I Spy Spring Book

Look outside your window, go in your backyard or take a nature walk and look for signs of Spring. Take a picture of them or draw a picture of the things you saw and write a sentence about each sign of Spring.

I see pretty purple flowers growing in my neighbour’s garden.
What do you see? 

Dear Families,

Thank you for helping to continue a classroom tradition of making a food bank donation for the Thanksgiving holiday! Your generosity and support were greatly appreciated; as a class we collected a variety of items and filled two large baskets with healthy food. With your support, the children learned that by working together they can help others in need. 

Our Thanksgiving Food Bank Baskets

The children have also had their first two swim classes this month. Please continue to have your child bring a swim suit and towel in a separate bag for each swim class. It is very helpful if they can wear clothing that is easy for them to put on quickly; sweatpants and t-shirts have been good choices for swim days ( e.g., please no tights or belts or anything with lots of buttons). Swim will continue to take place every other Day 5.

Thank you for your continued support and encouragement.

Dear Families,

It has been a busy two weeks for the children in Room 204. One of the things we did last week was to create our classroom rules. Together we discussed important things to remember that would help us ensure that our classroom is a safe and caring place to learn. Here are the things we have promised to try to do each day:

BE KIND to others with your words and actions. 

BE A GOOD LISTENER.  We put up our hands to take turns. We look at the person sharing and think about what they are saying.

RESPECT each other. We take care of our belongings and respect each other's personal space. We keep our hands and feet to ourselves.

Work quietly and help each other. We share and take turns, help tidy up and use indoor voices.

Walk in the classroom and hallways.

As we discussed these rules, the children enjoyed listening to several books by David Shannon about a little boy named David who is not very good at remembering rules. Fortunately, just like them, David has caring adults in his life that help him make things right.

We also welcomed back our classroom pet, Stanley. The children are learning how to care for our guinea pig and Stanley is enjoying being back at school, sharing our classroom and carrots with us. 

Stanley our classroom guinea pig

Thank you for your continued support and encouragement.

WELCOME TO BACK TO SCHOOL!

Dear Families,

Welcome to a new school year!  I am excited about teaching this Grade 1 / 2 class and looking forward to working with your child.  Your support is invaluable in helping your child adjust to new routines or re-adjust to school after a summer break.  I hope the following information about our routines will be useful.

Entry/Dismissal  

8:45 am morning entry bell

10:00-10:15 am recess

11:35 am dismissal for lunch

12:30 pm afternoon entry bell

1:55-2:10 pm recess

3:20 pm dismissal

The primary students enter through the East schoolyard doors which are near the adventure playground.  These are the doors that the students will enter after lunch, recess and will be dismissed from at 3:20 pm.  Please help your child be in the school yard by 8:40 am.  Learning to line-up and enter with the other children is an important routine.  If your child is going home for lunch please pick them up in front of the main office by the spiral staircase at 11:35 am.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns at 416-393-9040. Thank you for your support and I look forward to working together to make this a great school year for the children in Room 204.

Roots of Empathy

The children in Room 204 will be participating in a program called Roots of Empathy (ROE). This program teaches children about feelings, their own feelings, and the feelings of others. Once every three weeks, baby Mabel and her parent(s) will visit the classroom. A trained ROE Instructor, Kali, will gather the children in the classroom around a green blanket and together they watch our baby, Mabel, grow. We had our first visit with Baby Mabel on November 2nd.

We sing Hello and Good-bye to Baby Mabel
each time she visits us.

During the program, the children predict and cheer when their ROE baby reaches the ‘developmental milestones' of the first year: “She can roll over!” “She got her first tooth!” “She can sit up!” “She can crawl!!”

We learned that Baby Mabel is a
happy baby most of the time.

The ROE Instructor, Kali, also coaches the children in observing the baby and reading the cues the baby gives as to how she is feeling: “Is the baby happy or sad?” “How can you tell?” And we use this discussion as a lever for the children to talk about their own emotions and to understand how their classmates feel: “Do you smile when you’re happy?” “How can you tell if your friend is happy?” Being able to understand how other people are feeling is called empathy. The ROE Instructor also visits the classroom before and after each Family Visit to prepare and reinforce teachings using a specialized lesson plan for each visit.

For more than fifteen years across Canada and internationally, each year thousands of children are learning respect and care for one another with the lessons started through their Roots of Empathy baby.

We're excited that we've been chosen to participate in Roots of Empathy, and we hope you are, too. 

If you have any questions or would like more information, please let me know.

Our Sunflower Paintings

In June, the children in Room 204 participated in a special workshop with a visiting artist, Karen Harkins. She shared some books with the students about the artist Vincent van Gogh and his sunflower paintings. The students were then inspired and challenged to produce their own interpretations of his paintings. They learned how to explore, experiment, and use feedback to create these wonderful sunflower paintings. It was a creative and challenging experience! 
We also planted sunflower seeds that we hoped would grow in our gardens over the summer! It took three attempts to finally get some seedlings to sprout ---growing sunflowers proved to be more difficult for us then painting them! 

Our Friendship Fruit Salad

Dear Families, 

Thank you for your donations that helped us make this beautiful and delicious fruit salad. By helping to make this treat, the children were able to understand how differences can be an important and positive thing. We discussed that it was because each of the fruits were unique that they helped to make a wonderful salad; that if we only had one type and colour of fruit --it would not have been as good as it was. We were then able to discuss how that also is true for each individual in our classroom. This simple activity helped the children understand it is our differences that allow us to make our own unique contributions to our community. 

Our Delicious Friendship Fruit Salad