. We wish her a speedy recovery and are sending her a letter and some cards to cheer her up. In the meantime, we've had a few very helpful ECEs and we are lucky to have Mme Diana with us while we are shorthanded. With only one regular teacher in the room, the children are having to be extra patient with me, and extra helpful. I've been grateful for all the helpers I have in our class. The picture below is a beautiful sight I walked into last week, when it was just me, and I had to help students with their belongings when others were ready to begin. Some leaders emerged and started doing poems with the group that was waiting. Made my day!

Here are the beautiful flowers with the marbled paint design made by mixing paint with shaving cream. To the left are the aquariums we made with Mme Diana, and also the t-shirts we decorated for Pink Day.

Les animaux de la ferme

Hello parents,

It was a Monday miracle! Our eggsperiment worked! When we showed up Monday morning, our egg shells were covered and stuck together with crystals. Each student took theirs home in a little cup to show you. We have already started another little experiment, hatching a little chick from an egg (thanks Dollarama).

Today was international Day of Pink! William knew the story about the origins of pink day, and told us about it. We had a couple short discussions about instances where we could have chosen nicer words about our friends' clothing, and about activities and colours that are often associated with either girls or boys, but that everyone should be able to enjoy freely. We all know what to do, we just need to do it!

We had a few special centres set up today. One was to decorate and cut out a t-shirt, celebrating Day of Pink. Many of them feature hearts or pictures of friends. Another activity was making shaving cream paintings. If you haven't tried this, you MUST. It's so cool! Basically, you just need shaving cream, acrylic paint and thick paper cut into whatever shape you want. We did flowers. Ask your artist what the steps are to create these amazing painted designs. I can't wait to put them up on our tree in the hallway!

A third special centre is Mme Diana's animal centre. As part of her internship, she must design and run a centre. I suggested working on animals, since we haven't learned much vocabulary in this area. Each day she will run a centre doing activities with farm animals. Students may choose to work here during their centre time. We will encourage everyone to try it out!

Outside, we are still making adorable little houses and communities (not encouraging home toys at school). We also had a group of campers building a fire pit as part of a grand plan to stay overnight at school. They had it all worked out!

I also have good news to share about our class. Today was a much better listening day. The last two days were not so hot. It seemed like a lot of us forgot to stop what they are doing and look up when being spoken to. We talked about it, and today we did a lot better. Let's keep it up!

Mots de la semaine

Here are some farm animals we are learning about this week. 

There have been others on previous lists.

le canard

le cochon

un mouton

une oie (goose)

la vache

Dance Party!!

We had SO much fun at the dance-a-thon this afternoon. Thank you so much for all your donations and fundraising efforts. As a class, we raised over $850!!

Today, we also did a great activity led by Mme Diana. She read us a story about an octopus, and later we got to contribute to a group painting of an aquarium.

Mots de la Semaine

l’océan

un poisson

la pieuvre (octopus)

une baleine (whale)

nager (to swim)

Yesterday, we worked together to write another letter to August. We thanked him for his letter, and told him about our crystal growing experiment (still in progress). A few other students chose to write August a personal letter during their centre time. I mailed everything off after school!

We tried something new this afternoon during storytime. Since I wasn't done meeting with reading groups, and we had already listened to a story earlier with Mme Diana, we tried a grade 1 task: read to self. We did a good finding a book and a quiet place to look at it on our own during storytime.

Outside, the kids have been really getting into digging. They have dug some massive holes in the garden area near the front of the school, and also in the sandpit. I'm looking forward to doing some planting with them soon! Yesterday, I observed a few kids building little tree houses. Very cute!

Updated Dance Time!!

Alert, Alert!!
To any parents coming to volunteer at our specific dance time, we are dancing a bit earlier than initially planned. We are now from 1:40-2:10 pm.

Bienvenue avril

Hello families,
Well, our experiment wasn't a complete fail. There has definitely been some growth, but not nearly as much as we had hoped. This is our best egg so far, but we'll give them a few more days.

A few reminders and upcoming dates...
- Dance-a-thon envelopes are due Thursday, whether there is money inside or not. Consider this your ticket for Friday's dance.
- If you'd like to glow in the dark, wear white on Friday!
- I neglected to put Dewson's musical on the calendar. The junior students are preparing the musical "Clowns". This will be performed the evenings of April 17th and 18th. I've been helping a tiny bit with the singing, and I believe Mirabel's dad is involved as well. I'm confident it will be an amazing show. Please plan to see it!

We would also like to welcome Mme Diana. You may already know her from the YMCA, but you may not have known that she is also an ECE candidate. She will be completing a placement in our classroom for the month of April. It will be great to have her support!