TOMORROW is the Dewson Festival. Thanks to all of you who are involved in making it happen. We will try to get all the kinder kids out to the bouncy castles in the afternoon, just in case they aren't able to go to the festival with you in the evening. I also expect that tickets and wristbands will be distributed to students in class sometime during the day tomorrow. If you ordered tickets, it may be good to speak to your students about where they should keep them until you arrive.
Pick-up can feel frantic on festival day, but there is no change on my end. 3:15 in the kindergarten yard. Same kids, same time, same place. Please let me know if your arrangements have changed. For example, if your child is not going to daycare and should come outside with me, please let me and the daycare know. As always, I will not release kids without seeing their picker-upper, so if you are helping at festival and won't be able to get to our yard at 3:15, please make arrangements with someone who can. Thanks!
There are two additions to our June calendar:
1) Next Monday, June 11th, we will have a Run, Jump & Throw event for the kinders. This is like a mini version of track & field. It will take place between 9:00-10:15 am outside. Please send your students dressed in gym clothing, and feel free to come watch!
2) We would like to recognize the many parents who have helped out with events throughout the year. We did our best to send thank you cards after each event, but Dewson is now hosting an appreciation hour for all volunteers. I do not have all the details yet, but I believe it will be
Now let me show you some of what we've been up to lately...
One of my favourite things to watch is when students start or continue a game independently of me. I left these students playing a game of Soldat using the big bouncy ball and they kept the game going for quite a while!
This group was playing a game of babies. At one point, the babies were crying SO loudly, that I didn't know if it was real or pretend. It was pretend. To calm them down, we sang some lullabies.
On June 1st, we completed our last self-portrait. I can't wait to send them all home so you can see the progression in your child's fine-motor skills over this school year.
Last week was bike to school week. Every day, we each placed a sticker on our chart to track how we all arrived to school.
This week, I challenged students to try to show this data in another way, possibly using building materials or making colour groups for each mode of transportation. Mme Janice helped some students to count out coloured cubes for each way of getting to school. Amazing!
We then traced the rows of cubes, creating a diagramme à bandes. We looked at both our charts and discussed how the bar graph is a little easier to read, because you don't have to spend the time counting all the stickers (which we had all done together) to know which way had the most people. Good little intro to data management before grade 1!!
Fiesta Farms was giving away their last Venus Fly Traps. I brought one to school, and the kids have been so fascinated by it. We have been hunting for ants to feed it, and watched two of the little mouths close right over some unlucky victims!
Look at this amazing path! The students have been moving our stumps around like nobody's business. They made this great road, and have now constructed a sort of fort!
Here is someone making a good quiet time choice.
We got out the outdoor kitchen set. Since it doesn't come out very often, it was pretty special and lots of kids wanted to play with it at the same time. This left some of us feeling like there wasn't enough food to go around...
... so we made some more during our centre time. Some cooks even made a recipe book!
Mme Dominique update: I know a lot of you are concerned and wondering. She is doing better, but stairs are still hard for her. The kids get to do downstairs in small groups from time to time to work with her, but at this point it seems unlikely that she will be back with us full time before the end of the year. ):
See you tomorrow @ Festival!