Hello Kindergarten Families,

Welcome to the last full week of school! I know you child is getting excited about summer and having some time off but I want you to know that they are all still working so hard in class each day. 

This week we will be focusing on a few different things. We will be talking about the summer solstice as well as National Indigenous Peoples Day today. We will be celebrating and honouring indigenous people and their contributions to our communities. Please take a few minutes to speak with your child about the different things we did in class. 

For the week we will be continuing to learn about bees and how they are important to our land and in nature. Students will get the chance to learn how to draw a bee and make their own rock bee as well.  We will also learn about how we can protect the bees. 

If the weather is nice we will be outside as much as possible this week. If you wish for your child to wear sunscreen please make sure you send them with it on when they come to school. It would be a good idea to have a hat in their backpack as well. 

Have a wonderful week and as always please send me an email if you have any questions.

Seana Blake

smblake@cbe.ab.ca

 Happy Monday kindergarten families,

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend and were able to enjoy some time outside in the wonderful weather we had. 

Last Friday we ended our inquiry and learning around earthworms. We talked about what they do fir the soil and how they help plants grow. For the next 2 weeks we will start learning about an insect we see often in the spring and summer. We will begin to talk about the bumblebee and honeybee. We will be reading books about them as well as watching different information videos. Students will also get the chance to learn how to draw a bee and learn he different body parts they have. We will also be talking about why we need to take care of the bees and how they help us.

Today we will be going outside and tying orange ribbon onto our fence by the playground. We will de doing this to honour and remember the 215 indigenous children found buried at the Kamloops residential school. While we will not talk directly about the bodies that were found, we will discuss how indigenous children were forced to go to the schools. We have spoken about this many times before and the children are always very insightful in their thoughts and feelings about the subject. They understand that we continue to talk about residential schools so that we don't forget and to make sure it never happens again. I encourage you to speak with your child about their ribbon and why the ribbons are on the fence. 

We plan to be outside as much as possible over the next 2 weeks so please make sure your child comes dressed for the weather. If you wish for them to wear sunscreen, please out it on them before they come to school.

As always, please email me if you have any questions. I hope you have a fabulous week!

Seana Blake

smblake@cbe.ab.ca

 Hi Kindergarten Families!

Happy Thursday! We have been super busy in kindergarten and doing a ton of great learning and exploring. We have been finishing up our study of animals in winter this week. We focused on animals that adapt this week and specifically talked about the arctic hare and how it's fur changes colour in the winter. We watched videos, read books and looked at different pictures and drew hares in the winter. Our poem was also about how the hare changes colour. You can have your child read the poem to you and tell you about the hares winter adaptation.

I Am A Little Hare

I am a little hare,

small and white.

I change colour

in the winter.

To hide out of sight!

We have also been looking at the difference between 2D and 3D shapes as well as working on our printing and counting to 20. Next week we will be moving on to talking about Friendship and Valentine's Day. Normally students would be able to bring in Valentine's cards to share with the class but we as that this year your refrain from sending any in. Unfortunately with COVID-19 we are not able to bring things to school to share with other students. Thank you for your understanding! If you have any questions feel free to email me or we can always chat at the door. :)

 Happy Monday Kindergarten Families!

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend in this warm weather we are having right now. I just want to give you a few updates about what is happening in kindergarten. 

This week we will be starting to learn about families. We will talk about our own families as well as other students families in our classroom. We will learn about different things that families like to do together as well as different traditions that families might have. Our poem for the next couple of weeks will focus around family and the different types of families there can be. The general outline for the poem will look like this:

Families

I have_________________.

I have_________________.

I have_________________.

I have_________________.

I have_________________.

I have_________________.

This is my family.

Each day there will be a different family shown through the poem. Our key words will be mom, dad, brother, sister, grandma and grandpa. Students will get to create a different poem each day.

We have also been learning about what a pattern is and that a pattern repeats. We will use different members of a family to create different patterns this week and work on colour patterns as well.

I also wanted to let you know that we are having an online book fair starting today!!! It runs from November 30 - December 13, 2020. The Shopify link below will allow you to browse and place orders. Please know that is a completely optional book fair and you do not have to purchase books. If you do plan to purchase books though please remember to use our class code as well RC190682. 

 

Shopify URL

https://bookfairs-canada.myshopify.com/pages/5153667

 

Featured Books  Check out some of the great new books available this fall.  Your Shopify link will also contain links to Explore the Books & Watch the Trailers. This will be their sneak peak of what’s coming!  Please note that your shoppers won’t be able to see the full selection or the shopping cart until your start date.   If you click on your link mid-fair, you will be able to see a running tally of number of books sold. 

 

Family Night is every Wednesday from 6:00 – 8:00 PM local time – FREE shipping on all orders placed during this time. Share the attached flyer– encourage families to take some time to browse the book selections, share a snack and have a snuggle up and read time at home.

If you have any questions about what we are up to in class or the book fair please email me. I am glad to help!

Thank you,

Seana Blake

smblake@cbe.ab.ca

 

 Hi Families!

I hope you are having a wonderful week! I just wanted to let you know that the November Scholastic digital flyer is out now. I will add the link to the flyer and our class code in case you are looking to add any books to your home library. Have a happy Wednesday!

https://editions.mydigitalpublication.com/publication/?i=678106&ver=html5

class code: RC190682

Seana Blake

smblake@cbe.ab.ca

 Happy Friday!

Our week of learning about pumpkins has come to an end. Our weekly poem taught us about different sizes of pumpkins and helped us to start recognizing words that repeat. We reviewed the letters Mm, Ss, Aa, Rr, Ll, Tt, Ff, Nn, Ll and Tt. We will not be doing new letters next week but will take the week to continue to review the letters we have talked about so far. We sign the song for each letter and learn an action that goes along with it that helps us remember the sound it makes.

We also talked about the number 1 and the number 2. We write the number, create a group of objects showing that number (2 blocks, 1 pencil, 2, leaves, 1 stick, etc.) show the number in tally marks, show the number in pictures (drawing 2 cars or 1 bear, etc.), what the number looks like on a dice as well as what the number looks like written in a word. 

Next week we will be retiring to look at our names and the letters in our names. We will practice printing our names, making our names with clay, rainbow writing our names and going on a letter hunt around the school. We will do a new weekly poem with the topic of how our names make each of us special and unique. 

The following week we will be discussing and learning about Remembrance Day and what that day means to us. I just wanted to give you a heads up in case you wanted to start talking with your child about the day and what it means. 

Have a wonderful weekend and enjoy the nice weather we are supposed to be having!

Seana Blake

smblake@cbe.ab.ca

 Happy Friday Kindergarten Families!

We have had another great week of learning! Learning about trees and their leaves and what changes happen with trees in the fall. we learned another fall poem and enjoyed creating actions to go along with the words. Make sure to ask your child to sing the poem for you. :) 

Next week we will continue to talk about fall as well as talk about pumpkins and their lifecycle just in time for Halloween next weekend. I will also be sending out a email messenger with more information  about what we will be doing for Halloween at the school.

Also make sure to check your email for one from em over the weekend. I will be sending you an email with your students google classroom login as well as their password. Please make sure to login to their google email and get into our kindergarten online classroom. If you have any issues getting in make sure to send me an email and I can try to troubleshoot with you. 

With all the crazy cold weather we are having, make sure to send your students with the correct clothing for the weather. Jacket, snow pants, hats, mittens or gloves and boots are needed Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday if it is cold and there is snow on the ground. 

If you have any questions, please make sure to email me!

Seana Blake

smblake@cbe.ab.ca