Thank you for fundraising!!

Thank you all so much for helping us fundraise!! We worked together to add it up, and our little class raised $755!!! That's over our goal amount! Thanks so much for supporting the programming at Dewson. To celebrate, we danced our hearts out at the dance-a-thon today.

We also danced yesterday at a very cool around-the-world dance workshop. We experimented with dances from different places and styles, including a waltz, a salsa, a jig, some animal moves - we even did the robot!

Earlier this week, we went to College/Shaw library where we participated in some interactive stories, guessed fun facts, and listened to some jokes. We also got a little time in the park.

Today I sent home the calendar for May with more dates. Our next library trip is on the 13th, and you'll see that we have another big trip coming up on the 24th. Forms for this, as well as Scholastic packages, will come home later next week. If I haven't already told you, please keep the evening of May 30th free for our Kindergarten Concert. It will begin at 5pm in the gym (though we will ask the kids to arrive a little earlier). We hope to keep the concert to an hour. Please let me know if your child cannot attend, as each person is important to a performance we are preparing!!!

Next week we will begin a new entry routine. Rather than have outdoor play first thing, we will come in right away, and then go back out later in the morning for our private outdoor time before lunch, as has been our routine all year. This change is good preparation for grade one. In the morning, our goal will be to get to the carpet in time for announcements, and I will expect everyone to listen to the announcements, and try to sing with me (or remain silent) during the national anthem. Please reinforce these expectations at home. A lot of our kids are into sports, so I always remind them of how soccer or hockey players stand respectfully for the national anthem before the game. If they've never seen this done, it might be good inspiration.

Looking forward to June, in preparation for the Dewson Festival, each class has been asked to collect items for a raffle basket. Our theme is Arts & Crafts for kids. If you are able to purchase or donate new items, such as markers, crayons, craft paper, stickers, popsicle sticks etc., that would be fantastic. You can send it to me, or directly to the office (I think) by May 23rd. Just include a note so I remember what it's for. Thanks!

Ooo, we had a great music class yesterday. Mr. Greene taught us about the Gamelan. The Gamelan is a traditional Indonesian ensemble of percussion instruments. I remember learning about this tradition in university. The instruments are revered and honoured, as you might honour royalty. To show respect, we all took off our shoes when playing the instruments. Mr. Greene said that our class had done such a good job, that we could show his next class how it's done, giving me time to run downstairs, grab my camera, and take some pictures!!

We are very into performing right now - I've been invited to a few concerts during centre time. Some performances are songs and poems that I've taught, but others are freshly composed and original. The performers seem to be reading the music from their drawing books...

 
What else? Plants!! Our large garden is coming along just great. Sunflowers, tomatoes, 4 o'clocks and beans are all doing their thing by the window. We are quite proud of our growing babies. In our plant journal, we learned and labeled the basic parts of a flower, and also put some puzzle pieces in order, showing the steps from seed to leafy plant. This was easy for us, thanks to that cool experiment we did where we watched the bean seeds crack and start growing their little roots out of soil.

Here are the plant parts we learned:

Les racines

La tige

La feuille

Les pétales

La plante

We attempted to answer another massive question from our list today. Why do stars look like «?
I found a YouTube video that answers the question very well, but we didn't have time to discuss after everyone's turn.... I'm very curious what our scientists understood.

Have a good weekend, and don't forget your green bags on Monday!

Our plant babies

We are plant parents!! All our little mamas and papas are delighted to watch their little sprouts popping up and growing taller each day. They water their tournesol diligently, and remain very interested in our tomato experiment. Each time one group of seeds pulls ahead with a new little sprout, they decide that's the group that must be from space! To celebrate Earth Day, we planted even more flowers, seeds kindly donated by Aili & Arja.  

A while back, we wrote down some questions we had about the Earth and space. Some were so grand that a simple classroom experiment was not a sufficient answer, but thanks to the internet and a great book Emmylou shared, we were able to somewhat address the history of our planet. A much easier question (phew!) was, how do plants grow? While we can easily observe our little garden growing daily, the beginning of a plant's life is underground. To get a close-up look at how it all starts, we put some bean seeds in a baggie with a moist paper towel. After a few days, we took out our seeds and began to see some changes. First, it becomes swollen, then it cracks, then we can see a little root forming inside, and then it finally pushes it's way out. Now we know not to stick our fingers into our soil to see what our seeds are doing. They are already hard at work getting set up!

Aside from our gardening, we have also enjoyed a new moon sand centre with buried bug fossils to dig up and brush off, working in our plant journals and writing in our personal journals, some origami with Mlle Jade and spring animals with Mme Diamond, building, and finishing our alphabet soups with some charcoal shadowing and spoon. They look even more realistic from a distance.

For some Easter fun, we dyed eggs and watched our hidden messages appear, and I prepared a little treasure hunt in our classroom. Each student found 4 treats (the first year that we actually found everything I hid!), and everyone was great at hinting, but not giving away the hiding places for others still searching.

Some Easter words to review...

Un oeuf

Le lapin

Une poule

Du chocolat

Joyeuses Pâques!

Pink Day Update

Hi Salle 101 families,
We celebrated Pink Day in style, although I wasn't on the ball with this picture so we're missing the daycare kids. We read a couple books, including "My princess boy", and had a discussion about how we can support our friends if we see teasing going on for any reason.

On pink day we had our second X Movement workshop, which was super fun!

We have also been working on our little garden. We have more tomatoes each day, and now we each have a sunflower seed to watch and take care of.

We completed our "Alphabet Soup" art project and they look great! We inspired another class to do them as well! Now to find a place to display them...

See you tomorrow!