Félicitations!

We are SO proud of our students for their performance last evening. Wow! It's amazing that kindergarten students can remember all those words and do such an amazing job performing for a huge audience. We will be reprising our song at an assembly to celebrate Day of Pink. This will most likely be April 27th, early in the day (~9:15). You are welcome to attend this assembly if you wish. Save the date!

Our gym was also highly decorated with our beautiful hearts and many garlands that we made earlier yesterday. I challenged students to create a pattern in theirs!

This is a nice time to look forward in the year. In the coming months, we will have 4 more library outings, we will host the April assembly, Dewson's junior students will put on the musical 'Clowns', we will attend Dewson's annual Dance-a-thon, students each have one or two more turns to show & tell, we have a very exciting spring field trip in the works, and of course I assume the Dewson Festival will be back! We have lots to look forward to.

Today, we did an amazing clean-up job of our cubbies, lunch cubbies and mailboxes. Lots of stuff came home and I hope you have gotten back most of the mittens, hats, sweaters and socks that may have been left here recently. Hopefully we are just about done with our winter gear!

On behalf of Dominique and myself, have a wonderful March break! See you on the 19th.

Learnings this week...

Dear parents,
One final reminder about our concert Thursday evening. I sent home a bright pink paper reminder today with all the info you'll need. You can also check my previous blog post for all the details. Remember, after the concert, your singer can take home their heart decoration that will be somewhere in the gym.

This afternoon, we attended a presentation by First Nations educator, Clayton Shirt. He spoke to us about the medicine wheel and the importance of remembering that we are all humans first. He guided us in an exercise of self-care and taught us the Ojibwe word for Thank You. Miigwech.

Outside, some students have enjoyed drawing and playing hopscotch and making rubbings of the texture of logs and rocks (their idea, not mine!).

Indoors, students have been busy working on their goals, getting ready for our concert, painting, and building. The group below built a house complete with chimney and walkway!

Sound-wise, we have gotten pretty much to the end of the alphabet, but we'll work on those last letters for a while longer since they don't appear in the message very often. We have learned about a vowel blend (advanced stuff!) - o and u work together to make a new sound, oooo, like "Boo!". It's amazing how much these little brains can soak up! 

Finally, I usually prefer to use this blog to communicate to you all the positive and interesting things that go on at school, however, we had serious discussion with students this afternoon, and they thought it might be beneficial for you to know what we talked about so that we all share the same understanding. Many students were involved in a tag game today where instead of lightly tagging their friend, they pushed or pulled them. I have made it very clear that this game is never allowed at Dewson, even if a group of people all want to play it and think it's in good fun. Every single student heard me say this today and agreed that this rule just makes good sense. They also agree that they alone are in control of their bodies, so nobody can make them do anything that they know is unsafe. If any adult sees students continuing to play this rough game, we will immediately ask them to sit out for the rest of that play time. I hope you agree that this is fair. Perhaps you can reinforce this discussion with your student. Thank you.

Words of the Week

A while ago, we learned how to say "No, I do not want to play that game.", so that we would be able to express to our friends when we need to make better decisions for ourselves. This seems like an especially important phrase to practice this week.

Non, je ne veux pas jouer ce jeu.

See you Thursday!!

Concert Info

Dear parents,
We are VERY excited about our upcoming kindergarten concert one week from tonight. Our class has been working on our song for the last month and I think it's sounding amazing!
On the evening of March 8th, we ask that you please arrive at school at 6:00 pm. Our class will be meeting in the library. After drop-off, you can claim your spot in the gym and enjoy the show. I believe we are last anyway, but we would encourage all parents to support all classes by watching the concert in its entirety.
At the conclusion of the concert, we will meet back in the library for pick-up. It will be busy - there is no need to rush.

Dress: No need to go buy something new. Any nice outfit will be fine. Since our song is about friendship, and will be later performed in the context of Pink Day, I think having a touch of pink somewhere might be a fun way to unify our class. This could be as simple as a sweater, hair accessory, bow tie, or you can really go for it. Anything Valentines-y would also be great.
We are also performing the little dance that Mme Gaudreault and visiting artist, Rebecca, worked on earlier this year. For this, we would like to request that students bring along a pair of rain/rubber boots if they have them. You will see how that fits in with the dance!

If your child unfortunately can't make it to the concert, please email me so that I'm not searching for them on the night of.
Thanks for your help - really looking forward to it!!

On Tuesday morning we attended Dewson's assembly celebrating Black History Month. I was impressed with how our class listened to and acknowledged the performances respectfully. We also read the story of Viola Desmond, a Canadian woman who was treated unfairly during a time when segregation was common practice. For a group of kindergartners, we had quite a thoughtful discussion about how she would have felt in her situation, and how we would feel if things were still like that today. Please ask your student what happened to Viola Desmond and whether it was fair.

Calendar Update! We have had to move our March library outing to Thursday the 29th, rather than Monday the 26th as indicated. Thanks for making this change.

FYI, Scholastic has continued to improve it's online store. You can now fully select and pay for your items online. You will need to enter my information, and then I just have to confirm the order. No need to send me paper (although that way still works just fine).
I have not been amazing at sharing recommendations from the Scholastic catalogues the past couple months. Here are some ideas from the March Club de Lecture catalogue:
10F7, 13F7, 20F7 - these are all collections of books (sometimes just $1/book) that are very much like the books the kids are borrowing from school. The vocabulary should be familiar and there won't be too many words. If you'd like to work more on reading with your child at home, these are the books for you!
22F7 La princesse dans un sac - I read this to the kids on Halloween (when I was dressed as this character), so they will understand the story in French.
From the English SeeSaw catalogue, I'd love to recommend #26S7 What do you do with an Idea? - I just purchased this book as a gift for Ms. T's baby, and I almost teared up right there in the book store when I read the last page. Such a lovely message!

Mots de la Semaine

The next 5 numbers, after my last installment. This is as high as our most challenging cute little number trays go.

vingt et un

vingt-deux

vingt-trois

vingt-quatre

vingt-cinq